NUOVE DIMENSIONI

"Nuove dimensioni" is the second album by Sezione Frenante, a band from the province of Venice whose roots date back to the early seventies. It was released in 2019 on the independent label Ma.Ra.Cash Records with a renewed line up featuring Sandro Bellemo (bass), Alessandro Casagrande (drums, percussion), Luciano Degli Alimari (lead vocals), Mirco De Marchi (piano, keyboards) and Antonio Zullo (guitars) plus the guests Deborah Barbiero (backing vocals), Mauro Martello (flute) and Francesca Rismondo (cello). According to the band, this is a concept album about the origins of the universe, the depths of space, the nature of time and the fate of black holes with lyrics inspired by quantum physics, astronomy, ancient history and mythology. The beautiful art work by Walter Marin tries to describe its musical content...

The instrumental opener "Kosmos" sets the atmosphere. It starts softly, the mood is dreamy, then the rhythm rises evoking a long, epic journey across the mystery of the universe. There are no lyrics, but the liner notes give a clue of what the music is about... From ancient times, man has turned his gaze to the sky, hoping to steal its secrets, marvelling at the alternation of light and dark. Now, thanks to previously unavailable technologies, he can hear, see and study the harmonies coming from the depths of space... If the world is just a teeming of ephemeral quanta, an immense interplay between space and elementary particles, what place do we human beings have in all of this?

The title of the following "L'era di Planck" (Planck epoch) refers to an era coming immediately after the Big Bang, the event which began the known universe. The music and vocals conjure up the image of a little seed, dynamically balanced, silent and motionless in the absolute void. Since remote times it blossoms breathing in the nothingness. By chance, a magnetic current runs across that nothingness and unchains a reaction, pressure surges and you can imagine an empire of gas where protons, neutrons and photons randomly collide one against each other in an infinite chaos, creative furnace of new elements, planets, life...

An explosion leads to the next piece, "Fuso delle necessità" (Spindle of necessity) whose title refers to a model of the workings of the universe elaborated by the ancient Greeks where the sun, moon, five planets and fixed stars revolve around the earth. Here the music and lyrics evoke the Myth of Er, a legend about the cosmos and the afterlife that ends Plato's Republic. Er, dead in battle, rises from his funeral pyre to tell about his journey through the cosmos where he could see the souls of the dead in march towards their fate. Then he describes shining columns of light and the celestial spheres of the astral plane revolving around Ananke's spindle...

"Principe del vuoto" (Prince of the void) starts softly, by acoustic guitar and flute, then the vocals evoke an ever present music expanding in harmonic planes where space and time blindly follow the rhythm and notes, soundtrack of ancestral events... But the harmony is disturbed by a different kind of notes, the notes that form the aura for the prince of the void, a merciless, hungry black hole that swallows the stars and breaks the astral fabric...

The dark, threatening "Orizzonte degli eventi" (Event horizon) conjures up the image of a lonely, breathless star and its explosion in an immense field of forces that suddenly invades the void. Other stars, old planets and comets are scared and try to escape from the dark monster that swallows everything around him, the black hole where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The feared boundary of no escape is called the event horizon...

The mood of the following "Venere" (Venus) is definitively lighter. Here the music and words give voice to a jealous planet with a female name, the name of a Goddess. Venus looks enviously at a celestial stone full of life, the Earth. She can't give birth to any living being and so, during the night, she listen to the dreams and hopes of terrestrial lovers that at dawn she handles to the sun... All in all, aren't we all children of the stars, children of the night that turns around us?

The long, complex "E' nata una stella (Giostra a catene)" (A star was born - Swing ride) is a charming track that depicts in a very original, surreal way the birth of a star and the formation of a galaxy. Here the lyrics are like brush strokes of colour on a black canvas conjuring up rainbow arches and column of light, shining creatures, little lively spheres, living stars... The new star is compared to a rotating Chair-O-Planes that travels across the galaxy, dancing with its sisters in a perpetual motion. This star is not the most beautiful nor the brightest one but it could be a source of life, your life!

"Nomadi velieri" (Nomadic sailing ships) ends the album with a funny description of the solar system with all the planets that turn stealthily around the sun hiding mysteries, drawing ellipses, rotating lightly but remaining always together like a deployed fleet of nomadic sailing ships in the sea of the universe. Their evolutions are like the paces of a baroque dance...

On the whole, a wonderful album full of excellent music and sense of humour where boredom has no place.

andrea parentin - italianprogmap.blogspot.com