** 2026 stock ** Released in March 1985 by I.R.A. Records, Desaparecido is the first full‑length studio album by Litfiba and the opening chapter of the band’s “trilogia del potere,” completed by 17 Re and Litfiba 3. After a run of EPs, singles, and the theatrical soundtrack Eneide di Krypton, the Florence‑based group condense their early new‑wave experiments into a concise, 33‑minute statement where the rejection of violence and totalitarianism becomes the unspoken axis of the record. The line‑up - Piero Pelù (vocals), Ghigo Renzulli (guitars), Gianni Maroccolo (bass), Antonio Aiazzi (keyboards) and Ringo De Palma (drums), with additional keyboards by Francesco Magnelli - channels the nocturnal tension of British post‑punk into a sound that still smells of Mediterranean heat and street dust.

From the opening “Eroi nel vento”, which quickly became an anthem of Italian rock, the album establishes a grammar where sharp rhythmic drive, echoing guitars, and synth lines serve lyrics steeped in metaphor, dream imagery, and lysergic flashes. Pieces like “Lulù e Marlene” (a tribute to Louise Brooks), “Istanbul” and “Pioggia di luce” balance singable hooks with oblique storytelling, while the title track “Desaparecido” filters Latin American references through mariachi and flamenco inflections, turning enforced disappearance into a haunted, danceable ghost. The closing “Guerra”, reworked from an earlier EP, locks the record into its thematic frame: conflict and oppression are everywhere, hinted at more than declaimed, embedded in images rather than slogans.

Musically, Desaparecido is often cited as a watershed for Italian rock: a record that marries UK new wave influences with a “gusto per la melodia tipicamente mediterraneo,” a combination the band consciously pursued at the time. The production keeps the edges raw enough to preserve club and rehearsal‑room energy, but there is already a sophistication in the arrangements - interplay between bass and drums, keyboard textures that expand space rather than simply colouring chords - that points beyond simple imitation. Contemporary notes from the period underscored its significance, presenting the album as proof that a “nuova musica italiana per il mondo” was possible: cosmopolitan, modern, yet recognisably rooted.

Four decades on, Desaparecido is widely regarded as a milestone, both by critics and within the band’s own discography. Anniversary editions and reissues underline how strongly those eight tracks still resonate, with songs such as “Eroi nel vento”, “Istanbul” and “Lulù e Marlene” remaining fixtures of Litfiba’s live repertoire and Italian rock radio alike. Within the arc of the “trilogia del potere”, it stands as the leanest and most immediate chapter: less sprawling than 17 Re, less rock‑centred than Litfiba 3, but perhaps the purest expression of the band’s original intuition - that you could take the shadows and angularity of new wave, pour them over Florence, Santiago, and imaginary borderlands, and end up with something that sounded like no one else.