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- Bands:
VANESSA VAN BASTEN - Duration: 00:41:57
- Available from: 05/08/2026
- Label:
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Subsound Records
Vanessa Van Basten was born in 2004 as a project by multi-instrumentalist Morgan Bellini, who was joined shortly afterwards by Stefano Parodi on bass. The duo's goal is to build soundtracks for non-existent films, capable of making up for the lack of images thanks to a series of post-rock, sludge and shoegaze suggestions, adopting an approach not far from many post-metal realities that emerged at the beginning of the new millennium.
In this context, their debut “Swedenborg's Room” must be counted among the most significant releases in the post-rock field, although after this excellent debut the band followed a tortuous path between EPs, splits, collections of covers and outtakes (on different labels, moreover), allowing only one other long-distance release (“Closed to the Smart/Dark/Door” in 2011), and keeping away from social media and promotions. The group, after all, seems to show the same character as the music they produce: the equivalent of a girl who sits frowning at the edge of a dance hall, refusing, somewhere between disdainful and sarcastic, every invitation to enjoy life.
The new album “Yes” is therefore released on Subsound Records fifteen years after the previous one and shows itself alien right from the ambiguous cover, which heralds the shaggy “Dying in my Bed”, an awkward step to the June of 44 of “Engine Takes to Water”, from which the melodic and suggestive glimpses open, of which Aaron Turner was the champion with his Isis.
“Spittincoton” shuffles the cards further, introducing a psych atmosphere over a carpet of grunge guitars, but it is with “Giornata de Legno” (answer to “Giornada de Oro”, on the debut album) that things become more intriguing, and behind those acoustic guitars dictating a changing tempo, which risks derailing at every passage, we almost seem to glimpse the Tortoise of “TNT”.
While the canonical electric post-rock, ultimately boring, of “Heartheaven” is the only song in which we can clearly find the influence of Mogwai, the thirteen minutes of “La Vita è la Droga della Morte” (we allow ourselves to gloss over the choice of titles) are lost between shoegaze, sadcore (in the central movement, where the gentle contribution of a synth emerges) and post-metal during the noise-saturated coda, resulting in the most significant piece (if not nice) of the lineup.
“Nicaragua” finally closes the setlist like a two-faced Janus: first a relaxed splash of arpeggios and then an electric run-up dragged by a liberating drumming, an episode which (like “Spittincotton”) makes us reflect on the band's potential, should it decide to abandon itself more often to a less thoughtful tone.
Despite lacking the compositional heights of “Swedenborg's Room”, “Yes” is therefore a good return for Vanessa Van Basten, capable of picking up the thread of a discussion which, between impromptu releases and forced pauses, had now become frayed.
It is now up to Morgan Bellini and his associates to continue working on their music with greater continuity, thinking about what has been written in one go and smoothing out some imperfections. For the moment this is fine, even if we would like to see her dancing every now and then, the haughty girl mentioned above.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
