Planet Funk
Static

Static is a bold album, and one must admit it. It was released barely a year and a half after the previous one, The Illogical Consequence, which was a triumph of dance, funk, and electropop much appreciated, and it astonishingly baffles everyone as it manages to be exactly the opposite of the previous work. What happened in the last 18 months?

For the first 15 minutes, I had the impression that I had picked the wrong CD; these are not the Planet Funk, there must be a colossal case of homonymy, but no, it's them.

Static won't be a successful album, it doesn't wink at the audience, it's not flattering, it's not danceable, it's not fun. It is a glacial, cold, and fundamentally melancholic album. The analog instruments that, although secondary to electronics, were still present in the sound of The Illogical Consequence have entirely disappeared; just think of the beautiful bass sound that underpinned all the tracks.

In Static, instead, pure, minimalist, and essential electronics reign supreme; the sounds are few and simple and seem to leave room for the melodic lines of the vocals which, compared to the previous albums, are completely different both in writing and in arrangement (and most probably also in the performer, although there is no certain news on this yet).
The tracks are 10 and absolutely homogeneous in this new somewhat suffering and dark attire. This time, the first listen is more complex than in the past and not recommended for those who don't have the patience to dig and wait. There isn't a single track that encourages dancing and movement, and perhaps here lies the explanation of the title, Static indeed. The beautiful opening track, It’s Your Time, is nervous, claustrophobic, surprising for its relentless rhythm and a voice that seems to want to explode without succeeding, but above all for its decidedly sad vein. It is without doubt the best way to present the new atmosphere in which we move in this album. And the following tracks do not diverge much from this mood, especially with the second track Magic Number.

The third groove, Swallow, is practically an electronic nursery rhyme, an obsessive music box on a single note, while the fourth track, In The Beginning, always on a single note, is entirely based on a kind of strange "poppoppoo" in falsetto interacting with melodic and extemporaneous singing and a neurotic rhythm.

The gem of the album is undoubtedly embedded in the center, If We Try, a fantastic, light, and nocturnal ballad, piano voice, and various sounds; it is a track that surprises, captivates, and absolutely exalts the new melancholy of Planet Funk.

The sixth track breaks the spell a bit; it is the track that gives the name to the work, Static, which has an out-of-context Hip Hop vein and then lets itself go into an excessive keyboard frenzy. The seventh track, We Turn, revolves around a piano arpeggio, it is pretentious, has a triumphant gait but does not entirely convince, does not engage, does not animate.
We enter the final trio, the tone of the album has undoubtedly dropped, but here begins Running Through My Head, a fantastic hypnotic march, luminous and tormented, followed by Tears that seems to have escaped from the drawer of the best Depeche Mode, a kind of breathless run inside the ice labyrinth of Shining, but there is no way out of here.
It closes beautifully with Big Fish, electronic reggae out of the ordinary, a brave and successful experiment, a song that works well, engages, and is enjoyable.

The moral of the story is that Static is an album that baffles, it moves light years away from everything that Planet Funk has represented up to now, it is an album that will not break into the mainstream and will not please those who appreciated the dance and easy listening vein of the Neapolitan band. The listening is more challenging than in the past, and one gets the impression that the attempt is to make a slightly more elevated and complex record. The experiment is bold but only partially successful; there are notable and surprising tracks, but as a whole, it doesn't captivate, it's cold, and at times the tone seems low-key. I imagine that the criticisms of the album will be predominantly negative. As far as I am concerned, it is a good album, appreciable especially for the attempt of change that seems indifferent to the sales charts.