Masoko
Bubu'7te

It is refreshing to note the eloquent vibrancy with which certain sparse and not particularly well-known entities residing in the tricolor-chromatic sound-undergrowth persist, despite everything, in their own proactive and native music-dissemination action, producing works of such appreciable and pleasant substance.

Masoko, a homemade quartet (now quintet) sonically active for about five years and with a logistical-operational base in the Roman area, has recently been embraced by the benevolent and maternal (sponsoring) claws of the very active and musically savvy Snowdonia, extracting (after productive road-testing activities consisting of self-produced works over short and very short distances) from the magomarcelesco musical hat, like a bunny in prestidigitation, the currently enjoyable and artisanal musical-manufacture, arriving at the representation of their completed work over a long/hefty distance through eleven moderately unaligned, sometimes recalcitrant, often successful and never banal, pseudo-wave/rockish tracks.

While not substantially generating anything new and/or particularly striking in a purely executive sense (it seems to eavesdrop on a sort of trait d'union between the Londoners Grand National and the latest Bugattesca offspring), the Bubu-numbered trabajo, although presenting some cursory yet ultimately overlookable naivety, is solidly appreciated for the sincerely engaging energetic charge it promotes and for the moderately personal sound-framework as a whole presented to our miserable, curious, musical-explorers: a biting, vital, spirited, and entertaining alternative-(hard)pop built around a solid and present bass sustaining an athletic, varied guitarism which in turn supports and sound-guides the often engaging - even on a purely lyrical level: part of the positivity of the proposal is due to the sharp, playful, and brilliant textual approach "I'm much cooler than you / don't ask me why" ("Cool") - vocal lines of the appreciable and vocally convincing Messere De Leonardis.

The authentic potential pseudo-subterranean stunning hit "Alfonso," opens in the best musical manner this slightly over half-hour of healthy transgenerational sound-miscellany (the colorful and often sugary keyboards recall a certain playful fervent wave of the mid-eighties) where the syncopated and pseudo-danceable "Disconite" or the screeching "Ferrari," represent a genuinely engaging project, if not entirely, successful and exhilarating.

Three and a half leaning (at times solidly) towards four.

Astro-I almost forgot: "..they are all born under the sign of Capricorn."