RA ME NIVAR

Mobius Project come from Sapri, a town in the province of Salerno, and began life in 2005 under the name Sphera drawing inspiration from bands such as King Crimson, Yes, The Beatles, Focus, Camel, Weather Report, Balletto di Bronzo, Area or Osanna just to name but a few. The current name of the band reflects the common interest of the members for astronomy and mathematics and refers to August Ferdinand Mobius, a German mathematician and theoretical astronomer who is best known for his discovery of the M'bius strip, a non-orientable two-dimensional surface with only one side when embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space.

In 2014, after many years of work, the band self-released an interesting debut album entitled Ra Me Nivar with a line up featuring Massimiliano Amato (guitars, vocals), Lucio Filizola (guitars, vocals, keyboards, sitar), Tony Guerrieri (bass) and Francesco Magaldi (drums, percussion) plus the guests Brunella Gianni (vocals) and Gino d'Ignazio (flute). On the beautiful three folds art cover by Ennio Lanzo you can recognize M'bius and his strip in the character in the foreground and in the strange spectacles he wears, along with other elements that in some way try to describe the album content: a kind of magician's box filled with strangeness, irony and a pinch of madness, a mirror, an Oriental carpet, mathematical formulas on the wall...

The opener "Ra Me Nivar" starts softly, with spacey ambient sounds. Then the rhythm takes off and the music swings from hard rock and funky to a soft, jazzy finale while the lyrics conjure up images and colours from the outer space such as stardust falling upon silent altars, strange spectral synthesis based upon celestial mechanics, threatening black holes devouring everything around them, colliding worlds breaking through the doors of perception... By the way, the title is taken from the pages of Oceano Mare, a novel by Italian writer Alessandro Baricco, and is a word in an imaginary African dialect that means "man who can fly".

"Scorci di vita su nastro di Mobius" (Glimpses of life on Mobius strip) features Oriental influences and sitar passages. Here the music and lyrics describe with a funny sense of irony a journey to India where vanity and richness contrast with honesty and poverty and where the horizon ends up to swallow your identity between false perceptions and mirages.

The following "Entanglementallistically Speaking" recalls the Beatles and Pink Floyd. It's sung in English and here you can find particles riding through the time, masses colliding one against each other in the space, Maxwell's equations broken with a silver hammer and Tesla's war of currents in a huge and creepy world that's almost impossible to decipher.

The beautiful, introspective "In fuga dal destino" (Running away from destiny) features dark vintage sounds and evocative atmospheres. The poetical lyrics describe a man running away from war and fear, trying to savour life in its multiple aspects, writing intense pages in the book of his life. It leads to the conclusive "L'equilibrista" (Tightrope walker), a complex track divided into three parts that depicts a dreamer strolling in a city, blas'. He's metaphorically walking on a tightrope above the void of a cruel reality, actor of his soul, breathing freedom, his spirit flying into his inner space... A great track!

On the whole, a good album from a very promising band!

By the way, now you can listen to the complete album on bandcamp: have a try!