Leo Nero
Monitor

THE REVIEW

Monitor – Leo Nero: when Italian prog looks to the future and never goes back

Before becoming Leo Nero, Gianni Leone was the mind behind Il Balletto di Bronzo, one of the most legendary and obscure names in Italian progressive rock. Albums like YS had already shown a tendency to push beyond the limits of the genre, with complex structures and disturbing atmospheres. After that experience ended, Leone tried a solo path with Vero in 1977: a work that still kept strong ties to prog, while already showing some signs of change. But then something happens. Prog is no longer the right language, or maybe it's just not enough anymore. And instead of slowly adapting, Leone decides to make a clean cut: he changes his name, becomes Leo Nero, and with Monitor enters completely different territory. And here’s where it gets interesting. Instead of reproposing tired formulas or updating them timidly, Leone makes a clear leap forward. He changes his name, changes his sound, changes perspective. Monitor isn’t an evolution: it’s almost a rupture. Monitor is exactly this: a foreign body, a leap into the void, or perhaps an emergency exit from Italian prog, which had reached its endpoint.

We’re at the beginning of the 1980s. Prog is over, or at least it seems so. Baroque keyboards and endless suites are no longer of interest to anyone. Here come the new wave, synthesizers, minimalism, and a certain taste for the cold and artificial. Leone, instead of resisting or adapting halfway, makes a drastic choice: he completely changes his skin.

This isn’t an “electronic” album in the easy sense of the word. It’s an electronic album in the unsettling sense. The drum machines don’t just keep time; they impose it. The synthesizers don’t simply add color; they build everything. Even the voice often seems more like a signal than a human expression. At times it feels as though Leone is deliberately taking the man out of the music, or at least trying to reduce him to just another element. The interesting thing is that the album is split in two. Side A, with the Optical Band, is almost deceptive: more “playable,” closer to a song structure, even if still filtered through this cold, slightly alien aesthetic. Then you flip the record, and side B changes the rules of the game. Here Leone is left almost completely alone and it shows: the structures become barer, the sounds more obsessive, the atmosphere more rarefied. It’s like moving from a nocturnal city to a room filled with lit monitors where nothing happens … and precisely for that reason, it puts you on edge.

And in fact, Monitor is not a welcoming album. It doesn’t come to meet you. It doesn’t try to please. It’s edgy, at times even irritating, but it has a very strong identity. And above all it has something many more “perfect” albums lack: the courage to be wrong.

The atmosphere is perhaps its best weapon. There is no spectacular science fiction here, no spaceship or cover robot. Here the future is silent, a little empty, almost bureaucratic. It’s made of signals, circuits, interrupted communications. A future that today, at times, even seems familiar.

In the end, Monitor is one of those albums that you probably won’t love right away. Maybe not even later. But it stays with you. And above all, when listened to today, it sounds incredibly ahead of its time. It’s not just a passage from prog to new wave: it’s truly a change of perspective.

And maybe that’s why, even now, it still seems a bit out of place. But in the right way.