"The Italian Group Ianva surprised before with the very versatile concept album about Fiume , named Disobbedisco! which presented a very pleasurable exponent of the Mediterranean part of neofolk music. They themselves however prefer the term melodramatic pop or folk noir. Now the band returns with a new EP, named l’Occidente. On it are 4 new dramaturgically loaded songs that will all not be featured on the upcoming new studio album, but instead stand completely on their own. Musically influenced by the Mediterranean area, music such as from Scott Walker, Ennio Morricone, Jacques Brel, Marc Almond and post-industrial in the spirit of Boyd Rice. The music has strong orchestration, with elements from cabaret, folk and forceful vocals. The titel song ‘L’Occidente’ deals with the fact that ‘the west’ is one the one hand seen as a civilization that is threatened by alien forces, yet on the other hand has also spoiled and vulgarised itself, which doesn’t do any justice to the European origins of this culture.The demise of the west has nicely been reflected by the cover of the cd, with a cruise ship that is going under, which invokes the image of the Titanic, which sunk in 1912. The year in which also Oswald Spengler’s influential study Decline of the West came out. This heavy theme is followed by ‘Santa Luce dei Macelli’, which deals with the crypto-pagan rituals still present in the Italian Catholicism in the rural area of Calabria . After an instrumental song we are treated on a cover version of the classical Strawbs song ‘In Battle’, which translated as ‘In Battaglia’ deals with the Scottish-English wars from 1639-40 be it translated to the Isonzo battles of 1915-17. With L’Occidente Ianva again shows that with a strong concept and excellent melodramatic music with a strong Italian character, they can lift themselves easily above film music as well as the traditional neofolk genre. " (TekNoir - Gothtronic (NL) - 9,5)
Our biggest thnx to TekNoir and all Gothtronic Staff
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- "DISOBBEDISCO" RE-RELEASED! By popular demand, in the next few months a special reissue of "Disobbedisco!" will be released. This "nice price" edition (jewelbox + 20 pages booklet) will also include "Un Sogno D’Elettra" and a live cover version of Jacques Brel’s "Amsterdam", two out-takes taken from the first and sold out miniCDr "La Ballata Dell’Ardito" (Antica Fonografia Il Levriero - 2005). Due on April/May 2008
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