WOW – Rosa di Luce – LP – Vinyl [JUL 25]

LP – Limited Edition Black Vinyl

When youre immersed into something you never actually realize if the essence will project as bright as the efforts, as deep as the process and as loud as the intentions. WOW, the Roma Est duo of China and Leo Non, have never had to create magic or delve into mystique along their meandering path, its just been a long solemn wait for what life throws at them and actually sticks. Cause and reaction, because the essence is quietly there when the clamour fades away.

Their new album Rosa di Luce is as pure as they come, a crystalline documentation of a new family, new meanings and new languages where the only rule is to gently adapt and just let things flow. Welcoming Mina Wow, a tiny creature, into the fold was never going to be easy for a life led on the road and for a band as radical as WOW, where nothing is sugar-coated or constructed behind the scene, a different approach was desperately wanted, needed and searched. Almost total disarm, doing the small things, undress, get rid of the unnecessary feedback. Thats whyRosa di Luce, more than ever, showcases WOWs other-worldly spectral capability of creating songs that contain immense and minimal emotions, raw but welcoming, sincere but cutting and could play out to be a career-defining album.

Loosely recorded between their house in Rome and a campsite in Southern Puglia (where WOW organizes their yearly Shawala Festival), these songs are masqued by a minimalist entendre that leaves space for Chinas stellar vocal delivery a haunted range with frequencies to tickle a soul and pierce hearts withLeos resolute guitar playing leading a timeless revolution.

The center-piece Le Montagne E Noi is a perfect example of their stripped-back nakedness hiding complex arrangements (the beautiful sax played by Ryan Spring Dooley and celestial flutes by Alessandra Lazzarini) that sound effortless and imperative. Spiritual orchestrations that match our times and, most importantly, their new family and definition of space. Peaks that can always be reached, forests that need crossing (La Radura) in order to find a sound. There is no pretension or conceit to WOWs style it is entrancingly vibrant yet melancholy, taking notes from the most visceral strand of Italian traditional music, yet still walking down a trail that is very much their own.

A planet where Branko Mataja and Alice Coltrane are backed by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru and Mina on a perennial quest for the ethereal. Music to remember the essencethis is what we are, like the ocean.

The sound of Roman band WOW is clear-eyed yet atmospheric, playful about its sonic influences but serious about its own music-making; elegant, diffident, intimate. Their music is both historical and of the moment; Italian and global; nostalgic for an era we can only experience through records and movies, and also grounded in the present. – Bandcamp Daily

WOW erase the constraints of time and geographical borders Aquarium Drunkard

Tracklist:

1. Rosa di Luce
2. Primavera
3. Le Montagne e Noi
4. La Radura
5. Creature Fragili
6. Samba e Amore