Thursday 24 June 2021

A NEW DARK AGE

 Warm Spaced Blue is the second album by Roman band Ingranaggi della Valle and was released in 2016 on the independent label Black Widow Records with a renewed line up featuring founder members Mattia Liberati (Hammond B3, Mellotron, Fender Rhodes Mk V, Mini-Moog, piano, backing vocals), Flavio Gonnellini (electric guitars, backing vocals), Marco Gennarini (violin, backing vocals) and Shanti Colucci (drums, percussions) along with Davide Savarese (vocals, glockenspiel), Antonio Coronato (electric bass) and Alessandro Di Sciullo (electric and acoustic guitars, Moog, Mellotron, Roland TR 808 and TR 909, Akai MPC Touch, Korg Kaoss Pad KP 3, electronics, backing vocals) plus some prestigious guests such as Fabio Pignatelli (bass), Florian Lechner (narrative vocals), Stefano Vicarelli (synthesizer) and Paolo Lucini (flute). If compared with their previous album, the sound is darker and, in some way, bolder and more experimental. According to the band, this is a concept album sui generis, inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s literary work, ghost stories and Gothic atmospheres dealing with the relation between self-conscious and collective unconscious. Anyway, there is more focus on music than on lyrics and you can enjoy the album even without the help of a Jungian key to analyse the complexity of the concept while the art cover and the pictures in the booklet by Jacopo Tiberi could give a clue of what the music is about... 
 
 

 
The disquieting opener “Call For Cthulhu: Orison” introduces the subject matter with an invocation to the return of a fallen god, the one who can sweep away laws and morals overcoming the difference between good and evil, restoring universal freedom... “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age...” (quote from H.P. Lovecraft, The Call Of Cthulhu). 
 
Ingranaggi della Valle 2016

 
Inntal” takes us in the eerie woods of the Inn Valley drawing pastoral landscapes and spectral shadows for a Gothic tale where fear can drive you crazy. The narrative vocals in German, the short lyrics in English, the music and the picture in the booklet evoke the ghost of a drowned girl and the irrepressible force that can attract you in her fatal arms and then push you into the void of the night... 
 
The short instrumental “Call For Cthulhu: Through The Stars” takes you for a nightmarish trip into the deep ocean where you can experience an oneiric vision of the submarine corpse-city of R'lyeh, home of great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults... 
 
 

 
The following “Lada Niva” is a bit lighter and dreamy. It describes the troubles of the ghost of an old man hanging on his memories and who can’t forget his old car and the sound of the rain on its wind-shield, making very difficult for him the last step into the afterlife. Then it’s the turn of the mysterious “Ayida Wedo”, a beautiful instrumental track whose title refers to the Rainbow Serpent of the Voodoo culture and to its double personality... 
 
The long, complex “Call For Cthulhu: Promise” evokes in music and words claustrophobic atmospheres and cosmic journeys across the unknown territories of the mind. The promise of a spiritual rebirth and the hope for a come back from the abyss close an album that is really worth listening to... 
 
You can listen to the complete album HERE
 

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