Valerian Swing
A Sailor Lost Around The Earth

Uh-oh! We are informed that this review also appears (in whole or in part) on solouninsiemedibugie.blogspot.com/2011/05/sailor-lost-around-earth.html

First confusion. Then wonder.

The children's universe is made up of drawings and figures that are easily found in nature: the circle, the triangle, the sun, squares, houses. Then elementary school comes along. They teach you that a liquid tends not to have a shape of its own but acquires that of the container in which it is found. An unthinkable, shocking thing. To not have a shape is not acceptable, not on this world, not in the angelic and innocent mind of a little one. Water then becomes the favorite plaything: you watch it, you pour it from one glass to another, when you are small you plunge Didò into it (that has a shape! And it's the one I want!), you put it in the paddling pool in the garden but...nothing. You can't understand why and you're left unsettled.

''A Sailor Lost Around The Earth'' is a liquid. A murky liquid, salty. It represents precisely that frightening amorphous mass that attracts children and confuses them; practically the natural habitat of the (heart) octopus depicted on the cover. A choice, that of the cephalopod, which perfectly conveys the idea of what the Correggio trio is capable of conceiving, not only due to the occasionally tentacular drumming of David Ferretti reminiscent of some intricate Mastodon-like solutions, but especially for the variety of styles and atmospheres embraced even within the same track (the fusion between Dillinger Escape Plan and Isis of the enchanting ''Since Last Century'' for example).  

Their first effort, ''Draining Planning For Ears Reflectors'' (2008), was an intense, surprising album but not without some youthful sins; this second endeavor distances itself from that Post-rock/Shoegaze drift that was not yet fully enlightening: almost entirely removed are the vocal parts (a detail I appreciated a lot), we find ourselves facing a much more disjointed, math, frantic album. I don't know if I'm making myself clear. Probably not.

Rhythmic changes, blazing accelerations, music that contorts itself with no apparent logical thread. Valerian Swing's underlying idea is to focus entirely on breaking the schemes: the basic structure is reinforced by jabs of contaminating serum that modify its DNA (''Hypnagogic Allucination? Sound In The Void''), by the dream-like triumphs of ''A Sea In Your Divine Fast'', by electronic experiments (''Nothing But a Sailor Lost Around The Earth''), even by the jazz contaminations of ''Dr Pengle Is Here'' with the cameo of trumpeter Gianluca Petrella (and with the hints of Zu peeking through) which disorient more than necessary.

The form-song structure is then overturned by sudden twists and mood swings. Every inhibition is annihilated, plunging into such a quantity of emotions that even the most demanding listener is astonished. It's not instrumental masturbation for its own sake; everything flows and intertwines in our hands like a confidential lover dancing before our eyes. A profound, almost entirely instrumental reflection that evolves, listen after listen, into something even more unknown, dissonant, mystical.

Give it a chance. Become its container. And, before dismissing it, at least pass by ''It Shines'' or ''Le Roi Cremeux'', with those riffs that start and stop, then start spasmodically chasing each other again.

First confusion. Then wonder.