Le Cose Bianche – L’ultimo canto della pornografia

The “pornographic” trilogy of Giovanni Mori alias Le Cose Bianche, a prestigious name within the Italian power electronics scene, renamed, on our page, the “poet” of the genre, has started almost by accident. A work entitled L’ultimo canto della pornografia sounds a bit as a sort of extra bonus, a “swansong” of a discourse that accompanied us approximately for a year, consisting of three albums (Aesthetics of a good pornographer, Pornography should not be an illusion and Born) similar and, at the same time, different between each other for some aspects, rich of interesting featurings and, above all, more worthy for their lyrics than for their musical patterns, that faced the topic of pornography, presenting us different approaches to it.

This high-level textual research here knows a further evolution, that brings it to become the main element of his songs, besides a pronounced interest for certain ’60s and ’70s cinema, that can be found in the videos made for the songs L’indissolubile legame tra sesso e morte (that, more than shocking the listener, recalls the very long titles of the italian genre movies of the ’70s) and L’ultimo canto della pornografia, the title track. If one would search for the key element of this release, it could found in the decay of the oppressive noisy blanket that entirely covered Mori’s stream of consciousness, that here, at the contrary, is put in the background, leaving his interesting lyrics breathe, lyrics that range from the extradiegetic recitation in the already quoted L’indissolubile legame tra sesso e morte, maybe the best song of the album, accompanied by a video showing an unknown (to us) movie characterized by slightly avantgarde and theatrical scenic designs, to the explosive and distressing lyrics of L’ultimo canto della pornografia that, differently, in its videoclip, clearly recalls landscapes, characters and italian ’70s scenic designs (also here we don’t know what’s the movie). Here the priority is given to the screamed repetition, rather than to the description of a scenario.

There are also songs characterized by more introspective and personal lyrics such as Ultima notte all’EUR, in which the musician recalls the father figure (one of the main elements of Mori’s lyrics), La sindrome del tramonto (another very personal song) and Eleanor, a song that focuses on the particular relationship with women, another main topic of Mori. Interesting, even if a bit (voluntarily?) bumbling as far as the sonic output is concerned, it’s the inclusion, in the vinyl format, of the live version of Come se la pornografia non fosse mai esistita played during the performance at the last Congresso Post-Industriale, recently held in Bologna, this one performed together with Iugula-thor. What Mori does in this album is similar to the need that serial killers have, a posteriori, to explain the motivations behind their crimes. Mori here sets aside the wall of noise that characterize his oeuvre in order to try to explain us what he has tried to tell (and to tell us) within his trilogy, and, more in general, in all his albums until now, at its best, without renouncing to his lyrical world full of metaphors. It’s a sort of baring himself in front of the listener, maybe unconsciously, as said by himself, but an inevitable process that allows him to distinguish his music from that made by his “colleagues” (that have other trademarks).

This is one of the reasons why, excluding certain featurings (as that made in Ten Hot Injections with his friend Otur Boyd / Moreno Padoan), it’s useless to talk about Le Cose Bianche simply focusing on the noise patterns used by himself, especially for this release, although the sound of his friend and colleague Paolo Bandera alias SSHE Retina Stimulants can be clearly heard in the album. It would be quite useless as well to focus on his musical roots (Maurizio Bianchi for the sounds and Atrax Morgue for the lyrical approach), when it’s clear that Mori has reached a personal formula and that he uses a very particular lyrical imaginary. Although musically maybe his project doesn’t revolutionize anything in particular, LCB is one of the most interesting italian (and not only) post-industrial lyricists.

Label: Old Europa Cafe

Rating: 7