Piano Magic
Artist's Rifles

Frustration, stress, a constant emotional tension that destroys any possibility of spiritual well-being…
These are the evils of our world. The evils of our daily life. A life we lead without even understanding why, and this sometimes makes it seem hateful, unbearable, useless. The doctor or psychologist tries to help us, but they are human beings like us. They give us pills and stuff like that.

But wouldn't the formula for well-being perhaps be found in the very everyday living? In trying to approach differently what we always do?
For example, if there is one thing I always do, it's listen to music. I believe that nothing better than music can compensate for the incompleteness of the human spirit. But how many records, however beautiful they may be, can truly lead the listener into a real spiritual catharsis? Here I am no longer talking about beauty for its own sake, here I am talking about inner rebirth, about music that digs deep into the soul.

Music like that of Piano Magic, for example: eternal, ascetic, dreamy. Dark, baroque pop, experimentation, electronics, toy instruments, rock, new wave, acoustic and melancholic intimacy. A dreamlike stasis that seems to be a photocopier of hidden emotions and ancestral sensations. I listen to one of their albums and decide to describe my experience, jotting down the words automatically, as if it were a Joycean stream of consciousness (which is probably the best way to describe the group's music), sketching out concepts while the album gently caresses my ears as background.

The album in question is "Artist's Rifles" from 2000, and the choice is not accidental. If I chose it, it's because I sincerely believe it is one of the most underrated albums by Glen Johnson's band. Sure, it managed to follow "Low Birth Weight," but it was also overshadowed by the glorious beauty of albums like "Writers Without Home" or "The Troubled Sleep Of Piano Magic." But this is the album that, in my opinion, gathers the fruits of what the Piano sowed, bringing to the pinnacle that conception of cathartic, intimate, melancholic, and spiritual music that is their true trademark.

The album is introduced by 1.16, one of the three instrumental tracks on the album, untitled, recognized only by their duration. And amidst them, the songs arise, as if they were butterflies in search of freedom. No Closure is the definitive confirmation. Johnson is emphatic, evocative. The atmosphere is a mix of soft tension and lyrical pacification, with guitars that seem to timidly emerge from the depth of the percussion. This is the ideal prelude to the wonderful voice of Caroline Potter, the angel who accompanies us in A Return To The Sea. The atmospheres of You And John Are Birds are those that literally break down all walls: this is the piece that manages to go deep, to destroy any divide with the listener, immersing them in a state of total and evocative trance. The thunderous progression of the song, marked by cello and drums, ends with the sweet chirping of nightingales, leading us to Index. The simplicity of the guitar arpeggios also becomes the key to this inner quest that one undertakes while listening to the album. The same is found in Century Schoolbook, indeed, here even more emphasized by the female voice, tribal percussions, and the same sequence of notes that repeats for almost 4 minutes, which is like chasing an infinite and ecstatic spiral without ever reaching it. A guitar intro opens Password, and it is the sum of all the sensations experienced so far. The guitars, as well as the bass and vocal melodies, are imbued with a sonorous lyricism that seems to be a real escape from reality, an escape that soon turns into a dark and timeless tunnel.
The semi-acoustic Artist's Rifles, marked by a march, is the end of the catharsis. It is the end of an album of absolute level, that reworks what the God Machine and Joy Division created, in an experimental, mystical, and contemplative form. We return to our daily lives, with the awareness that… "There is no peace, no conclusion."