Rodrigo Leão & Vox Ensemble - Theatrum (1996)

Rodrigo Leão isn't exactly the type of musician you would immediately imagine going for a solo career: on two of the pivotal bands that modernized the profile of Portuguese music in the 1980/90's while retaining a sense of cultural identity (Sétima Legião and Madredeus), his role in providing the harmonic underpinnings for the music on bass or keys was as effective as it was discreet. However, that he would choose to begin said career by composing earwormy minimalist songs, orchestrated with recourse to a chamber ensemble, synthesizers, and a small chorus singing in Latin, is what would surely make any self-respecting Tarot reader (that hypothetical creature), asked at the time to chime in on the future of his career, to subsequently give up the deck. 

It can still be said that, while surprising in his personal trajectory, that career move was nonetheless, at least in part, a fruit of its musical times, even if not of its main branches. Its melodic sensibility and compositional methods do match up with contemporary minimalist forces straddling the line between the avantgarde and pop music, like Andrew Poppy and The Lost Jockey, or Jeremy Peyton Jones and Regular Music. 

Theatrum, though, the third and final release with his "Vox Ensemble", is something else; not in terms of its approach, but of its emotional resonance, as it is positively (so to speak) dripping with pathos - the sort that, ironically, tends to afflict people wanting to believe in life being fair, love lasting forever, or that they'll never stop making your favourite ice cream - which makes this like something out of Michael Nyman's nightmares, or maybe, more recently, of Eyvind Kang's darkest moods. The sort of smashing sounds on one of the tracks even remind me of Joy Division's I Remember Nothing, and it doesn't quite feel like just a coincidence. 

I don't think Leão has ever been this good again (I lost interest quite a while ago, as he became a more aesthetically well-adjusted individual), but I can understand why he wouldn't want to either. I too might favour not appreciating it as much as I still do, but here we are, all out of ice cream.

Riccardo Cocciante - Mu (1972)

Now that the letters of the greek alphabet, such as Mu, are getting a (literally and metaphorically viral) bad wrap, through no fault of their own, it is perhaps time for us to be reminded that letters, syllables, the words they make up, are all just innocent victims of how we choose to name things, and "Mu" - from cows to Cocciante, by way of crypto history loonies - has been for centuries a consistent source of entertainment, one that deserved a better fate in popular memory. 

Take for instance this record which, unlike new SARS-CoV-2 variants, is a nice surprise; one I wouldn’t have expected to find while scraping down the barrels of Italian singer-songwriter prog: that’s like a cocktail mixing amaretto, limoncello and grappa; what could possibly go wrong? Well, go figure, not all that much, for once at least (and I do mean once: all the other Riccardo Cocciante records this one misled me to hear were a sappy waste of my time). The songwriting is rather decent, sometimes even inspired (the adamic Era mattino sul mondo is actually mellotrony-gorgeous; A Dio is beatifically effective; and the genesiac opening and eschatological finale are not at all something I am displeased with), while the arrangements are evocative enough to befit it, keeping things interesting without overtaking the show or merely pandering to the star’s sense of self-importance. 

As naïve as its inspiration warranted, the narrative (put to words by two hired parolieri) goes through a mystical hodge-podge of (at least) biblical and buddhist tropes injected (along with a jarring reference to 'a gram of heroin' (to make everything sound allegorically contemporary and relevant I guess)) in the 'lost continent of Mu'; all of which could very well befit the hermetic machinations of Charles Portis’ Masters of Atlantis. Nonetheless, the constellation of session musicians and arrangers brought into this affair does sound enthusiastic enough about it to make things reasonably compelling, even when they tread on more laughable grounds (e.g. Festa or Vita). Still, if you have the cultural audacity to believe that the subject could still be suitable for more highbrow endeavors (well, sort of highbrow: you would have to hear Mike Patton shriek and 'sing' for this) you should flee towards Eyvind Kang’s Athlantis instead (however fleeting the relation of the Latin sources he used – Giordano Bruno, primarily - to the work’s title may apparently be).

I was also quite amused for a while by the verses “Tu, col tuo corpo di fango, non ricordi che in te c’è qualcosa di Mu”. Turns out it was another of my occasional forays into the wonderful realm of misheard lyrics, as I imaginatively mistook plain, boring “piú”, for the much more entertaining Mu, what with its bovine overtones and all. It was fun while it lasted, though, and I look fondly on that time. 

In full, for true Gnomons (complete the triangle, scale that cone):