L'Aura
Okumuki

This album features impressive chiaroscuro, pastel and watercolor drawings by a child, the rain tapping on the windows. L'Aura's world is like the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood: now calm, now unsettling.

The scenarios of "Okumuki" are filtered through the innocent eyes of a child. The black of night with its slender figures of spectral trees from which come the nocturnal and sinister hoots of the owl, the fiery red of a romantic sunset on a beach, the yellow of a sunflower field in full summer, the green of an apple tree in spring, an old room with a fireplace with a soothing and delicate flame and a rocking chair, on which to sit and leaf through an old album of memories and then look out the window to notice the leaves falling from the trees in autumn: all this merges and creates a magical reality, inhabited only by fairy-like creatures who, even in the worst nightmares, reassure us with their sweet and melodious voice, like that of the Italian singer, the true revelation of the year within the stagnant Italian pop scene.

The lyrics are beautiful; the power of the words of "Irraggiungibile", a song presented at the Sanremo Festival 2006 (an unworthy venue for the sophisticated talent of L'Aura), is comparable to that of an expressionist painting.

The real protagonists of the album are also the instruments, never relegated to a simple background function but always perfectly blended with the singer's heartfelt voice. The piano, accompanied by acoustic instrumentation such as strings, guitar, and bass, is the predominant instrument; throughout the hour-long album, it plays simultaneously ironic, enchanted, charming, playful, romantic, cheerful, and melancholic. Everything is natural, detailed, and intense. There is no trace of electronic beats here, only pure vibration, a dream dimension, and a parallel reality.

This album is not the usual product crafted at the office that record companies try to sell us as the new revelation of Italian pop. It is a true album, coming from within and not lowering itself to any commercial logic, at the risk (and merit) of being appreciated by only a few. L'Aura, as another young Italian girl, Elisa, once did, has shown everyone that even pop can transcend the limits of banality, superficiality, and déjà vu and give us something truly enjoyable.