Ultraviolet Makes Me Sick
No Freeway, No Plan, No Trees, No Ghosts

THE REVIEW

It's hard not to notice the cover among the others, an intense magenta that stands out, as a frame for a lamp emitting a dim and sickly light, almost shrouded in fog. Yes, the fog. These three guys from Pavia consume it in industrial quantities, dense yet so tender that it can be cut with a breadstick. It creeps into your bones during the cold winters of the Po Valley and affects your mood. I know it well.

With this small premise, it might be easier to understand the music of Ultraviolet Makes Me Sick, an excellent blend of post-rock created on stretched guitar arpeggios intertwined in a Mogwai style (often without bass), psychedelia, jazz, slow-core, melodies balanced between melancholy and intimacy. Then there's that jazzy drumming often played with brushes, never hitting hard, playing a lot between cymbals and offbeats, as in the sublime ending of "Hearts and Minds Out Of Tune And Reversed" where they seem to take the staff midway through the song and flip it. Almost a satanic message à la Black Sabbath. It alludes to certain works by Tortoise, less enamored with electronics, but here it would be better to stop. First of all, one risks overshadowing the actual merits of the trio from Pavia and then because in 2005almost2006, talking about post-rock seems to be heretical and out of fashion, stuff from the last decade. Imagine then if this type of music is played by an Italian band - "forced" moreover to release their debut "Soundproof" on an Australian label (CameraObscura, but now they are with Urtovox) to have a minimum of visibility - and compared to the aforementioned sacred monsters. I couldn't care less about comparisons and the rest, I delve into the psychedelic melting pot of "Intimacy Is Jazz, Disturbance Is Art" and smile, but not too much, when I hear the whispered words of "Counter-Clockwise" saying: "Bad Moon Rising, night drives along the 'autobahn', French fries in Belgium, Klaus Kinski, Chocolate cookies, Belgian county", because maybe they talk about me too.

It's the first episode featuring the voice of a singer (Andrea Ferraris, guest on this album) and a more popular song form, verse-chorus-verse, etc. Finally, a taste for improvisation and free-jazz in the concluding "[... ]" as a seal of a meticulous work, rich in details and nuances to discover slowly.
Now there's nothing left but to close windows and shutters, ensure that annoying light doesn't filter in, apply a nice sunscreen 30 because you never know, close your eyes and chase that lamp on the cover, which has now become a fascinating jellyfish, an impalpable dancer in the sea of fog of Ultraviolet Makes Me Sick.