I Nomadi
Gordon

Ten years of career is a very important milestone for many artists in the musical field and beyond, and also a point of (re)starting for many of those who want to challenge and question themselves again. Beppe Carletti and Augusto Daolio decided to celebrate it with yet another lineup reshuffle, but above all with a very special and in some ways totally bewildering work in the galaxy of Nomadi.

It's 1975 when "Gordon" sees the light. The musical landscape of the Belpaese has already been rocked by several musical earthquakes and even Nomadi decided to join the party. It seems impossible to recognize them from the introductory notes of "Sorprese" so distant in space and time do their previous (and even subsequent) works seem, Augusto's firm and warm voice intervenes on a flying carpet of Floydian manufacture, telling us about a path of introspection, almost cathartic in offering it even to himself... don't be in too much of a hurry and enjoy the moment you are living is his (precious) advice, which he does not delay in addressing in a futuristic way to the character of the science fiction comic "Flash Gordon" (a full 5 years before the redundant bandwagon that the Queen will dedicate to him for the film adaptation). Also in this case, the journey of Gordon's spaceship towards his now extinct and dead native planet (Mongo) seems to want to bring us face to face with our deepest selves, alerting all our senses. Echoes of 60s psychedelia and skillful doses of raw and dry electronics are the perfect background to Augusto's voice lost in the depths of the cosmos, following the drifting vessel.

Only these first two songs would be enough to make "Gordon" a masterpiece in the Italian "light" music panorama, but it remains strangely in the background, so much so that even the most loyal and "hardcore" Nomadi fans consider this work difficult, going "so far" as to label it, not without reason, psychedelic... but there are still eight other tracks and many, many other surprises.

"Ritornerei" is a more or less unconscious (surely innocent) homage to the recent cultured detour undertaken by Battisti and Mogol in exploring new melodic structures in the pop(ular) culture song structures, with albums such as "Il Nostro Caro Angelo" and "Anima Latina"; here even the unusual singing line recalls that lazy and sly style of Lucio perfectly fitting a surreal and naive text, which becomes a play of mirrors between introspection and difficulties in social relations of "Come Mai", resting on a jazzy dreamy and smoky composition, with Carletti's piano taking over the second part and leading the song perfectly as it moves towards the languid and surreal territories of "Vittima Dei Sogni"... a perfect composition of robust pop, with a vigorous and round pace for a love story suspended over the wire of uncertainty "Io un giorno o l'altro mi stancherò - Il tuo bersaglio non sarò - La vittima dei sogni tuoi - Se ne andrà, vedrai" with the piano still in the foreground, suspended between the more casual of Ray Manzarek and the more languid of Pip Hoyle (Radio Birdman - "Man With Golden Helmet"). "Immagini" is a typically Nomadi piece, probably inserted to help the public (and maybe themselves) not to get lost, even if the consciousness here is expanded and the result more rarefied and "mystical" compared to their normality. Sensual to the limit of eroticism is "Senza Discutere," a sort of moral and temporal continuation of that "Bella Senz'Anima" that just a year before had brought Cocciante to the top of the charts, so much so that even Augusto's voice is here strained and somewhat above the usual lines, with a hint that recalls some moments of that progressive masterpiece "666" by Aphrodite's Child.

The tribal inserts of "E Vorrei Che Fosse" oscillate in perfect balance between the playful and theatrical vaudeville like in some Beatles-like merry-go-rounds and the lyrical and slow-rock surrealism of Ivan Graziani, who would come to prominence some seasons later with albums such as "Ballata Per Quattro Stagioni" and "I Lupi". "Il Destino" also seems normal with Augusto's usual reassuring voice consoling and cuddling us like a tender and benevolent father after a bad fall and deep and excruciating pain of skinned knees, except to step aside for the long final suite with a slightly progressive and slightly spaced flavor... always everything with the due consideration that we are navigating in pop territories and are talking about a group like the Nomadi, even if here in splendid and inspired form; as for the final drunken tavern ballad "Fatti Miei" where a certain early Roman and Romanesque singer-songwriter à la De Gregori and Venditti emerges from the nuances of the song, definitely more ironic and less somber in narrating first-hand the story of a betrayal.

As said after this work, Nomadi will embark on a new path and with the subsequent "Noi Ci Saremo" will give space (and time) to other stories and other journeys, leaving "Gordon" as the sole and unique "experimental" testimony of their career, much like the Rolling Stones did with "Their Satanic Majesties' Request".