Delusions of Adequacy
Instrumental Quarter - No More Secrets CD
by Andy Hawkins
Words can be unnecessary. Whether you’re making eyes at the hottie across the bar or trying to encourage a friend to call for help while you’re standing in a cave full of sleeping bears, sometimes speech and its wicked cousin words are just flat out uncalled for. Paride Lanciani knows this. Charting a chaotic path like a Styrofoam cup down a muddy creek, the Italian guitar-maven’s latest brainchild, Instrumental Quarter, is effuse with the life blood of raw, improvisational musicianship.
The music in No More Secrets drips from the tips of low-hanging icicles. It rises like a green fog inhaling the world. It evokes a natural setting – morning, midday, night, all wrapped up in a warm blanket of coastal tectonics. Kinetically thumping and tumbling one second, soft and translucent the next, Instrumental Quarter defies an easy categorization (aside from the obvious instrumental label), and you get the feeling that’s exactly what Lanciani wants.
Enlisting help from cellist Marco Alloco, drummer Flavio Cravero, and bassist Luigi Racca (also officially three-quarters of Lanciani’s previous outfit, the Steve Albini-produced Kash), Paride delights in twisting a listener’s expectations. The evocatively beautiful soundscapes of the title track eventually give way to a stomping, acrobatic display of finger picking and polyrhythmic time changes in “Just a Dream.” Musical frameworks tumble headlong down grand, spiral staircases before arising from dead dust to ascend a golden ladder to Heaven – it's that breathtaking. Instrumental Quarter delights in ignoring preconceived notions of “instrumental music,” making up for its lack of any lyrical accompaniment with witty guitar tricks and sonorous melodies.
This album may not impress your futurist friends, who insist on listening only to trip-hop while digital filming their own faux-hawks in the mirror. Its more likely to convince your grandfather, whom you play chess with regularly, that perhaps you aren’t some “punked-out punker with punky ideas.” Next time the both of you decide to try a hand at Fisher’s favorite game, mix up a batch of ice tea, take it out on the porch, and throw in this record. Trust me, he’ll appreciate it even more because it's Italian.
Source Delusions of Adequacy
