H.E.X.

H.E.X. (Lizard, 2021) marks an even more radical departure from the clich's of the group's music, totally renouncing the use of the voice as in the previous Sonnar, and showing a spiritual and inner tone very rare in today's music.

Inspired by the timeless contents of the Book of Changes, the work, entirely instrumental, consists of two suites by Andrea De Luca and Davide Guidoni, assisted by the eclectic saxes of Filippo Brilli.

The first suite, "Heng", a sonorous story of hexagram 32, describes the concept of duration through the widespread use of arpeggiators, in order to decompose the vertical harmonic structures into sequences of individual events, the presence of numerous sections in polyrhythm and the appearance of natural flow backgrounds (water and wind), so as to depict the complexity and synchronicity of existential dynamics, suspended between duration, fragment, contrast and simultaneity.

The second suite, "Kou", expression of hexagram 44, reproduces the experience of encounter and relationship in its various moments, from the remote and unconscious approaching, to communication and contact, recreating the flow of connected emotional and vital energies to the experience of the other. In the second part it opens up to the dimension of the temporal perspective and panic illusion, characterized by transport into a dreamlike and forgetful collective universe, in which, in the end, the individual experience is shattered and reabsorbed.

Both are a masterpiece of atmospheric and mysterious spiritualism !!

We start with the spectral electronics of HENG (**** /) which simulates ethereal and timeless landscapes. The sense of mystery is not used to generate fear in the listener, but, on the contrary, to encourage a communion with the forces of the infinite and the eternal. Electronic instruments embrace a form of spiritual and solemn, but rather interior music. than external, which is introspective rather than spectacular. The sound is sometimes inert and sometimes infinite: there are no usual melodic references, the mood is dramatic and infinite.

It is surprising that it is a three-person line-up: The deus Ex-Machina Andrea De Luca (bass, guitars, synthesizers), is accompanied once again by Filippo Brilli (Sax) Davide Guidoni (drums, Percussions), and together they embroider a dense emotional carpet at times galactic, soaring high up to touch the clouds.

KOU (*****) distorts even more the stylistic coordinates of the group: The intro proceeds slowly, to the millennial rhythms of the cosmos, in a disturbing sense of emptiness. The music of the group explores metaphysical caverns, reaching out towards the essence of things, in search of the inner sound of which the oriental gurus say. the listener is anxiously awaiting a divine response for the first few minutes of the suite, which punctually arrives with a riot of Crimsonian Saxes from Poseidonian memory. The frantic noises of the percussion get louder and louder still, but they are only a passage towards the end of the record, a cosmic turmoil, a spiritual orgasm that slowly fades ...

... at the end the quiet has been restored ...

H.E.X. it's a journey into the super-human world. With this work, Nodo Gordiano try to condense and push to extremes the stylistic and expressive characteristics of the previous five albums, proposing a work that opens up new perspectives in the future creative activity. In my personal 2021 top five!