“Hermann”
Paolo Benvegnù
La pioggia dischi / Venus
2011

It’s in your hands. Immediately you realize this is the typical record whose cover makes you regret for LPs. A man, maybe an old man, maybe a monk, whose eyes are closed by the young hands of a woman or a girl.

For the ones who don’t know Paolo Benvegnù (and I think this is the unfortunate case of most of the english speaking people going to read this review) he is the former member and actually founder of the Italian indie rock band Scisma. I’ll leave to you the pleasure to seek and find and satisfy your curiosity, but let me tell you that, now, Paolo Benvegnù is a reference for Italian alternative music, and not just for the alternative one if you consider that Mina (shame on you if you don’t know her…) sang and recorded one of his songs.

More than a single listening is needed (owed) to this record, and not because the music is particularly complex, or the sound canvas too experimental, but because we are not talking just about music, but a complex work made of sounds and literature.

More than a piece of music, this record is a piece of literature, both because lyrics are very important, maybe the most important side of this CD, and because the genesis of this job is very similar to the ones of many novels, stories and books written in the 19^th century or something.

Do you remember something of what you studied at school? You remember that escamotage: a book found in an old attic or a cellar, sometimes it’s a collection of poems (the pseudo Ossian..) sometimes a map (the Treasure Island) sometimes a diary, sometimes a novel. This is the case. Paolo Benvegnù tells about this discovery in an attic, a novel written by a famous (they say…) engineer skilled in precision mechanics, Fulgenzio Innocenzi, disappeared in the 70s after he boarded a whaling ship in Japan. This record pretends to be the soundtrack of the movie inspired by that book. Of course the book never existed, and so Mr. Innocenzi.

We actually don’t care if the record is a soundtrack, because it looks and sounds more like the movie itself! Paolo Benvegnù is a great story teller, and this record is the story of a/the man (better mankind) told through myths, images, historical characters. In fact just before listening to the record itself we have the Leviathan (you know, Leviathan/Moby Dick/whaling ship), then Ulysses, Moses, Andromeda, Atlantis.

Listening to this record you will face a paradox, as the music/sound itself is quite simple, catching, pop, sometimes, but you need to approach this record exclusively. Not reading a book. Not having dinner, as I often use to do. Approach it as you approach a movie, or, better, a book. Listen to the words, to their sound, create your own world and stories over those words and sounds.

Sit down, close your eyes, a glass of wine. One single sip of wine is not enough. So a single listen.

by Puppet

Related Images: