Artist: A Violet Pine
Title: Turtles
Genre: Post Rock / Alternative
Release Date: 23rd September 2015
Label: T.a. Rock Records
Album Review
On their Bandcamp-page the Italian trio, whose second long player crawled ashore four weeks ago, reveals some clues regarding to their band name and somehow this illuminates the acoustic relief of ‘Turtles’ perfectly. Violet Pine is an imaginary tree, a symbol for violence and distance, for feelings and happiness. The try to dig for the living, the breathing in darkness and vast, through shadows and skins. Like roots penetrating the soil. "Why are we so cold? Why are we so blind?" as the opening lines of ‘New Gloves’ are asking. And at the bottom this is what the nine songs are - a kind of emotional violence and sonic distance, a lot of feelings and, hidden behind some deceiving masks, even happiness.
I have to confess I like the atmosphere that ‘Turtles’ is exhaling. This symbiosis of distorted interferences and pleasing harmonies, of shard-like noises and satin melodies, of teeth grinding guitars and aerial piano tunes. Like the mighty opener ‘The Game’, the splendidly melancholic title track or the itchy ‘Have Fun’. There is that rusty and filthy patina that's plating the acoustic landscape like a subtle monument to the coins other side, like cracks in a harmonically balanced picture, stains on a whites sheet of paper. Every apparent moment of concord (and there are quite a lot on ‘Turtles’) is accompanied by a twisted echo, every enjoyable gathering of notes mirrors a distortion, armed with guitars, the bass and electronic break-ups and even Guiseppe Procida's vocals, whose timbre owns that rough fragility, that throaty surface, which seems to keep you mostly uncertain about its real intents.
While listening to songs like ‘Last Year’ that oscillates from clean guitars and a Hammond humming to distorted bow waves and back again, or ‘The Moon Has Been Turned Off’, which starts a plain of isolated organ sounds for becoming a tower of guitars and drums in its coda, it feels like the songs are squirming, sidestepping on an acoustic border between light and dark, between reflection and absorption, leaving you clueless about the side they push you next. Sonic shadows, only visible in the harmonies light. Atmospheric physics that causes a tension, fishy but hypnotically within and between the songs. As I said, it is a good album. One that lacks any kind boredom while keeping a pleasing undertone that circles above , one that feeds from a variety of styles and stylistics without losing a kind of acoustic texture. A moody one, full of contrasts and blurred edges. It is a tree that yearns for light while casting shadows...
Tracklist
01. The Game
02. New Gloves
03. Turtles
04. Last Year
05. Have Fun
06. Bright
07. Lucky When I'm Wrong
08. The Moon Has Been Turned Off
09. Why?
Line-up
Guiseppe Procida - Vocals, Guitar, Synth
Pasquale Ragnatela - Bass, Guitar, Vocals
Paolo Ormas - Drums
Website
https://www.facebook.com/avioletpinemusic
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 7
Sound: 7
Total: 7 / 10
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