La Quiete
La Fine Non è La Fine

I don't think I've ever come across, in my entire life as a keen avid listener, a more incongruous name for a band than this: La Quiete.

The few moments of calm hidden here are mere illusions, flashes of melody to give us a moment to breathe, to make us believe we are still in control of ourselves, that we haven't fallen into the turbulent web they've skillfully woven. La Quiete means sonic confusion, instability, sensory loss, cosmic hallucination, it means "unrest". The images follow one another in a colorful fresco before our incredulous ears, which do not have the time to ponder over mysterious and unconsciously fascinating titles like "Il destino di un ombrello," "Raid aereo sul paese delle farfalle," or the Montaliana (also in the lyrical style) "Ciò che non siamo, ciò che non vogliamo". The notes flow frantically, they chase each other, stumble over one another and over everything dominates a sense of confusion, of loss of control, a true Joycean stream of consciousness transformed into resounding melodies that contradict and interlock, then abandon themselves and die in the grip of some hysterical outburst.

If I had to find a sentence to describe La Quiete's music, I think none is more perfect than the one that opens the song "Merce Cunningham": "Everything happens in an instant. The image..." and then off, fast as the wind, in the grip of the blindest madness that makes you scream, rant, and the unfortunate listener cannot understand the rest of the text: "...is no longer a stream flowing among the rocks". Sure, but I know because I've read it: you won't understand it. Don't worry. Because it's true that all the lyrics here are in Italian; but if they were in Chinese or Serbian I don't think the change would be traumatic. What should make us reflect is how all of this is a deliberate effect: not only the total alienated and homicidal imbalance that animates every song, but also the very incomprehensibility of the lyrics, set among guitars that rise and fall only to get lost in the infinite void after a moment. Even the very form of the lyrics, transcendent, poetic, pseudo-philosophical but with a confused soul, plays part in this great sadistic game set up by the Italian combo. We were saying, why all this? La Quiete wants to represent the purest representation of the human unconscious, of pure thought that manifests in us without control, without us noticing. Here the words are not mediated: everything is pure, uncontaminated.

It is a true musical transposition into the post-hardcore field of what surrealism attempted to do in art and literature. The thought is violently torn from the unconscious and spat into the song. The lyrics often flow without apparent meaning, everything is hidden, slightly suggested. But I'm not only referring to the lyrics: indeed, I'm mainly talking about the music. Listening to La Quiete means embarking on a mental journey that challenges our psychological stability, because the same musical structure reflects the pure structure of thought, the same music is a stream of consciousness that rises and falls and finds no peace (or rather, quiet). Take the last song with its meaningful title: "Metempsicosi del fine Ultimo: Nevrastenica Oscillazione fra Poli Estremi". What does that mean? I don't know about you, but I don't know. And even more misleading is the text, almost a sort of invective against conformism. Timidly the first words arrive, almost stammered, but decisive: "L'industria culturale..." and then it accelerates and that thought fades and is lost in the void. "..until the achievement of the complete leveling of individuals reduced to zero and integrated into the dominant culture expression of power". All spat out like a suppressed, perhaps removed, thought of anger, which bursts out like a volcano in eruption, and is lost in the dense webs of guitars. It's all magnificent. There seems to be a grind attitude in La Quiete, but it doesn't resolve in a guitar distortion or in the speed of a double pedal; instead it fades into a flow of overlapping thoughts, recreated surgically with a very skillful execution technique that suggests some revelation the group had in a moment of mystical transcendence.

Stop looking nostalgically toward Sweden or America; stop believing those who think Italy is musically worthless, who believe there is no post-hardcore scene in the Bel Paese. Especially musically, I am the furthest thing from nationalism, and I love everything our foreign comrades propose; but when I listen to albums like this I feel proud to be Italian. And that is no small thing, believe me. Because everything happens in an instant. The image...