Tag: Milan Italy

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Milan-based punk rock outfit The Gluts — Claudia Cesana (bass/vocals), Bruno Bassi (drums) and Nicolò Campana (vocals, synths) and Marco Campana (guitar) — derive their name from an age-old term often used to denote unsold, surplus goods. For the Milanese quartet, they’ve taken it to symbolically express a surplus of energy, much like the energy that has long driven their own work.

Interestingly, since the band’s formation, the Milanese punks have established and honed an explosive and psychedelic-leaning take on noise and thrash punk with the release of their first three albums, 2014’s Warsaw, 2017’s Estasi and 2019’s Dengue Fever Hypnotic Trip.

The band’s Bob de Wit-produced fourth album Ungrateful Heart is slated for an October 8, 2021 release through Fuzz Club. Reportedly, the album sees the Italian quartet making a decided sonic departure from their previously released work. Ungrateful Heart‘s material is deeply indebted to 70s punk, 80s hardcore and post punk — in particular, Fugazi, Gang of Four, Sex Pistols, Public Image, Ltd. and the Campana brothers’ obsession with Italian and American hardcore punk.  

Recorded over a tireless week in which the band and their producer essentially lived and worked side-by-side in the studio around the clock, the Ungrateful Heart sessions were fueled by a forceful intensity and uncompromising fierceness. “Bob’s contribution to this album was essential. He pushed us beyond our limits. It was difficult, we can’t hide it, but it really was worth it,” the members of The Gluts say in press notes. 

In the lead up to the album’s release, I’ve managed to write about two album singles:

  • “Love Me Do Again,” a slick and uncanny synthesis of Never Mind the Bollocks-era Sex Pistols and Mission of Burma rooted in unadulterated hedonism. Written by the band’s Bruno Bassi while in pandemic-related lockdown, the song was “inspired by the different versions of the myth of Dionysus (the Greek god of wine, pleasure, madness and frenzied ecstasy) and an unexpected excitement caused by imagining how great it would be to be all together again,” the band explains. 
  • “Mashilla” is a furious and muscular aural assault featuring scorching and angular riffage, thunderous drumming and vocal cord ripping howling. And while indebted to 70s punk and 80s hardcore, the song is centered around an alternating grunge rock-like song structure featuring hypnotic verses and ferocious mosh-pit starting choruses. 

Ungrateful Heart’s third and latest single  “FYBBD” is a furious, old school hardcore punk ripper reminiscent of Dead Kennedy‘s “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” centered around enormous power chords, and an urgently snarled mosh pit friendly mantra. Play loud, jump into a mosh pit and tell some fascists to fuck off. The song features a guest spot from Radio Days’ guitarist Dario Persi.

The Milanese punks describe the song as “a burst of anger towards any form of alt-right thought and praxis, featuring a concealed quote to a very famous Italian Antifa hip hop song.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Gluts Take Us on a Hedonistic Glimpse of Ancient Rome

Rising Milan-based act The Gluts — Claudia Cesana (bass/vocals), Bruno Bassi (drums) and Nicolò Campana (vocals, synths) and Marco Campana (guitar) — derive their name from a term used to denote unsold goods and symbolically expresses a surplus of energy like the one that drives their work. Since their formation, the rising Italian quartet have established and honed an explosive psychedelic-take on noise through the release of their first three albums, 2014’s Warsaw, 2017’s Estasi and 2019’s Dengue Fever Hypnotic Trip.

The Gluts’ Bob de Wit-produced fourth album Ungrateful Heart is slated for an October 8, 2021 released through Fuzz Club and the album reportedly finds the Italian psych rockers making a decided sonic departure from with the material being rooted in a sound indebted to 70s punk, 80s hardcore and post punk — in particular, Fugazi, Gang of Four, Sex Pistols, Public Image, Ltd. and the Campana brothers’ obsessive with Italian and American hardcore punk. Recorded over a tireless week in which the band and their producer essentially lived and worked side-by-side in the studio around the clock, the Ungrateful Heart sessions were fueled by a forceful intensity and uncompromising fierceness. “Bob’s contribution to this album was essential. He pushed us beyond our limits. It was difficult, we can’t hide it, but it really was worth it,” the members of The Gluts say in press notes.

