Ferrum Sidereum
Zu
January 9th
Distorted bass, sax and drums are the basic instruments of a monumental and relentless album, 80 minutes of charged, visceral, violent music that “starts from the center of the Earth and looks towards the sky”. To create it, the three Zus recorded jam sessions that lasted up to an hour each and then compressed them until they obtained instrumental masses lasting seven, eight, nine minutes. It's zen fury that overwhelms you, it's a political record without a single word sung. Read here.
Yes! Boom! Voila!
Yes! Boom! Voila!
January 16th
A supergroup which, however, does not define itself as such, but rather wants to play down the rituals and rhetoric typical of rock. They are a mix of noise and pop, anger and irony: a singer who says very serious things while smiling, a proudly ear-breaking guitarist, another guitarist who lives in a recording studio, a bassist with the devil inside, a drummer who plays everything in a very cool way. They gave their first interview to Rolling: here it is.
Dream Life
Marta Del Grandi
January 30th
With Dream LifeMarta Del Grandi brings order to chaos without simplifying it. His third album traverses dreams, fears and uncertainties, transforming them into songs that remain light even when they tell something troubled. It's an album that doesn't need special effects. The example that writing, care of the arrangements and an almost fairy-tale atmosphere can have incredible strength.
Even heroes die
Kid Yugi
January 30th
With Even heroes dieKid Yugi confirms that he is one of the most original pens of Italian rap. Between literary references, cinematic images and powerful productions, he builds a record that reflects on violence and fragility. But above all it manages to represent both the bugaboo – for the sometimes violent language – and the hope – for the cultural baggage put into rhyme – of many parents who “think well” compared to their children who only hear rap on their headphones. Because we are never one.
Agony
Chiello
March 20
With Agony Chiello signs his most conscious work, choosing to delve deeper into his own universe instead of following the easier path of pop heard on the radio. Between guitars that look to new wave and 90s rock, intimate confessions and a dark aesthetic, what comes out is a coherent and surprisingly mature record. It is the project that most precisely defines his identity and confirms him as one of the most recognizable voices and pens of the new panorama.
Leros Leros
Leros Leros
April 3
Lero Lero – the singer-songwriter Alessio Bondì, the keyboardist Donato Di Trapani, the producer Fabio Rizzo – fish from the Sicilian sound archive of the twentieth century (voices of farmers, washerwomen, carters) dragging the sound into the present between Mediterranean electronics, microtonal strings, frame drums, marranzani. In the land of Battiato, Rosa Balistreri and Alfio Antico, tradition ceases to be a postcard, following an increasingly present trend in the Mediterranean to relate to one's own history. No nostalgia, but a present that wants to tell a future through the past. «We didn't get hooked on this burning matter out of aesthetic fascination», explains the band, «but because of a question that had been buzzing in our heads for a few years: who the fuck are we?». An album that is the noise of Sicilian roots moving under the asphalt: buried, and for this very reason it lives.
Native language
Zara Colombo
April 3
The coolest Italian project of the first half of the year. They are a couple. She is a model who comes from Patagonia and sings in “cubist” Italian, in the sense that one feels she has a strange accent. He is an artist and photographer, he writes light and slightly nostalgic songs. I'm a little Birkin and Gainsbourg, a little Factory and a little old Piper. Delightfully simple and retro. Sweet life for bitter times.
Gospel
Shiva
April 10th
Gospelwhich was initially intended to be titled From the Gospel according to Shivathen shortened so as not to challenge too much the sacred Catholic imagination of our country, is the account of a couple of years that would have broken anyone: prison, house arrest, the birth of three children. Shiva, on the other hand, came out with the ambition to strike with a more mature language and with total transparency of thoughts, fears and intentions. Relying on a very 2000s sound (from the Timbaland school), and with a plethora of notable guests (Anna, Geolier, Kid Yugi, Tiziano Ferro, Lazza, Sfera Ebbasta), Gospel it is the redemption – personal, artistic – of Andrea Arrigoni. As well as a very good Italian rap album.
Disenchantment
Madame
April 17
Madame's best album for the things she says and how she says them. The story of a journey of awareness made with the shamelessness that distinguishes this singer (or disenchanter) who challenges the sense of modesty, decorum, algorithms, the idea of the pop song as a self-absolving formula. She sings about her limits and her miseries, which are also ours, she puts into her songs the hypersexuality that leads her to abuse the people who excite her, the psychotropic drugs without which for a certain period she couldn't get out of bed, the crisis that led her to hospitalization. Protagonist, in a five-year-old version, of one of our digital covers.
I'm not saying goodbye
The lover
May 7
Italian music needs singular trajectories like that of Lamante. I'm not saying goodbye it is the second album by Giorgia Pietribiasi, who recorded it in a church in 1400 (an idea by Taketo Gohara). It is full of mysterious songs that talk about mourning and that seem like dreams to be interpreted. The title recalls Don't say goodbye of the writer and Nobel Prize winner. «During the ceremony he asked: can the dead save the living? I tried to answer.”
The unlikely flood of the Oreto
Dimartino
May 8th
The first of the Colapesce Dimartino couple to release an album of songs. He says that «this is a folk record without hits» outside all the rules of contemporary pop, it is very soft but not very light music that flows like the river of the title. «The coda of the first song leads to the following one, it is a flow that never stops». One of those disc-worlds that you have to enter to exit after 35 minutes.
Paolo Santo Superstar
Paolo Santo
May 22nd
With Paolo Santo SuperstarPaolo Antonacci proves to be much more than an author of radio hits or the classic son of ambition. His is a decidedly personal debut that combines melodic taste, symbolic imagery and a writing that delves into nostalgia, confusion and feelings. Between suspended atmospheres and references to the best Italian songwriting, Paolo Santo builds a recognizable, at times magical, world in which it is nice to get lost.
I
18K
May 29th
Finding a good young rapper in Italy today is a feat. Yet every now and then, someone different from the others pops up, perhaps from the most unlikely possible province (read Brisighella, 7000 inhabitants in the Ravenna area) for this genre of American origin. Filippo Casadio, aka 18K, has four albums under his belt and an idea of sound that almost no one here has: he doesn't look to Shiva or his colleagues at home, but to Yung Lean, Bladee, Crystal Castles. Avant-rap that flirts with avant-pop, closer to C2C than to the disco beat. It's trap with class revenge and the temptation to do something new. Is there hope in the scene? Maybe yes.
People Pleaser
Damian Dalla Torre
June 12th
After the previous one I Can Feel My Dreams had put him on the map of new European talents (with the Guardian who had even voted him best contemporary album of 2024), the saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist from Südtirol is back with an intriguing new work that broadens his already rather broad sound palette. An even more international album than the previous one, which moves between Leipzig, the city where Damian lives, and Japan (Tenki Ame with Manami Kakudo), and where the artist's wind instruments harmoniously relate to field recordings and synths. Suspended between analogue and digital, between dream and reality, it is another piece to add to the history of excellent Italian artists who are more understood, known and appreciated abroad than here. To discover.
I love you
Tamango
June 12th
I love you like a wish, I love you like Tamango, the name of this collective (even if they don't like the word, it's too devalued) which comes from Turin and produces everything in almost total autarky, the music, the merch, the stage. The album also contains the songs from last year's Rampallonata, in a mix of stylistic variety and theatre, sense of humour, provocations, poetry, desire to turn the world upside down. To tell this beautiful anomaly of Italian music we sent Enrico Gabrielli to Turin.
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
