Timoria
El Topo Grand Hotel

The cultural level of a country is also evident from the quality of the music produced within it.
Without falling into too many existing clichés, it's important to highlight how the Italian cultural level is mediocre, and especially in this season, at the dawn of the new millennium, the state of our creative genius is rather barren. Homogenization, the need to make everything functional for sales, the tyranny of surface, there are too many excuses used now to hide an unjustified poverty of talent and ambition; there are too many alibis in the face of this eloquent crisis.

Economists often say that "a crisis is a turning point", certainly, sometimes negative but nonetheless, a hope for a new season, a new recovery, a new promise. Only those who have taken on the challenge of continuing work in the name of quality cultural products think this way, and specifically, I am referring to Omar Pedrini. A hesitant, hidden figure, the concealed leader of one of the best Italian rock bands, now a producer, director, and promoter of good artistic products, Pedrini, since the early '90s, besides pursuing ambitious goals with Timoria, has worked hard in the name of Italian cultural rebirth, as an artist but especially as organizer and artistic director of Brescia Music Art, an appreciated festival of arts and cross-disciplinary contamination. One may agree or disagree with the concepts of contamination and cross-over, but one cannot help but agree with Omar's noble attempt to change the game, to bring certain nuances to light, and to give visibility to art forms that have lived and continue to live in the shadows.

The release of El Topo Grand Hotel soon follows one of the most successful seasons of Brescia Music Art and is a work of strong contamination, between different styles, times, ideas, and characters, eagerly awaited by the most attentive devotees and already undeservedly supported by critics as the best album of the year even before its birth. The "new" Timoria, those without Francesco Renga, reach their second attempt after the Pop-toned album, 1999. They arrive at El Topo filled with the suggestions and ideas of leader Omar Pedrini, filled with influences beyond the simple sound world, with a decidedly non-conformist work, a difficult concept album, that responds solely to the desires of its composers, without other logics.

El Topo is a 1971 film by Jodorowsky. The album is a tribute to that film (the story of a mole that, dazzled by the light, is forced to retreat underground once more), with the addition of Grand Hotel, precisely because the story contained in the album takes place in an underground hotel. A pessimistic metaphor, like the film, a visionary story, hallucinogenic, encompassing a cross-over of artistic genres that lead the protagonist Joe to his destiny. A journey through time and crisis, surmountable only with escape, the album is an escape into the art of poor Joe, it's a magical getaway from a bad society and a bad historical moment.

How distant are Timoria; in a whirl of mixed sensations between bitterness for the lost identity and admiration for the new variety of sounds, for the multiple ideas, for the sincerity of the product, for the classic and avant-garde sound at the same time. In the album, Omar involved numerous artists: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, spiritual testament of the Beat Generation, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Chilean poet and director, both present with readings of their poems; he embraced suggestions of different origins, beat influences, the mythical Mork from Ork, Ugo Tognazzi, and some old blues, hip-hop melodies and Anglo-Saxon pop, Castaneda, and a rich section of instruments completing the band. Moments of true tension, of commitment (Sole spento, La Febbre), lighter and more playful moments in a nice balance.
The journey unfolds in a magical world, where one feels oppressed and crushed by "a sun in which you feel cold” and by falsehood. The only refuge from this world seems to be thought, a safe haven for Joe.
Only thanks to an “Immense Sky” can you forget, even for a moment, the bleak reality that often returns in the 19 tracks of the album (from the splendid and melancholic blues of “Vincent Gallo” to "Magic”). The journey continues with "Snow”, a man alone with himself who stops to watch the snow that makes everything lighter and more intangible and even the most abject things watchable. With "1971”, an account of a vacation in the Dutch land, and “Sunday”, a decidedly light but very pleasant song, you breathe a moment pressed by the bass loop. "Magic” is then one of the most intense moments of this long timeless path: old Joe has now learned to stay alone with himself, no longer afraid, he has become a “city warrior living his magical moment”. The sense of unease that certain atmospheres and harmonies help create ("Febbre”, for instance, manages to convey all the anxiety and worry of those who suffer and find no support in anyone, thanks to the guitar arpeggio and the enveloping sound of the sax, “Sole spento” conveys the pain of the suffocating prison experience), is never dispelled, the gray society in this album offers no alternatives other than Joe’s escape beyond his senses, into magic, the interior, art, elsewhere. It is also a musical, sonic message aimed at a battered society in which artists must be the ones to take on the creative and cultural crisis and start fighting it, before the State and institutions, aimed at a society in which music is played by DJs; hence the continuous references to the '70s, to the Hippies, to Beat, to psychedelia. There is a group that finds no place in its time, a malady that has afflicted the most sensitive artists from time immemorial.

An innovative, difficult album, free from pre-established forms and schemes, far from the easy cliché of the sequel (Viaggio Senza Vento II). A breath of fresh air in a stagnant area, like the Italian stage of the late '900s. An ambitious album, like works conceived with passion and the desire to communicate something. Not everything is perfect, indeed, many ideas and combinations are downright poor, somewhat banal, but they contribute in some way to create a unique aroma, an album with an original identity, recognizable though having undefined boundaries.

"Our planet has become so ugly that all we can do is escape," said Pedrini when presenting this album. I wonder, with all due respect, where Omar is today?