The Merola Matrix
The Merola Matrix

What do an internationally renowned artist (Hugo Race), an artist of merely corporeal heft (Mario Merola), a beautiful and damned region (Sicily), and an ugly and damned movie (Matrix) have in common? Simple: a minghia. In fact, this is a review of the minghia, and the album in question, "The Merola Matrix," is an album of the minghia. And do you think a minghione like me could pass up an album like this? Naah…

"The Merola Matrix" is what each of you - in your psychologically unstable subconscious - has always wanted to play, and only someone like Hugo Race could have created it. Yes, Hugo Race: an eccentric and refined guitarist in the first incarnation of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, then a painful disseminator of blues martyrs in the "True Spirits," then an eccentric experimenter in the electro-wave project "Transfargo" until arriving at the latest effort "Sepiatone," a semi-acoustic deformed body constructed alongside the beautiful Marta Collica. And now... and now the impossible.

Hugo Race has never shown to have all the marbles; one day he realizes this himself and thinks: well, in my opinion, Mario Merola is great, Matrix too, and in Sicily there are beautiful women, beautiful music, and you can pick up quite well. So, he calls Merola (seriously) and asks: can I sing it all like in a Neapolitan sceneggiata? Merola gives his blessing, and the "The Merola Matrix" project starts, which is based on three main pillars: avant-garde technology; Sicilian folk tradition; Neapolitan sceneggiata. How these three antipodal factors can coexist is unknown, but Race gives it a try.
What results is a disorganized cauldron in which synthetic loops, disarticulated screams, landscapes of warm electronics, and whining guitars blend together. And then voices everywhere, choruses, dances, songs, accordions, scetavaiasse, putitù, drunk orchestras, drunk singers, some film clips, all inserted in a context where - strongly - it seems to echo tradition.

Antipodal worlds, as said, yet never so close. The credit of Race lies entirely here, in daring where it seemed impossible. And, in today's music scene, heavily marked by derivation and the reiteration of old past styles, the path traced by Race seems to be the only way out of stagnation, namely experimentation and mixing. Certainly, there's a complete lack of a focal point, through which everything could revolve, but it's a first step, and - we are sure - others will take up the bold lesson.

I already have an idea. It's called "The Metal Fantozzi." You take Marilyn Manson and mix him with Fantozzi, the Neapolitan pastiera, and add a nice Tyrolean feather. Try it yourselves.