PLUHM
Canzoni dell'io nudo

The second work of PLUHM, the project of the Italian and Sicilian Lucio, is an immersive, powerful, deep album.

"Canzoni dell'io nudo" starts from the darkest and most cinematic ambient drone to take different yet related paths: shoegaze, IDM, neo-classical, sacred.

Looking at the titles, one might think of a sort of psychoanalytic session, a kind of self-analysis, starting with "Descent" with its Hecker-like crescendo that explodes into a black hole of crystalline intensity, continuing with the Burial-like beats of "The Naked Self" and its solemn and beautiful church organs, organs that we also find in the third and static track, a stasis that almost moves, so much does the intensity rise with each passing second. The first gem, however, comes with "The Abyss": an accumulation of radioactive debris that leads to a slow-motion ending, a slow and deep pace with a counterpoint of shrill melodic sounds coming from who knows what depths of the unconscious.

With the fifth track, "Essence of the Real," a breath of fresh air is taken: a felted and melancholic piano accompanies us throughout the piece, starting light, then crumbling under layers of crystalline noise and skewed but very clear melodies.

From here on, the descent into the unknown of the self continues, hence a special mention for the two tracks that follow: "Obsession" is pure emotion, with a constant and powerful beat standing above a sad and very sweet piano, and sacred voices filling all spaces, before a finale where everything stops and a suspended and floating melody enters, opening up to draw dreamlike landscapes (the video is very beautiful). "The Cloud Thickens" has a structure similar to "The Abyss," with a perpetual accumulation, dictated by a constant and insistent piano, then exploding/imploding onto itself in a slow and black IDM whirlwind like a stormy sea.

We reach the end, and "The Palace of Regret" prepares us to reemerge from this blackness that envelops everything, the air becomes resigned, almost subdued, always rising, before an instrument of Oriental origin draws solemn melodies and culminates in a cinematic and liberating finale (I sensed something of Dead Can Dance). "Ascent," as the title itself implies, is a track where the cloud created until now dissolves, making way for a final breath that speaks of liberation.

"Canzoni dell'io nudo" is an album that must be listened to from start to finish, without breaks. A piece of local art that cannot and should not go unnoticed.