If you had asked me this time last year to name one alternative or at the very least one guitar band from Italy I think I would have struggled...Wait! I know I would have struggled. I'm not so ignorant to think they wouldn't exist - I know that Continental Europe has produced some music world leaders and therefore would obviously have healthy independent and underground scenes (where else do leaders either come from or get their ideas!) I guess like so many other people I was Anglo-centric. So much easier to follow a band or an artist when language isn't a boundary. What you soon learn about many of the great bands from Italy, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands etc. is that many of them are actually caught in the same trap of Anglo-centrality which forces them to sing in English and generally emulate the heroics of past UK & US masters of the genre. I can understand this though because it's a vicious circle and if the only bands that are seen to make it beyond the national frontiers are doing it then what motivation is there to stick to your own? That's no-longer the kind of world we live in...of course one way round it is to be instrumental! That way you can only be judged on the music and not your accent...a global solution.
This is what I hear in the Italian four-piece, Nicker Hill Orchestra's new album All The Different Deaths...And Rebirths. It's 95% instrumental (the brief vocal moments in tracks 2 & 4 are arguably textural rather than lyrical) and it encompasses many of the great attributes you look for, or have come to expect, from instrumental albums of the last few years. It's delicate to a point of fragility before building along repetitive and menacing themes, then exploding in soaring episodes, all underpinned with heavy down-tuned rhythm. There is a large amount of hat-tippin' towards two of the great instrumental bands of recent times Mogwai & Explosions In The Sky, but I can also hear moments from other lesser known European bands that have caught my attention, including two worth looking up, We Vs Death from the Netherlands & Enemies from Ireland, which help confirm the ease at which instrumental music can and does travel.
For all this, Nicker Hill Orchestra have still produced a fantastic sounding five track album. If it doesn't struggle with national boundaries, it unfortunatly does with those of genre, but with this type of instrumental album that is less important because it's such a simple pleasure to listen to. The danger lies in it fading to background music, but then that's what a good heavy section is for - to grab you by the throat and demand your attention - and this album has them in all the right places and with that oh-so-satisfying rumbled fuzzy distortion that Mogwai used so effectively on Mr. Beast. Perhaps this album's greatest achievement however is it's ability to achieve the epic without becoming dull, and remain technical without appearing to overstretch the musicians. It would certainly be great to hear these songs live and hopefully it won't be long until the band find their way to the UK...or I head back to Italy! 8/10
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