L'Enfance Rouge
Trapani - Halq Al Waady

"In the absence of stable reference points, the nomad has developed the ability to create his own map at every moment. His geography is in constant change, it deforms over time based on the movement of the observer and the perpetual transformation of the territory".

Francesco Careri "Walkscapes - Camminare come pratica estetica" Einaudi, 2006

With a personal, nomadic musical poetics that develops through keeping in motion, accumulating experiences, and multiplying sources of inspiration (for the record, among those declared by the group we find Keiji Haino, Wadih el Safi, contemporary classical music, and the songs from the Spanish civil war), François R. Cambuzat, Chiara Locardi, and Jacopo Andreini with "Trapani - Halq Al Waady" chart a course that could serve as a basis for interesting developments in a largely canonized genre such as rock, here conceived in its noisy and experimental meanings.

They succeed in the endeavor by weaving with the traditional instruments of the genre - guitar, bass, male voice/female voice, drums - a texture that speaks to us of a dark, rhythmic, obsessive, and expressionist rock upon which the arrangements of Mohamed Abid allow musicians who orbit the National Orchestra De La Rachidia to intervene/interact/collide/generate, with instruments belonging to the Tunisian musical tradition, unpublished and undoubtedly fascinating weavings.

The parties involved are highly skilled at avoiding the risk of glossy postcards and exoticism for its own sake; the music develops in such an organic manner that removing even one point from the weave would ruin the whole tapestry: it would be a shame, because the eleven songs represent the stages of a journey that shapes time, turning it into a place where the listener can get lost, only to re-emerge from the waves of emotions 47 minutes later, at the end of which L'Enfance Rouge and the musicians involved have given us a musical jewel of fine quality, as exciting as it is interesting.

I close with a mention of merit for the Wallace Records by Mirko Spino, an independent label that publishes this work and that, over the past 10 years, has been producing records of quality, genuinely interesting and never banal.