Paolo Benvegnù
H3+

'H3+' is the most prevalent molecule in the universe: the hydrogen cation. It is an unstable particle that cannot bond because it is isolated in the spatial vacuum. A dimension in which Paolo Benvegnù had to launch himself, before being brought back to earth by his musician colleagues (Luca Baldini, Ciro Fiorucci, Andrea Franchi, Marco Lazzeri, Michele Pazzaglia and the exceptional collaboration of Steven Brown), and a state from which he conceptually wanted to start in the composition of the third chapter of the 'trilogy of H' after 'Hermann' (2012) and 'Earth Hotel' (2014).

If 'Hermann' unraveled around the central theme of man, his history, and evolution, a world made of images, literary insights, and concrete fantasy moving around it; if 'Earth Hotel' was a profound reflection on love and the places where it expands and consumes itself, and the journeys that heighten or diminish the distance, the short or long times that mark its rhythms, 'H3+' (Woodworm) is dedicated to loss, abandonment, and rebirth, where 'grace' is the molecule at the base of life, filling the spaces between emotions, preserving the memory of what we have been and what we will be.

The result is yet another masterpiece album, where important conceptual and philosophical visions are combined with writing that has no equal internationally, with arrangements charged with that previously mentioned grace and emotional beauty. With references to his historical masters like David Sylvian ('Victor Neuer', 'Boxes', 'Quattrocentoquattromila') and a certain experimental wave ('Slow Parsec Slow', 'Goodbye Planet Earth'), the album dwells on the principles of mechanics ('Macchine') before fully opening into songs of indescribable beauty: 'Olovisione in parte terza', 'Se questo sono io', 'Astrobar Sinatra', 'No Drink No Food'.

Benvegnù essentially writes the same album since 'Rosemary Plexiglass', a sort of continuous film with life. 'Hermann', by its nature, required staying attached to our planet; 'Earth Hotel' still considered Earth as its ideal setting and a kind of closed space. This time, however, it was necessary to detach from Earth and narrate the journey of his alter-ego, Victor Neuer, explorer in Werner Herzog's unknown deep space, and after reaching it at the end of an adventurous journey and an inner exploration that Paolo wanted to define as 'salgarian', driven by that feeling we call 'nostalgia', completes with an ideal return home with new awareness and with which we look at what surrounds us with new eyes and the conviction that everything we need is already around us.