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Along the edges of the soul, this record stops. It doesn't arrive directly, it doesn't spoil the ears with syrupy and diabetic melodies, it doesn't give itself to everyone like a fourth-rate whore, but it takes its OWN time to enter in OUR time, in our head, in our memory; it takes its time to settle, to be interpreted, appreciated.
A November afternoon a few years ago, maybe one, perhaps already two.. Rain, outside to sadden the street. A burned CD, one of those you gradually consider less, those to which, in the end, you become most attached. A name written in red marker, in block letters: MASSIMO VOLUME - Lungo i bordi.
"That's all..."
My usual diffidence. My usual superficiality.
Play.
That day, however, the rain found its counterpart in that record, its perfect translation. "Il Primo Dio": a piece that smells of rain, to listen to with the rain, both outside and "inside".
"There's strength in the rain that wets the edge of the sink
and my outstretched arms, today.
Not in the hills, nor in the sky that keeps the birds low
and has the faded colors of a Polaroid.
Emanuel Carnevali, starved to death in American kitchens
exhausted from fatigue in American dining rooms
you wrote"
An old book forgotten by many, a sick poet forgotten by all, a life that now, thanks to this piece, returns, overwhelming and powerful as the person who lived it: Emanuel Carnevali, a mysterious and withdrawn figure, poet, emigrant, alone, tormented by illness and his own life: throbbing, sanguine, tumorous.
Clementi (voice and bass) gives no escape for words: he draws them to himself, makes them alive, evocative, and stunning. The music accompanies him in his acting, the guitar and bass beat the ticking of the rain.
"Lungo i Bordi" is an album of unease ("Pizza Express", "La notte dell'11 ottobre"), solitude, anxious and meaningless waiting, mysterious nothingness, everyday life pierced by latent truths, failed and flawed loves, perverse sex, empty rooms. It is a journey at the end of the past, of youthful memories, of past years, of regrets; a nightly journey, where the traffic listened to is "deep as a symphony".
The night is "Lungo i Bordi"; in the night move the characters of this album's stories: nocturnal, agitated, and calm as only the night can be, with its neon lights, its darkness, its reflections, its binges; the night then fades into morning: the sticky mouth, rest after the acid and feverish insomnia, alcoholic and undone.
There is music to accompany all this, always evocative, stormy, thunderous at times, resigned and obsessive at other times, music that carries the same weight as the words, in symbiosis with Clementi's lyrics. There are the stories, the stolen glimpses of life, like an involuntary confession given by a lousy wine on a lousy evening. There are four men behind this album: Emidio Clementi (voice and bass), Egle Sommacal (guitar), Vittoria Burattini (drums), Gabriele Ceci (guitar), four men, not rock stars nor flashy silvered demigods, who translate their (painful) souls into the grooves of these tracks, these "pieces of life".
Understanding, knowing, and appreciating this album is like getting to know a person: you cannot skip the steps, you need time, to wait for things to settle, silence.
This is an album that, like all masterpieces, transcends time; it cannot be framed in a specific historical moment; it could have been recorded yesterday, ten, twenty years ago, and as a masterpiece, it goes beyond useless and silly temporal determinations, it doesn’t fit into a genre, but it is Music, perhaps the best music produced in this country.
"Lungo i Bordi" was a hurricane in the Italian musical scene and, above all, it was a hurricane for me.
Afterward, I felt like the ceiling of a bombed church.
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