The Fog In The Shell
A Secret North

Maybe it's because the day isn't the brightest. Maybe sometimes you need to suffocate to start breathing again. Maybe I just want to feel a little post-everything today. A bit poster, yeah, which is so cool.

So I finally decide to remove the soundtrack of "Locoroco" (damned Japanese!) from my so-called stereo, since the hilarity effect it once provoked has now faded after the third consecutive listen, and here I place this massive disc made in Italy. Oh yes, fellows, this intriguing name belongs to a promising group of daring youngsters from my area, I believe.

Novara, Milan, thereabouts.

Back then I was younger and slaved away at a damn (but cool) festa della Quercia summer party (ouch, sore spot), with the sole purpose of snagging free drinks - a goal I dare say was excellently achieved in hindsight. And one evening, some curious fellows played for us, with a rather poster mode, placing a picì here, a mùg there, various instruments, strobe lights and many other psychedelic light effects. No one paid attention to them at the time, perhaps due to the middle-aged crowd, but as I finish off the leftover wine jugs snagged from the old folks' tables, just to make the evening even more poster though I don't know what it means, intriguing little sounds reach my earwax-blocked eardrums, piquing my curiosity. But at the moment I don't have the strength to get up and see everything up close because my poster level is starting to dangerously rise, and as we know, the more poster you are, the more your body takes on amoeboid shapes.

But I do have the strength to note their name and imprint it in my astonished memory, so I can seek more in-depth information about them.

Months passed before I stumbled again upon the actions of these youngsters and remembered the old mark imprinted in the attic of my little brain. This time in some unspecified local spot. The Fog In The Shell! Those guys who made that strange but nice stuff, albeit rather melancholy! I liked them, neh! Anyway, that's how I came to get this nebulous product I wanted to talk about before I started discussing something entirely different. Let's go back to that, then. This time, I can't be the apparently cool but fakely amazed poster, as very few, I believe, will know the album (if not, excuse me for underestimating you, darlings).

My discourse will flow smoothly and coherently as a result: what I'm offering you today is a healthy example of how even in Italy, the lesson of "post-rock" - if this term truly means anything - more cerebral and introspective is bearing rather interesting fruits. Under the aegis of the small Tuscan label Dufresne, in just over half an hour, our adventurers navigate through six homogeneous moments in the atmospheres, predominantly melancholic and narcoleptic, slightly heterogeneous regarding the paths taken to reach such achievements. Speaking in terms of comparison, the FITS might seem like a hybrid between the slowcore of the Low and the early Giardini di Mirò with a subtle lo-fi aftertaste; all mixed with intelligence and personality, without a doubt. The guitars play a major role, often slowed down in static crescendos of riffs, supported by an adequate and powerful rhythm section, overwhelming when they decide to hit the accelerator ("A Man Escaped"). From the catatonic chaos of our guys emerges every now and then, without any protagonistic mania as befits the genre, the warm and whispered voice of Marco, episodes that remain rather limited to the strict necessary. The chemistry works marvelously in the 8 minutes of "Rain", a textbook prototype on how to build a noise-rock track, and in the psychotic riff of the concluding "I can be the chaos, they can be the structure", dragged into a coda to make their inspiring masters envious.

"Alright, Appe, but why do we care about your damn review, that as usual will fall into the oblivion of DeBaser's database after some sporadic reader's comments?"

Dear friends, you know what? One day if they definitively become a notable name in the Italian underground scene, and trust me, they have the cards to become so, I, with my usual poster face, will be able to boast with a "told you so, losers!" and I will be acclaimed by audiences and critics as "the next Scaruffi" and everyone will want to have a review written by my hand.

Otherwise, I tried to be poster, huh.