iberlino – analog:ca (Album Review)

Today’s review will centre around a music act that definitely does not skimp out when it comes to innovativeness. Meet iBerlino, with their newest release, ‘Analog:ca’. Analog:ca is a special album, described as one of the most unpredictable, original and long-lived musical projects on the Italian independent music scene. It also straddles the line between songwriting and experimentation, an ode to the end of logocentrism when it comes to multi-dimensional art. In the wake of their previous releases titled ‘Hai mai mangiato un uomo?’ and ‘Urban graffiti’, the band continues to experiment, accentuating trip hop influences and semi-instrumental tracks even more.

The questions behind the concept for this album include: ‘Is there a way to time travel through receiving messages from the future? Of bringing people from the past back to life in our present?’

Analog:ca is a record that relates to 2014 and creates an impossible present by connecting sounds and recordings from different eras. Analog:ca is a record that has a relationship with 2014 and creates an impossible present by connecting sounds and recordings from different eras.

In the track ‘Cresce grande, doce Lua’ for example you can hear cicadas recorded in2014 edited together with the voices of some neighbours in 2024. Throughout the track, Fabio plays in it. Other times they create rooms in which they play along with themselves from 10 years ago, with models of instruments that didn’t exist before. Models from the future, then.

Analog:ca is a record ‘developed’ like a roll of film: the songs begin a dialogue with the year 2014 with some ambient sounds, instruments and words recorded 10 years ago and left like a message in a bottle to be opened 10 years later.

These ambient sounds come from a time when the artists’ fathers, Paul Auster and many other people were alive. We play over them now as if time were a member of the band. It’s a kind of tribute to the past and every time these songs are played, those worlds with those people come back to life in the present and in our speakers. The aim of the record is to create a non-existent present, where ghosts of the past play with those of the future – or where in 2014, messages arrive from 2024. Time is actually another component of the band on this record.

The album definitely bears an experimental approach, with various effects and technologically forward sounds laced behind organic instrumentation. Some of these sounds remind me of space age music from the 60s, in the way they resemble signals from radio transmission. The constant reverb in the vocals also help to give the tracks an ethereal feel, with a ‘floatiness’ in them.

I don’t know if this is intentional, but some of the guitars used within the album also bear a very specific timbre to them usually associated with nostalgic and reminiscence. The sound selection and sound design within the album is extremely appropriate, and fits the thematic nature and intent behind the body of work itself.

In some instances, with tracks like ‘Alba 01424’ and ‘Tekno Bibbia Metropolitana’, the soundscape bears a resemblance to that of a neo-Kraftwerk approach, mixing the electronic tapestry method with semi operative, darkwave vocals. These songs also bear a four-to-floor groove, marking its genre-cohesion with other electronic dance genres. The choppy yet smooth background track help to form a cohesively unique soundscape, all while laced with the classic Kraftwerk-style synth and the melancholic singing of the singers. Besides the technical approach, the specific chords used and the bass help to build an emotional landscape within the otherwise technical nature of the track. I think this is very interesting and it show a high level of skill, compositionally.

Some of the tracks do build an essence of suspense and immortality, which can be heard with a delicate organic instrumentation over past conversations by people. The type of mastering that laces this album isn’t necessarily the clearest, but I completely understand the intent. The slight fuzziness within the tracks help to further the notion of nostalgia and recall, taking the past to the present. It also helps to provide the album with a sort of thematic ‘yin and yang’, mixing tracks with an ultimately warm feel together with tracks that feel colder, and bluer.

One of the highlights of this release is definitely the track ‘Fantasmi anni ’80 in Viale Cappucini’, which honestly reminds me of a more upbeat take on Station to Station by David Bowie. The krautrock and synthwave influence in this album could not get any stronger, and this track tingles with the addition of a saxophone solo, helping to save the track from any notion of monotony. The saxophone provides the track with a sense of lush maturity, while the rest of the instrumental ‘goes by’- kind of resembling our relation with time itself.

I definitely do sense a very distinct sonic influence within the entirety of the album, and it oscillates between the influences I have pointed out throughout the review. I think it’s distinct because I don’t think any other artist has paid homage to such influences with that much authenticity, almost as if the zeitgeist of the period were alive within these compositions itself. Whether to pass the time, or to take you through a new experience different from anything you’ve ever experienced, this album definitely sticks out as a competent work of art.

Score/Excellent: iBerlino definitely appeals to the artistically abstract with their release, analog:ca. The album is a treatise to the intent of unifying the past with the present and the future in a solemn yet electronic manner, and this intent definitely shines through with the musical motifs unfolding as you listen to it. It is existential, but also exciting and futuristic at the same time.

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