Pierrot Lunaire
Gudrun

I just finished listening to Anima Latina (with the hi-pod, while pulling weeds in the garden), there is this sense of emptiness (positive) inside, probably left by the great suggestion exerted by the aforementioned record, and I say, "let me write a review, of anything, on debaser, just like that...". I'm thinking of records I could review: so, something little known, something never reviewed, but not my usual spaghetti-prog underbrush, even though,...Perigeo? mah, Alluminogeni? bah, Pierrot Lunaire...mmm...Pierrot Lunaire? Yes, damn!! Everyone "knows" them for their debut album from 1974, characterized by a gentle prog folk, but not everyone knows that in '76-'77 the Roman formation released an even more interesting and unknown record:

GUDRUN

Out goes Vincenzo Caporaletti (guitar, bass, flute) and in comes the Welsh-born soprano Jacqueline Darby (voice, beauty), in 1975 Pierrot Lunaire are ready for another record challenge, much bolder than the debut album, more mature: in this record it's about avant-garde, and contemporary music, and the tracks of the LP, "Gudrun" (named after a character from Norse mythology), ooze nobility and culture from all sides.

The core of the trio, formed by Arturo Stalteri (keyboards, percussion, vocals) and Gaio Chiocchio (guitar, keyboards, sitar, vocals, RIP) wanted to do things big this time: it starts with the title track, a 11-minute plus giant dominated by experimentation in all its forms, medieval music, synths, guitars filtered through who knows what machinery (a microwave?), piano phrasing, and those female trills, Guuuuudruuuuun,... a hallucinatory and unmissable journey, in my opinion on the level of the best Kraut-rock (even if it has little to do with it): it's incredible how it makes you sail through the waves of your mind while the saltiness that only you can perceive crusts your eyelids... and then further down into the sea of irrationality.

But the album is more than the title track: then comes the relaxing "Dietro il silenzio" where Stalteri's sweet and slow piano notes are just another excuse to give full freedom to the mind, let it draw new shapes, new perceptions (drawing perceptions, mah...).

"Plasair D'amour" sung in French seems like a folk melody laid on a very simple architecture of deliberately annoying synths and white noise, while "Gallia" and "Giovane madre" aim at experimentation looking in all directions, the first with noise, the second focusing on the skillful contamination with jazz rock: all filtered through distorted, drugged, crooked, and descending sounds (there is also a drum played by an external member, Massimo Buzzi).

With "Sonde in Profondità" it feels like facing the most inspired Battiato of the '70s, on a new age background made of rarefied sounds and arpeggios, a war bulletin recording is inserted, read by a radio announcer, while in "Morella", it's the drama of Jacqueline Darby's singing that dominates, it's the most pop and melodic track on the album, but also one of the highest points, a whirl of intensity and counterpoints of rare elegance.

The album closes with "Mein In Armen Italiener" introduced by a choir of drunken people, but it's just a moment, the furious drums and electric guitar burst forth sweeping everything away in a kind of savage and primitive punk-hard-rock: a few moments later harpsichord and lyric voice calm everything down, noises, the Nazi army, and then... Silence.

The work will be released only in 1977 when the group had already disbanded: nothing was ever heard of Jacqueline Darby again, Arturo Stalteri continued and still continues his activity as a pianist and avant-garde musician, Gaio Chiocchio, God rest his soul, the extraterrestrial, became a lyricist, collaborated with Minghi (and who could forget "1950"), and in 1996, he left discreetly, still young, due to a heart attack, after a life as a true cursed poet; hallucinogenic drugs and alcohol consumed him and gradually forced him to leave this frivolous dimension, this pigsty where you steal, you fuck to make a career, you take pornographic photos and then at forty you become monks and nuns and everyone applauds you for the wise choice of redemption: but inside, deep inside, the chip is still horny and vulgar.

"...Acqua, acquetta, acquerella, acquerugiola, acquolina, acquona..."