IN FONDO VEDO IL NIENTE ASSOLUTO

Atti Pubblici in Luogo Osceno came to life in 2014 in Bagheria, a little town in the province of Palermo, Sicily, on the initiative of Gioacchino D'Amico and Sergio Giuliana. After some personnel changes and a good live activity on the local scene where they played original stuff and some covers of bands such as Queen and Pink Floyd, in 2018 the band self- released an interesting debut album entitled "In fondo vedo il nulla assoluto" (At the bottom I see the absolute void) with a line up featuring Antonio Tralongo (vocals), Alessandro Siragusa (keyboards, vocals), Gioacchino D'Amico (guitar, vocals), Gabriele Lo Iacono (bass) and Giuseppe D'Amico (drums). In my opinion the hard work of the band to refine their original compositions paid off and the result is a nice mix of vintage sounds, hard rock and melody that is absolutely worth listening to. Although the sound quality might not be perfect it is better than that of many albums recorded in the seventies and the capacity to convey emotions of the musicians is apparent.

The opener "La boutique degli inermi" (The shop of the helpless people) is an introspective track about regret and lost chances. There's a vein of melancholy in the surreal, dreamy atmosphere as music and words conjure up images of Christmas lights and old books while a pendulum clock beats the time swinging between boredom and agony. A bunch of doubts are your only company as you enter an old shop at the end of the road where a gipsy shows you all the time you lost looking through the window, in search for answers you've never found... Standing still, looking at the bricks in the wall we are all the same, dummies and clones adrift on the ocean. At every step you can hear the sound of creaking wood follow the weightless, crumbling body of a lost fool dancing on the shores of Ys...

The following "Salò" starts with a funky incipit, then in turns the music reminds me of Max Gazzè, Il Balletto di Bronzo and Deep Purple... It's a sarcastic piece against consumerism and the false ethical values of an obscene world where it doesn't matter if you steal or commit a crime provided that you do it with class. The title refers to "Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom", a 1975 Italian-French horror art film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini that is a loose adaptation of the novel "The 120 Days of Sodom" by the Marquis de Sade reset during WWII. The film explores the themes of political corruption, murder, abuse of power, sadism, perversion, sexuality and fascism and here the band express all their disdain for the lack of moral values in our society...

The bitter-sweet "Quando è già finito" (When it's already over) is an impressionist piece drenched in melody and nostalgia where music and words have the colours of a Claude Monet's tableau. It tells of the end of a romance... A girl has left Sicily and his sweetheart to go in the city of Bologna, in the fogs of the Padan Plain...

The long, complex "Venivo da sinistra" (I was coming from the left) ends the album blending hard rock, jazz rock and dreamy melodic passages. The caustic lyrics, interpreted with a strong theatrical approach, tell of defeatism and indifference in of a world on the wane, of crazy dreams melting at dawn and of the loneliness and pain of a man going in the wrong direction who feels lost in a world he can't accept...

On the whole, a very promising debut work!