The rediscovery of folk in all its facets has been one of the best things to happen to me this year; not that this music has never been in my ropes, unfortunately I’m old enough to have lived in almost real time, for example, the epic of CSN&Y and Neil Young soloist; so the current compulsive fan of doom and obscure sounds anyway could not abandon these sounds completely. After all, these genres rest on a common base, melancholy, which if in one case is brought to the extreme consequences assuming painful aspects, in the other is experienced as a transitory moment that the cases of life cyclically propose again, forcing to live with it without that everything must necessarily assume dramatic connotations. All this serves to introduce yet another folk pearl heard this year: our minstrel comes from the beautiful (and musically fertile in recent times) Sardinia and is called Enrico Spanu, while his project bears the name of The Heart & The Void; this is a combination that, when it occurs, can make us sink into the darkest despair or push us to find consolation in music, both playing and listening to it. A Softer Skin, the second Ep of the musician from Cagliari, has this effective cathartic effect: a half hour of music that maybe doesn’t change your mood but manages to clear your mind from the darkest thoughts, a bit like a cooler breeze that coincides with a clearing after a violent storm. If I had to associate two words to this work these would be purity and simplicity: the clear sound of Enrico’s guitar and his gentle voice, sometimes assisted by the contribution of Giulia Biggio, represent the antithesis of the spasmodic search for clever and effective solutions that most often hide, paradoxically, a discouraging lack of ideas and talent. Ideas and talent are essential if you want to propose a music that, only in theory, anyone could compose using only an acoustic guitar and his own voice, but that very few are able to realize in such a deep and convincing way as Enrico Spanu can. I admit that perhaps my metal DNA can be decisive in making me prefer, among the tracks of this work, Down To The Ground, the only song in which the guitar takes on electric guises, but it is really just a case, since the remaining five songs are an oasis of beauty to be held tightly in the face of the daily ugliness to which we are forced to witness. A record to listen to and a musician to support, regardless of the genres that you usually prefer.

2014 – Sangue Disken