CD – Silentes

This collaboration between Vittore Baroni and Daniele Ciullini expanded to include the rest of Le Forbici di Manitù, an Italian collective founded in 1983 that has spanned several countercultural eras, collaborating with dozens of international musicians and intertwining sound, poetry, postal art, and performance in a constantly open creative journey. Now it moves along the lines of intermedia practices and independent research. This time, Ciullini’s hometown of Florence is their base of operations: a meeting point between Viareggio—where Baroni lives—and the other hubs of their creative network. A city that becomes a mirror and a setting for shared stories and memories, with its streets, squares, and influences that seem to filter through the album’s sonic textures. Here, among hidden alleys and famous squares, it is possible to perceive the constant dialogue between past and present that animates each song, as if the city itself were suggesting rhythms, tensions, and paradoxes. The opening track, “Shadow Cones,” immediately immerses the listener in a rarefied soundscape, with electronic sequences underscoring the brief female vocal interventions, repeated like subtle signals. Not too distant in approach is “Traxman Redux,” which maintains an elegant texture but accentuates the vocal aspect—here more pronounced and mocking—evoking a citational tone that plays with textual and musical references from other eras. “Oxidized Lieutenant” is more tense, where the electronics take shape in a particularly articulate and compact manner, while the male voice leans toward a song deliberately suspended between the everyday and the theatrical. Not far from the registers explored thus far is “Biancone,” a reactive song thanks to its vocal excesses and almost operatic overtones, always with a conscious self-irony that lightens the project’s conceptual framework. In “Florence Caput Mundanity,” the voice becomes more persuasive, nodding to the world of fashion and brands, adding a counterpoint to the darker, more layered atmospheres. With “Lacerba Nights,” the tone becomes even more vibrant and tense: the sequences progress nervously, while the references to Marinetti, Palazzeschi, Soffici, Sant’Elia, and many others introduce a powerful and evocative literary and historical element. The album offers a new perspective on Florence, a blend of light and shadow, mystery, drama, and almost arcane glimpses. It’s an (im)possible encounter between song, cut-up, and experimental vocals, ambient-drone and industrial, old-world fascinations and Tuscan humor. It closes with “A Mid-July Nightmare,” an irresistibly ironic reply to the old summer hit “Luglio” by Riccardo Del Turco and Giancarlo Bigazzi, which seals the circle between indirect allusion and urban mythology, leaving the listener a little surprised and with a smile on the face.

 

Daniele Ciullini + Le Forbici di Manitù – Shadow Cones