Like the emerald merkiness emerging from the cover photograph, Bono / Burattini’s new album ‘Ora Sono Un Lago’ transcends elements, a tenacious and brooding collection of work that testifies the duo’s growth and ghostly ability to immerse kosmische landscapes, stripped electronica and oscillatory psychedelia and emerge with songs meticulously constructed, dense and unforgiving, full of richly assembled textures and echoed out other-worldly choirs. Some might call it confessional mysticism.
‘Ora Sono Un Lago’ was recorded and produced impeccably by Grammy Award winning engineer Francesco Donadello (Hildur Gudnadottir, Johann Johannsson, Modeselektor & Thom Yorke, David Sylvian, Ben Frost, Nils Frahm) giving Francesca Bono (vocalist, performer, founder of Ofeliadorme and member of the Donnacirco collective) and Vittoria Burattini (percussionist, multi-faceted drummer and member of influential Italian avant-rock band Massimo Volume) the freedom to truly explore different compositional directions after their acclaimed debut ‘Suono In Un Tempo Trasfigurato’.
The palette is wide, from the standout title-track, where scintillating complex sequences leave space to a a spellbinding synth, to the menacing ‘Prove d’esistenza/Il gesto’ lead by it’s funked-out robocop drums or its evil twin ‘Acrobata’, all hovering choppers and Carpenter existentialism. Pastoral minimalism and spiritual elegance take over on ‘Fragili danze’, a mesmerizing dance that mixes the emotional engagement found in Laurie Spiegel’s compositions and that constant search for human fabric. This is an element that is widely explored on the masterful album closing sequence of ‘Oltre le palpebre’ and ‘Lonely blue star’ where acoustic instrumentation pinpoints Bono / Burattini’s silky stratifications creating a sense of three-dimensional space and gentle propulsion. A mysterious mix that touches on the obscure rumblings of early UK post-rock greats Bark Psychosis/Disco Inferno while keeping a hand deep in the pockets of Italian archival folklore and 70s tradition. Songs like ‘Come un riflesso’ are a good reminder that the duo’s rhythmical complexion definitely takes nods from Liebezeit’s playbook but are set on the duo’s own pace, a lone voyager on a hallucinatory trip.
‘Ora Sono Un Lago’ is an album of staggering depth, a pointillist manifesto of contemporary futurism and hand-cranked emotionalism inspired by the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Patrizia Cavalli, where hypothesis and suspension become Bono / Burattini’s brushes for their distinctive blend of intimacy and reckoning.
