L'Arcano Patavino
Transcode

THE REVIEW

L'Arcano Patavino – Transcode

Artist: L'ARCANO PATAVINO

Album title: Transcode

Track list

1. La danza 2. Johnny 3. L'amore sospeso 4. Il corvo 5. Fiori di campo 6. Canticola 7. New city 8. Morgana 9. Terlundana 10. Soffio

Listen to the album: https://music.imusician.pro/a/zIAt2qGC

There are albums you listen to, and there are albums you travel through. Transcode, the new work from L'Arcano Patavino, definitely belongs to the latter category. A concept work crafted over ten years of artisanal and visionary labor, written and performed by Matteo Patavino (piano and synthesizers) and interpreted by Donato Arcano (vocals and guitars), it tells the story of Johnny — a man of the post-20th century, alienated, lost, but ultimately capable of reclaiming his own humanity. La danza opens the album with a jolt: disco-wave with a Teutonic beat, a masterfully executed bass groove entrusted to Ferruccio Spinetti (Avion Travel, Musica Nuda) anchors the weave of analog synths and electric guitars. Johnny dances mechanically on the edge of the abyss, a victim of a power that acts without principles or scruples. It’s a dazzling beginning, which immediately sets the emotional and sonic coordinates of the entire work. Johnny, the second track, digs deeper: dystopian, harsh electro post-rock, built on a dialogue between electric guitars and electronic contaminations. One of Johnny’s subconscious voices asks if he’s living inside a militarized mechanism, whose purpose is the loss of speech, of irony, of memory. "Non so più ridere, non so parlare, distruggo l'uomo vitruviano": verses that resonate powerfully in the present. L'amore sospeso brings a breath of fresh air: ethereal and restless art-pop, with a progression that starts from analog synths and finds fulfillment in a string orchestra. Johnny rediscovers love as the only human act capable of slowing down cosmic mechanism. Il Corvo is hypnotic trance, with a neurotic Vox organ punctuating an obstinate counterpoint. Johnny faces the monster destroying the planet, only to discover it wears his own face — a moment of powerful self-awareness. Fiori di campo is one of the album’s peaks: dreamy and elegiac, with an arpeggiated electric guitar accompanying a tormented vocal. On the battlefield, only severed flowers remain, innocent victims, but Johnny manages to cling to life with all its tragedy and beauty. Canticola brings the conflict between darkness and light, between daytime alienation and nighttime freedom. The track’s nervous yet fluid art-rock represents a heartbeat, its tension and release governed by the coming and going of day and night. New City paints metropolitan madness with a treated piano ostinato: Johnny finally reaches the new world, but burns his heart in the process. Morgana is lost intimacy: expansive and intimate electro post-rock, a return to the places to which we feel most deeply connected, only to find them emptied. Terlundana is the most ancestral and shamanic moment of the album: an electro-tribal mantra in an incomprehensible language, with the magnetic bass of Ferruccio Spinetti opening hypnotic portals and awakening ancient energies. Soffio closes the circle with painful, hopeful epicness: leading strings, electric guitar reigniting life, Johnny finding himself in the hand of his father and in that of his son. Memory and rediscovered humanity as a possibility for survival. Self-produced with rare care, mastered by Alessandro Guasconi at Virus Recording Studio, enriched by the visual artwork of Luigi Mastrangelo, Transcode is an album that knows exactly where it wants to go. And it takes us along with it.