WATER

A day, a friend popped up at my office with a strangely dressed guy who was bringing a number of vynils and CDs. The guy was Raffaele CERRONI, aka Dieter CRAF. I actually suggested MUSHROOM PATIENCE for inclusion thining it was an Austrian band. It was 2013 and Mushroom Patience had just releaased ROAD TO NOWHERE. I've taken about 6 years before deciding to write something about this project.

WATER is considered one of the best things produced by the band, even if at this point it was mainly a one- man project with some guest musicians. It's made of 13 untitled hypnotic tracks, all equally enjoyable if you are in the right mood. Track 4 is remarkable as it's short and grotesque, but the influence of the classic krautrock like that of CAN and AMON DUUL II is clear. During our conversation Raffaele has told me that he has jammed several times with Damo SUZUKI.

The trumpet of Fabio RIVABELLI, even if credited only as guest musician, is present throughout the whole album, and together with the distorted vocals and the noise in the background creates a particular soundscape, like "Holger Czukay meets Mark Isham". As usual, the longest track (track 5) is the album's best. It's based on a repetitive slow guitar harping, that the trumpet makes obsessive except in the last 2 minutes when it takes a different, almost horrorific, path. A very dark moment mainly made of bass and keys.

Paying more attention, the background noises are all related to "water": thunderstorms, rain, ocean waves. They aren't recorded sounds and the electroincs which produce them don't try to be realistic, just to give the listener the idea. The album becomes more and more dark while proceeding. Instead of the trippy craziness typical of CAN, it looks like we are in a very bad trip. It's that kind of nightmares where nothing happens, but your sleeping is uncomfortable.

There's also a couple of very short tracks, just "intermissions", which are more crazy and less dark. Another unusual thing is that I'm unable to identify the spoken languages. I think I've heard some English, German and some Italian but it could be even Spanish. Taking into account that Italian is my home language and I speak a bit of Spanish, not being able to recognize the language means that this is very trippy...

The longest tracks have similr structures: some percussion, repetitive sequences of notes, guitar, bass, piano, whatever the instrument is, it's repetitive. Then mainly trumpet and electric guitar provide the variations.

Trying to describe this album with a single sentence, I'd define it "a journey into the darkness". Krautrock lovers won't be disappointed by it.