After their first work My Low Heart, released in 2019, return Chemical Resistance, a duo formed by Cristiano Bocci and Adriano Magliocco grappling with a very multifaceted ambient, rich in cues and anything but monochordal or obsessively minimal as very often happens to be heard. Of course, easy-listening albums are a different matter altogether, but the first part of the opening track Segregation alone makes it clear that in the same musical segment one can hear poignant lead guitar lines as well as drones and further alienating effects. This encounter, only apparently conflicting, between melodic passages and assorted noises or alienated recited parts proves to be the possible constant, as well as the key to understanding a work in which an important doom component sometimes manifests itself with all its sorrowful content, as is emblematically the case in the wonderful Hope. Grief of Loneliness exhibits moments of total incommunicability (Rebellion, where someone from some recondite recess vainly attempts to initiate a contact by transmitting in Morse alphabet, before the whole dissolves into an overlap with threatening voices), although in Solitude the song form is lapped up, approaching sonorities not far from Darkher also thanks to the recourse to the beautiful voice of Sariina Tani; in closing the illusory incipit of Meditation leads to an epilogue that does not leave as much hope as that of (cyclic) End. Bocci and Magliocco confirm themselves as talented musicians as well as courageous in presenting themselves with a musical form capable of giving satisfaction to the most curious and attentive listeners, despite its not easy decryption.

2022 – Independent