Short Reviews [Marco Ragni - 2020 - "If"]

In 2019 Marco started working on material for what would be his eighth studio, then over the course of time the thought changes from the positive to something more inward due to the pandemic. Marco lives in one of the regions of Italy which were heavily impacted by the outbreak, yet still had to go to work last March when no-one knew what the future held, except we all looked to Italy as the epicentre. This has all impacted on this album, which in many ways is his most thoughtful I have come across. He also moved away from using the same musicians as before, which resulted in him bringing in Airbag guitarist Bjorn Riis, who provides lead guitar on 4 of the 9 tracks. When asked about the album, he said “Recording this record was a mystical experience. A year and a half ago I started with the idea of writing an album that was full of positive thoughts. Then in the course of 2020, because of what happened and is still happening, I changed my perspective. I decided to write stories. Stories of madness. Of ordinary madness. Stories of eternal love. Stories of darkness and fear. Stories that had other stories in them.” There is a strength and structure within the album, based often on picked guitar, and a real feeling of depth. There are times when the layering of the guitar comes across in a similar manner to classic Pink Floyd, while vocally he has more in common with the likes of Roy Harper, with a fragile power and emotion contained within. There is the feeling that this was recorded over quite a period, as there are some differences in the production and sound, while we have real drums in some places and programming in others, but always we have a real feeling of intent and purpose. Some tracks have a heavy use of acoustic guitar, while “Awakened Creatures” combines that with some interesting percussion to take us on a totally different journey. One of the joys of this album is that each song is very different to the others, so that the listener knows quite what to expect next. “Carnival of Ghosts”, one of the tracks recorded with Bjorn was released as a taster for the album, and is very different indeed to the rest, passionate and powerful with driving electric guitar, yet works well within the constraints of the album as a whole. Ragni has produced yet another really enjoyable album under extremely emotional and difficult circumstances, and it is well worthy of further investigation.