Manuel Santini
Bianchissimo

As a great admirer and deep connoisseur of Lucio Battisti's "white" albums, I couldn't help but welcome with joy, and dedicate a review to, the latest album by singer-songwriter Manuel Santini, born in 1984, when none of the five albums had been released.

The objectives of Bianchissimo - Battisti e Panella jazz session are twofold: to rediscover the last phase of the famous musician from Poggio Bustone, and to give a new look to the eight tracks of the album, eight like in each of the five works released biennially, from 1986 to 1994.

Accompanied by Andrea Garibaldi on piano, Piero Pellicano on bass, and Daniele Paoletti on drums, Manuel Santini's singing climbs into the difficult and experimental lyrics of Pasquale Panella.

It opens with La sposa occidentale, where Manuel removes some parts of the original to make his version more fluid. Then there's Don Giovanni, with no intro and directly singing, beautiful, hits the mark immediately upon first listen. Equivoci amici, already jazzy in itself, is made quite similar to the original. I can't imagine the result if he had chosen Che vita ha fatto... Per altri motivi, one of my favorites, tends to cancel out the electronics, as indeed in the whole album. Most tracks last almost less than the originals, and the brushed drums create a new atmosphere. Timida molt audace is performed with emotion and melody, precisely the two components that the public and critics no longer saw in Lucio's new post-Mogol songs. Then comes I ritorni, with no intro, directly singing... it turns out to be a "faithful copy rebuilt in inlays," it's indeed the case to say. Tu non ti pungi più is funny and romantic at the same time, and closing with Cosa succederà alla ragazza, with a shorter introduction and a convincing singing.

Curiously, half of the tracks are taken from La sposa occidentale, while Hegel is the only album not represented. The explanation might exist in the fact that the 1990 record is the best achieved, and my favorite, in the combination of words/music and singability. Hegel, the synthesis of the four previous ones and already melodic, perhaps for this reason was not considered.

To the courageous work of Manuel Santini and his Bianchissimo, which portrays a man with a top hat on the cover, in the surreal and minimalist style of the original covers, I give 4 stars, we are on the level of the album Sinceramente non tuo by EquiVoci.