Stefano Panunzi
Timelines

Being surprised by flying, looking at the world from a different perspective down below, where everyone appears like little ants rushing against time, the little time allotted to our lives.
Looking down where the usual guy is crammed inside his vehicle listening to the latest hit (strictly whistled phone ad or the current Vasco) at full volume, thinking that this is how he will be remembered and appreciated. Looking down where the “flag-bearing knights” of Italian music sell their childish deceit as pure gold.

Simply flying above all this without trying too hard to make sense of it, soaring on soft air currents, I encounter a sound cathedral, haunting and fascinating in which it's poetic to get lost. That's Stefano Panunzi!
A baroque sound cathedral filled with artworks and freshness that by itself is a national monument... one of those monuments to be savored slowly and within which it's a pleasure to return to be fascinated by what there wasn't time to delve into. Panunzi is the flight of the angel that from above doesn't scream to be heard, but fills the world with his presence without being noticed. And that's precisely the problem: getting known!

If dear Stefano were of English origin today he would have a monstrous following, but on the contrary, he is just Roman. And it's embarrassing to think that "artists" like Ramazzotti are Italy's spokesperson abroad when in the underground there's the real Art, the desire to write something that will be forever. Far from that music made of “C major cycles” and endlessly identical and self-serving chords, Stefano lives in an immense, spontaneous, universal, and cosmic sound limbo.
Indeed! Cosmic like the music that Panunzi conceives for the few chosen ones who will listen to him. But what are we talking about? 'Timelines' is an album of IMMENSE BEAUTY drawing its inspiration from an immense cauldron of ideas. In it, it's not hard to detect hints of space-rock, the best Sylvian and Fripp of Gone to Earth, the dark soundscapes made in Porcupine Tree by the mythical Barbieri, the sound derivations of Nosound and No-man, the best productions marked Jansen-Barbieri-Karn, and sound ideas reminiscent of David Torn's "tripping over god" and so on.

Panunzi retraces the good from the '80s and '90s, seasoning it in an ethereal sauce of keyboards, clarinets, sax, mellotron, cello, guitars warr, flugelhorn, trumpet and more. Everything seems minimalist, but minimalist, in the end, it is not. The sound elaboration is meticulous so much so that it's difficult to isolate a single track to elect as the quintessential single. Often there's not even a real separation between the tracks of the album almost to demonstrate that music is not a “finite” element to be enclosed in predetermined boundaries.
The album is all on the same line, turning in on itself in a perfection that suits little the human condition. Long notes in a cosmic and dark ambient host sax and clarinet adventures from the excellent Alesini, over which the typical elegant and technical bass of Mick Karn often prevails. Ethereal voices are often confused and fused with the instruments in a single sound solution. Nothing is tangible and one remains suspended in a flight that hardly suits those who want Italian music limited to the little song fully, and wearily, expressed by various Ligabues in turn.

Here we face the true sonic transgression and it is branded Italy. Numerous guests play this megalithic artwork. Among the names are Nicola Alesini, Giacomo Anselmi, Mike Applebaum, Peter Chilvers, Giancarlo Erra (Nosound for those who do not know him yet), Fabio Fraschini, Daniele Iacono, Haco, Gavin Harrison, Mick Karn, Nicola Lori, Diego Mancini, Sandra O'Neill, Laura Pierazzuoli, Giampaolo Rao, Markus Reuter, Rima, and Angelo Strizzi.

Music for the mind and the heart, food for the soul goes to touch its deepest impenetrabilities. Let this wind caress you and slip inside... surrender to the flight of the angel letting yourself be carried above the sky of your city. From up there the world will appear new to you... different, more foolish than it ever appeared before.
Particular credit goes to the production and distribution company, the RES music, who adopted a policy that will hardly enrich them, but that produces music of certain quality. If what I’ve told you has even slightly affected you... well... you have nothing left but to confirm it by going to buy 'Timelines'. You'll hold in your hands a genuine masterpiece!

PS: on the site I’ve attached, you’ll find samples of all the tracks. Enjoy listening.