Track By Tracks: SOLO - The Importance Of Words (songs of love, anti-capitalism and mental illness) (2023)

1. Don't shoot the piano player (it's all in your head):

 

Inspired by the Rolling Stones' “Their Satanic Majesties Request”, the Beatles' “Revolver”, and Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, “Don't shoot the piano player (it's all in your head)” is a psychedelic rock song about hallucinations and dissociative disorders. Full of alienating sounds inspired by the song “Mangiafuoco” by Edoardo Bennato and “Tomorrow Never Knows” by the Beatles, “Don't shoot the piano player (it's all in your head)” features a “3D” ebow in binaural that can be better appreciated through listening with headphones.

 

2. Summer fading (late love song):

 

Song wondering about what love is, and how this feeling is perceived and changes over the years that pass, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, “Summer Fading (late love song)” is an iridescent song that, for each stage of life narrated by the lyrics, corresponds to a different arrangement, while remaining a song with the classic verse-chorus-verse form (a bit like what happens in “Strawberry fields forever” by the Beatles). It goes from an initial dream pop (childhood) to shoegaze with the entrance of drums and bass (adolescence), up to the alternative rock of the interlude and the final part (adulthood). The influences are to be found as much in Muse as in Pink Floyd and Radiohead.

 

3. Hypocrisy (it's all I see):

 

Teetering between moments of calm and others of tension, “Hypocrisy (it's all I see)” is a song that could be likened to some grunge productions more closely linked to psychedelic rock, with vocals sometimes violent and aggressive, at other times more delicate; always melancholic. The topic is directed at how often, especially in recent times, there is a trivialization in addressing every sensitive topic (related to ecology, integration) always pointing the finger in the wrong direction, always in favor of the status quo, never criticizing an economic system for which I, the consumer, do not want to give up what consumer society has taught me to desire, even if what I have learned to desire is precisely the reason why the things I criticize (climate change, labor exploitation) happen.

 

4. What's the topic of the day? (forget the rest) feat. Alidavid

 

With the advent of the internet, we thought (we were deluded into thinking) that there would be a plurality of information that would lead to greater awareness on the part of everyone. With the advent of social media, all types of voices against the system have been silenced, suffocated by the jumble of messages that are daily thrown at us, and which it seems that we need to be actively involved in, otherwise we feel cut off from the debate. And so daily topics are born, disposable like all the products of consumer society, so that we talk about everything and nothing, without ever going to the bottom of the issues but immediately moving on to the next topic of debate, forgetting the previous one without having resolved it or at least addressed it, in a continuous present. “What's the topic of the day? (forget the rest)” is conceived as a fake advertisement, where a product called Topic Of The Day is sold (back to the consumer society). The tone is that of 40’s propaganda, a spoken word (masterfully interpreted by Alidavid) with a band accompaniment, a welcoming and reassuring but also uplifting melody, to encourage the purchase of the product.

 

5. Propaganda in my eyes, again (you’re erased)

 

More grunge. But this time the dirty, punk-style grunge. The grunge of Mudhoney and Nirvana's “Bleach”. And if “What's the topic of the day? (forget the rest)” pointed the finger at how we all feel the compulsive need to have to say something on any topic, even without having analyzed it in depth, “Propaganda in my eyes, again (you're erased)” talks about how we are influenced from above in everything we say and think we think, even when the topics discussed are of a noble nature: power has learned that censorship is useless, but it is much more effective to bring the debate to banal levels, so that there is a widespread perception that people, politicians, even entrepreneurs, are interested in certain topics, but maintaining a perpetual status quo guaranteed by the fact that the problems being discussed are never really addressed; the finger is never pointed at the real causes that lead to the distortions in our society.

 

6.Something (you don't need) feat. Nobody:

 

A song that mixes indie pop and dream pop with hints of dance and Daft Punk-style electronic music, “Something (you don't need)” develops as a two-voice conversation where my voice intertwines with Nobody's, sometimes playing a game of answers, sometimes harmonizing, overlapping and covering each other, “forcing” the listener to decide who to “follow”: “The importance of words”. “Something (you don't need)” is another song that focuses on the consumer society and how it influences us, in this case with regard to the spasmodic need to always appear physically perfect, in a perpetual game where the underlying message is to instill in people the sick idea that they are never up to expectations, in order to instill insecurity in individuals. After all, there is no better consumer than an insecure person, who fills their insecurities by purchasing what society suggests can improve their status; without neglecting the fact that an insecure person will, in general, be more easily subjugated and controlled, at all levels.

 

7. Emotional (e)states:

 

An instrumental track composed using sinusoidal oscillators, white noise generators, and filters, done with additive and subtractive synthesis processes, “Emotional (e)states” is inspired by elektronische musik, and in particular, by some works by Karlheinz Stockhausen. A binaural track, full of sounds that move spatially, it is recommended to listen to it with headphones for a 3D experience.

 

8.Lookout (consumerism will consume you):

 

Perhaps the most ambitious track on the album, “Look out (consumerism will consume you)” is a song that could be defined as art rock. Close to the more guitar-driven Radiohead, it is the song that gives the album its title (taken from the line “I don't understand now and no more the importance of words”). We are in art rock territory, where melody meets noise, always looking to psychedelic rock. The lyrics, full of nonsense, want to communicate the confusion that can be created in a person’s mind when surrounded by the many (negative) stimuli with which the consumer society bombards us constantly, to the point of losing the meaning of words, which leads to incommunicability.

 

9. It's propaganda time! (rejoice!):

 

Another binaural track, where the sounds “surround” the listener in a vortex, “It's propaganda time! (rejoice!)” is a piece of concrete music inspired by the works of Pierre Schaeffer. Linked to the previous track that precedes it, as if they were a single body, together with the subsequent “In the end (nothing matters)”, “It's propaganda time! (rejoice!)” takes up the same concept expressed in “Look out (consumerism will consume you)”, of the individual bombarded by too many coercive messages. The track is composed of advertising jingles from unethical companies, played in reverse, in a crescendo of noise that leads to the last track on the album.

 

10. In the end (nothing matters):

 

“You get confused, I know, when they are bombing you with so much shit”: with this phrase, “In the end (nothing matters)” closes this trilogy of songs dedicated to how society influences and confuses us, aiming at our depersonalization, our alienation. And it also closes the album, with a short and obsessive track, that takes us back to the 60’s psychedelic rock of the beginning, with a redundant acoustic guitar and an ultra-effected voice, between leslie, filters, reverbs, delay, vibe and phaser. In the end, nothing matters.