Spannung The Reviews
Reviews & Critical Reception
(DarkRoom Magazine)
(Masseria dei Suoni)
MASSIMO PIROTTA(Vorrei)
(Sapere in Campania)
(Non solo Prog)
GIOVANNI ROSSI (Industrial Revolution)
Related article: Romina Daniele's talent and spark
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION JANUARY 1st 2016
Giovanni Rossi (Industrial [r]Evolution) — Jan 1, 2016
Analysis of the triple album structure, vocal balance, and "Dasein" existential context.
<< We begin this 2016 with a freshly published album. Spannung is the new work by Romina Daniele, a triple CD that aggregates the beauty of no fewer than 31 tracks. Pretentious? Not in the slightest. Excessive? Not at all. Anachronistic? Perhaps yes, but it would be better described as 'courageous,' in an era where the bite-and-run format of the streaming single on Deezer or Spotify seems to cannibalize the market.
Spannung is a refined work, studied down to the smallest details, calibrated in the wondrous equilibrium of a voice that succeeds in expressing itself with extreme naturalness precisely within the difficult territory of instrumental performance. Romina uses her vocal cords as if they were a true and proper instrument, rendering them the protagonists of the long studio analysis of 'Dasein,' an elegy that settles along all three discs in various iterations. The dark ambient environment of 'Resonance' is the ultimate demonstration of the singer's vocal mastery, capable of organizing her own lines into a performance fully worthy of the name. Then there is the colorful 'Sycamores Trees,' a condensation of emotions in which the texture of the vocalist unfolds in all its grace, at the service of an evocative track pregnant with atmosphere. And when it seems that everything might be extraordinarily and pleasantly repetitive, here emerges a gem like 'Blue Spirit Blues,' pure and bleeding blues, upon which Romina settles lasciviously and convincingly. The discoveries do not end here; there are many other tracks sung and interpreted with other vocal variations, each of which should make its own entrance into the virgin listener's ears without anticipation, so as not to ruin the surprise. And above all, there is the closing track entrusted to the twenty-four minutes of 'Dasein III,' a further fascinating electroacoustic experiment of environmental inquiry.
I remained fascinated by the voice of Romina Daniele, sliding along the magic of Spannung, a complex album produced in a superlative manner, orchestrated between electronics and classicism, arranged with an abundance of details. She composes, sings, arranges, and moves within the complicated universe of experimental music with a naturalness that surprises. Spannung is an album that should not be missing from the collection of anyone who loves contemporary experimentation, above all the voice and its multiple expressive capacities. Romina Daniele is a seductive, fascinating, and magisterial interpreter of the thousand possibilities entrusted to human vocal cords.". >> Giovanni Rossi with Industrial Revolution
VORREI.ORG FEBRUARY 1st 2016
<< An amazon and her courage. Red, blue, and black—three discs in which to place all of her own ego, existence, being. Defying market rules in which everything is ground down too hastily, Spannung has had a long gestation (starting from 2009) and from it has sprouted a work of research of impeccable output and a path highly suggestive and full of surprises.
31 'situationist' tracks, in which the artist shows enormous composite capacity, a vocalism far from the ordinary, and which put together are the best grasp of that which can be created outside of canonical schemes. Her delivery is rooted deeply within the absolute lineage of historical vocal performance, techno-aesthetic research, and the unbridled impulses of a classic blues delivery that is both thoughtful yet lucid. As if this were not enough, alongside her activity as a singer and musician, there is to underscore the pairing of this with her activity as a writer. High themes and great care even for the smallest of details. Already ready and of imminent publication is Voce Sola, saggio intorno al discorso vocale, her new book.
And there is even a proximate past of which to go proud and with a high head: in 2005 with Diffrazioni Sonore she won the Demetrio Stratos International Prize for vocal research. In 2008 it was the turn of Aisthànomai, her second disc, in which the imperative is always that of experimenting and of dazzling. Between 2010 and 2011 she delivered to the presses the collection Poesie 1995-2005 (in a bilingual edition) and other writings... All of this, without neglecting in any way a wide concert activity (not solely in Italy), entering into sinuous repertoires of blues and rhythm and blues. In short, Romina Daniele is a portent, an artist to whom difficultly could pass through the head the desire to settle upon the already done and already heard.
