QUIGYAT (WITH BORDA)

For the year 2024 Italian voice artist Claudio Milano's "Nichelodeon" project offers a new five-piece work "Quigyat" . "According to the Greenland Inuit, the "Quigyat" auroras were the spirits of children who died a violent death or on their birthday" is stated in album's liner notes, and even without knowledge of Italian the listener can easily feel the sadness, anxiety and dark beauty in music. Songs' titles like "Little Symphony for Frozen Soldiers" and "Requiem in Defense of Children's Rights" tell it all too. But even if the whole work is as eclectic as always with any Milano work, there are not only dark colors or concern in it.

The trio of Milano, pianist Francesca Badalini and fret-less bassist Andrea Grumelli on this album for the first time collaborates with percussionist/ live electronics artist Teo "Borda" Ravelli. Being eclectic, "Quigyat" is less quirky then many other Milano works. The vinyl space limitation dictates extremely accessible (for Milano music) release size - less then 40 minutes in total. It's not a secret, that many previous Milano works were far not easy accessible even for his followers since they contained extremely eclectic and complex form material, offered in a size of two or three hours long.

"Quigyat" is more accessible and it shows that smaller doze is sometimes a better solution. Still, the material here isn't what newcomer can easily imagine. Milano offers his usual voice theater, mixing musical genres from singing poetry to tango, to analog electronics and quite bare-naked piano-fretless bass Italian prog.

I really like here minimalist take on a chosen material with highlighted bass line, a bit flat piano sound and in whole very theatrical atmosphere. For my ear, "Quigyat" is one among more successful Milano works and can be recommended for open ear newbie, interested in testing what Claudio Milano music is too.

3.5 stars. "Quigyat" is NICHELODEON's first production with electronic artist Teo Ravelli, who also adds drums. According to Inuit folklore the Northern lights were the spirits of children who died a violent death or died on their birthday. I live in central Ontario and am far enough north that I have seen these lights many times but it seems like a long, long time since I've witnessed them. There was to be quite the show of these lights about a month ago but we happened to have cloud cover making that advertised event a bust.

This record was taken from an event called A.N.F.O.R.E. which stands for "a new form of European recital". The voices on here were recorded from that live event and added to the studio compositions. This is surprisingly stripped down with us often just hearing bass, piano and Claudio's voice with electronics creating atmosphere. Considering the subject matter I am not surprised at how dark this can be and especially sad. They do go into the difficult side of our music but this record is less that than any of the previous NICHELODEON cds I own, in fact even Milano's vocals sound strangely normal at times. Still, this is not for the faint of heart believe me.

I think that second song "Requiem In Defense Of Children's Rights" is like a mini version of the album in the sense that everything I have described about this record is here. A great track to sample to see how you feel about this album. We get five tracks worth about 39 minutes and some of the instrumental sections were taken from previous NICHELODEON tracks. That closer might be my favourite, haunting and I like that there's drums and how about that powerful section just before 6 minutes. So good!

I applaud Claudio and this band for doing something a little different here although it seems Milano is always searching for something new and different to unveil to the world. I'll admit that their music doesn't always work for me, with me giving half of their records less than 4 stars over the years, but then there is always this guarantee with his music that new paths will be forged and that is exciting and welcomed whether I think it works or not according to my musical tastes.