Sig.Sapio
Acufeni

There is a small black heart that beats in these seven tracks. Fragile, thin, with every appearance of someone about to implode. I met Sig.Sapio, I still know him. No need to lie. He's a kid yay high, seventeen years old. Sure, who cares, you might say. But keeping in mind his age and appearance (imagine him a bit yourself) is the best way to listen to this CD screamed in whispers and tinnitus.

Oh right, I forgot: ti/ni/tus, n.m. med., esp. pl., an auditory sensation not due to external stimuli, but caused by disturbances of the ear.

The review could stop here: this album contains tinnitus, hypothetical sounds, hypothetical songs that imprint on your cerebral cortex like dreams upon waking. They always give the impression of improvisations, small emotional eruptions, recorded before forgetting them. Again dreams, upon waking. Or nightmares, to be more precise. Always that small black heart, always there.

Listen to “Bianca” and you'll understand what I mean. The synthesizer cries in the background while the uncertain voice of this kid yay high slightly scratches your thoughts, making them bleed. "I will recognize you, white trail of pain." It is all unstable, insecure, out of tune, but damn fascinating, probably precisely because of this: "Xalkididòs" is an anti-manifesto, a no-jazz improvisation (the only possible definition) for piano and percussion with his fellow Giovanni A. Sechi (another kid yay high), the improvisation of a song that can't be made, that takes two steps and collapses to the ground, miserably, barely gains a melody and crashes into fragments of whispered noise.

It speaks of pain, all of this, it speaks of a very small room isolated from the world, it speaks of the struggle to stay on your feet when gravity is much stronger than you. It speaks of a small black heart that beats, and when you look at it you wonder how the hell it manages to remain intact. Not to collapse in on itself. Small miracles of music.

If you open the CD (self-produced but meticulously curated to the brink of madness) you find a little sheet with the lyrics written on it by hand. On the back it’s scribbled "Mr. Sapio wants to be your friend, and your copy is n° x/50, be happy!". Below, the childish drawing of a child with a kite. He laughs. Above him, an improbable storm, and a threatening lightning bolt getting closer. I think then, in the end, the definition of his music lies all there.