Ungrateful Heart’s latest single “Love Me Do Again” offers listeners a real taste of what to expect from the album: slashing and angular attack paired with scorching feedback, atmospheric synths, four-on-the-floor that builds up to a frenzied intensity paired with a snarled, old school punk rock vocal delivery and an enormous hook. The new single is a slick and uncanny mesh of Never Mind the Bollocks-era Sex Pistols and Mission of Burma — rooted in unadulterated hedonism. Written by the band’s Bruno Bassi while in lockdown, “Love Me Do Again” was “inspired by the different versions of the myth of Dionysus (the Greek god of wine, pleasure, madness and frenzied ecstasy) and an unexpected excitement caused by imagining how great it would be to be all together again. At the end of the song our fascination for The Sex Pistols can be felt, since Nico screams like Johnny Rotten.”

Directed by Brace Beltempo, the recently released and gorgeously cinematic visual for “Love Me Do Again” is set in ancient Roman times — but while nodding at Caligula and the anachronistic-style of Sofia Coppola, with characters wearing roller skates. Bassi explains ” “In the video Nico plays the role of Dionysus and Claudia a maenad. Dionysus is the God associated with irrationality and the excess(es) of life and that’s what is behind our own name . . . ”

The Milan-based act will be touring to support the new album with stops across mainland Europe throughout October.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Introducing the Brooding and Cinematic Sounds of Federico Guglielmetti

Federico Guglielmetti is an emerging Milan, Italy-based singer/songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist and producer, who can trace the origins of his musical career to when he was a child: he started studying classical guitar under Maestro Tiberi, a blind musician with an innate musical ear, when was he 12. Tiberi then taught him piano, how to sing, how to compose melodies for vocals and to compose material for solo instrumentation, as well as for a full orchestra. 

Guglielmetti started writing his own original material when he was 16. Much of that early material, the emerging Italian singer/songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer recorded in various recording studios with a band of his high school classmates, including his childhood friend and collaborator Sebastiano Foti, who co-wrote the lyrics of Guglielmetti’s album Quel che resta. Guglielmetti has played with many of these friends — but over the years, he’s been joined by a collection of instrumentalists — and generally that will include a saxophonist, a violinist, two drummers, two bassists, two guitarists. 

Over the years, the Milan-based singer/songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer picked up production skills — particularly song editing and mixing, which has helped him create slickly produced material from his living room. Interestingly, as a solo artist, Guglielmetti writes lyrics in English and Italian and records versions in both English and Italian while playing almost every instrument. Interestingly, his latest single is the brooding and cinematic “Holy Mary.” Centered around an elegant and sparse arrangement of strummed acoustic guitar, twinkling keys, propulsive drumming, a soaring hook and the rising Milan-based artist’s operatic-like vocals, “Holy Mary” is a dramatic song that recalls Barry Adamson. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Travel the World with Up-and-Coming Ukrainian Indie Rock Act and New JOVM Mainstays Indytronics

Over the past couple of months, I’ve written a bit about the Kiev, Ukraine-based indie rock/post punk band Indytronics. And as you may recall, the band, which is comprised of founding members Danil Bogadenko (guitar, vocals) and Vitaliy Koutsiuk (bass) with Ruslan Dobrov (drums) and Denys Rybchenko (guitar, backing vocals) can trace their origins to when its founding members were traveling across Europe, and while in Stockholm, Sweden, the duo came across a number of street musicians, who were playing music with an interesting and very melodic indie the rock. According to the members of the band, its founding duo were so impressed by Stockholm’s street musicians that decided that they needed to start their own band when they returned home. 

Since the band’s formation in 2012, the band has released their 2013 debut EP Vision and their 2015 full-length debut Scintilla Wave and and as a result, they’ve developed a growing profile both nationally and internationally as they’ve made a number of live appearances on several Ukrainian TV shows and have received regular radio rotation on Ukrainian Radio Roks, Europa Plus, HotMix Radio, WCSF Radio German CTdasradio and others. Along with that, they’ve been written up in the British music magazine Huck and their music has been used for fashion shows aired on the international TV channel IDFashion throughout the US, Ukraine, Italy, Austria and France. 

While “Savannah Only Temple” was slickly produced indie rock that may remind listeners of  Narrow Stairs-era Death Cab for Cutie, The Postal Service’s Give Up and Snow Patrol, thanks in part to a rousingly arena friendly hook, its follow-up “Shark” found the band pushing their sound more towards electronic rock but with some of their most ambitious songwriting they’ve released to date. Their latest single “Alien Sun” finds the band at their most atmospheric while retaining their arena friendly hooks — and although the song will further cement their growing reputation for crafting crowd pleasing Death Cab for Cutie/The Postal Service/Snow Patrol-like indie rock, bolstered by an uncanny self-assuredness and earnestness of purpose. 

As the band wrote to me, they have a dream of playing concerts across