Satelliti

Communication needn’t be based on words, on sounds made by one mouth and interpreted by the ears of another. Humanity is long since past that – or you wouldn’t even be reading this.

Satelliti tap into this unspoken language, theirs a music that can say in seconds, with the ripple of a melody or the rise of a drum motif, what some might spend hours, days, weeks deliberating, to find that perfect lyrical flourish. To this duo, the words come naturally: by, in a sense, not coming at all.

You probably don’t realise you’re doing it, but you’re doing it; whatever ’it’ means to you. A nod of the head, a twitch of the toes, a drumming of fingers on the table top. Satelliti can manifest this behaviour – and without a single rhyming couplet.

The Italian duo of Andrea Polato (drums) and Marco Dalle Luche (keys) formed in the northern Italian town of Bolzano in 2010, having both, independently of each other, previously lived in London. To each other they brought experiences translatable to a new musical project: one that could exert a powerful hold on any listener with just those elemental instrumental constituents.

Theirs is a sound, on their new album Transister, that might immediately tempt the more muso-minded to term their wares post-rock. But in the 21st century, that pigeonhole has become stretched and twisted well beyond whatever it was originally meant to stand for.

This is driving and forceful, yet at turns tender and introspective, music that exists both as jazz-inspired and rock-centred. It wears certain influences proudly: Can, Miles Davis, Mwanidishi-era Herbie Hancock. It resents boundaries. It is personal, emotional, yet precise, at times almost mechanical. It isn’t quite like anything you expected it to be at the start, come the closer.

“We think that our music gives the listener the chance to travel,” say the makers of this music. “It’s not like we’re speaking to them directly; more like we’re inviting them to have their own trip.” And the suggestion of a voyage is an apt one: from its commencement to its climax, Transister is an able capable of transporting one from the everyday to the beautifully faraway.

It’s not an entirely improvisational aesthetic that the duo presents; but such is their ability to coax hypnotic motifs from the disorder of uncertainty that this jazz-like element sings truly across Transister. It’s there, as is a dose of krautrock, in the throbbing ‘Canada’; and again, in the title track.

Elsewhere, ‘Little Princess’ is the set’s most subdued, most delicate offering, warm keys filling the mix atop tickled percussion. Single ‘Young Wolf’ (video here: http://youtu.be/g8epoReNLCo) is Satelliti at their most… let’s not say aggressive, but the piece is certainly tumultuous. Yet controlled throughout, too – this is not a band that gives its material over to chaos.

Satelliti’s intention is to “keep evolving… without losing our personality”. Transister shows, clearly, that they’ve characteristics entirely their own, and they utilise them quite brilliantly. Evolution: it starts right here