Just over a year ago “Saracena” came out, refined album in the sounds and articulated in its political attitude. An excellent job that, placing the concept of separation in the center, wanted to sing about the Nakbathe forced exodus of the Arabs of Palestine and their drama returned current. Cesare Basile is totally free from any market or stylistic fashion logic. One of the few authors of the Italian panorama that remained able to produce records in which theunderground Squeeze the eye more and more mainstream. What is striking is his being a craftsman of music, coming to amaze without ever being overexposed. Artisan is literally in building his tools, modifying or elaborating them. To this he combines the versatility of a thirty -year career in which he has always looked beyond the geographical and sound boundaries.
This long premise is necessary to introduce “Nivura Spoken”, but to understand it in full the moment of conception must also be contextualized. We are in full pandemic in the spring of 2020. In a recent interview, Cesare himself saying that he did not want to create a conventional album but something more adherent to the extraordinary period that the world lived. He adds that he was not very inclined to play the guitar, preferring to approach the electronics instead. So after various vicissitudes on May 16, published by the Catanese label Vice versa records, “Nivura Spoken” comes out.
Firstly, an album that we could define dystopian in the sounds but also in text/music combinations. An articulated structure that sees as a further system spoken-wordof Blues tradition but whose origin dates back to ancient Greece, when the speeches of the wise were put in music and played during the Olympics. A hybrid job, mestizo as always, but with redesigned parameters again this time. Seven tracks, 27 minutes of experimentation and darkness (“nivura” in the rest in Sicilian dialect means “black”).
After a first track/intro Omony and more digestible in which you can see desert blues veins, you descend into the subsequent six groups, each of which features a female voice. Donne, level artists and associates to which Cesare asked to ferry the listener to his sound visions. Each of it recites in its own language or dialect of derivation.
“U me Zogu Cor Diavu” is a reinterpretation of “Sympathy for the Devil” of Rolling Stones narrated by Rita Oberti in a Ligurian mountain dialect with an industrial and noise frame. In “nisun al da nosi” the voice of Sara Ardizzoni is kneaded to evocative and hypnotic sounds that seem to emerge from the boiling of distant sulphurous lands. “Cosmo” could be one pièce Theatrical: the voice of Nada Malanima seems to come from another dimension, the alienating text is scratched by violent sound scratches.
True of Lecce lends the voice to a “synthetic” reinterpretation of traditional Salentino “Aremu Rinbinedda”, while Valentina Lupica re -adapted a text by Franco warmed on a sound carpet already blaming of Basile.
Really remarkable is “frustration”. The text, edited by the Palestinian rapper Sarah Elkahlout, is packaged by Basile in a post-rock key: the music gives the song the sacredness it deserves: in order to verses so intense, which Sarah has sent from his battered land, one can only feel respect.
In short, Cesare Basile confirms himself to be an artist capable of moving his gaze in time and space. Time makes a tool of knowledge and space a means of expression, crossing these two quantities without borders in every direction and combining apparently irreconcilable worlds.
24/05/2025
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