Spannung possesses a key that opens multiple doors (interior and exterior) and gives form and substance to new shapes of sonic life. A logical thread, equilibrium, and taste for risk, stability, and an attitude that has high profile as its ultimate goal. Spannung is completely another matter (a perfect number?), a triple CD, three hours of music that requires attentive and multiple listenings. It is not the usual routine, because the poetry that emanates from it is entirely subterranean and stands in the capacity of the listener to know how to gather it and savor it.
Impossible to remain indifferent to the centrifugal readings of 'Summertime' (George Gershwin), 'Sycamore Trees' (Angelo Badalamenti & David Lynch), 'Special Delivery Blues' (Odetta Holmes). Impossible not to be emotional in the primary approaches of 'Dasein' and in the glove of challenge of over twenty minutes of 'La natura assente.' Blue-tinged heart, electronic 'scientific' voice that is an integral and highly original songbook. Dazzling, in short, and how beautiful it would be to see her tested with the music of animated cartoons. I threw it out there. Vote: 9.5>> [Massimo Pirotta with Vorrei.org]
MASSERIA DEI SUONI / CONSEQUENZ JANUARY 27th 2016
Girolamo De Simone (Masseria dei Suoni) — Jan 27, 2016
An incredibly high-level philosophical review tracking the concept of "universo assente" (absent universe) and the philosophical framework of Heidegger's Dasein.
<< We are by now unaccustomed to works like Spannung by Romina Daniele. The reason is simple: for a long time now, research has seemed to abdicate in the face of dense proposals, declaring itself defeated. Shores of resistance naturally always survive in the recesses of the known, succeeding often, in institutional absence, to find sporadic lines of consensus. The line of the avant-garde was entirely within that trait between absence and assent. Now Spannung, this monumental project by Romina Daniele, posits itself like an assertive stele—musical and, in the opinion of this writer, also theoretical. It is an assertive stele and also a fiery dart: will it succeed in 'breaking' the Italian omertà [code of silence]?
Spannung is a box set that saw seven years of 'gestation,' and that comprises three discs: one red—the color of the cover and the booklet (and 'red' is also a bit the image transferred by the beautiful photos of the artist)—one blue, and the last black. In the first CD, the voice of Romina Daniele, her compositions, and her electronics. In the second, without subtractive intents for poetics and language, the vocal path continues, but with greater interactions: Luca Caiazza and Emanuele Cutrona (Bass), Luca de Maio (Guitar), giving a more performative vision, close to live, which completes and integrates the spectrum of what Romina Daniele can do, both in a techno-musical sense (already known to us) but above all, here, in a projectual sense. The architecture of Spannung is solid, well-consignored, precisely 'monolithic.'
In the first two CDs there are then some well-known places—let us say 'street indicators,' to use a French-style linguistic idiom: Gershwin, Bessie Smith, Frank Sinatra, some traditionals. Offers of a shore so as not to terrify us: but it is a matter of the art of permuting, of recreating, of doing what one wills with the known, without betraying it, rather innovating it. This means memory, but not necessarily in the sense of appropriation (which is always only individual, and with which uncontainable imagination has little to do). In the third CD, the black one (which is my favorite), the circle closes with two sole compositions, perhaps the longest and which I would consider almost as mini-'operas,' capable of being self-sufficient: 'Dasein III' (nearly 25 minutes), preceded by 'La natura assente' (6:24 dense minutes), which reminds me so much of the string of significance 'Petrarca-Ungaretti-Cilio,' also alluded to by me in a disc entitled Dell'universo assente edited and multiple times reprinted by the Milanese Die Schachtel. According to that string, which leads to Luciano Cilio, 'Laura is an absent universe... The idea of absence is a world distant in space and time, which returns to hear itself alive in the foliage of sentiment, of memory, and of fantasy. It is above all the breaking of the shadows of memory' (G. Ungaretti, Note – Sentimento del Tempo).
I do not know naturally how much in this title there is a correspondence of intentionality of architecture. The greatness of this musician, who is not solely a musician, resides precisely in her capacity to propose a composite action and a vocal gesture so bold, which puts itself at stake, which dares and explores nearly virgin lands, where very few others have set foot (and I think naturally to Demetrio Stratos: I believe that Romina is among the very few living artists capable of using the voice like Demetrio), and contemporaneously to offer a rock-solid aesthetic and philosophical framework. Someone wrote that one cannot prescribe from being. Personally, in an analogous projectual aesthetic, I have preferred to refer to the multiplicity of sense, of subjects, of feeling, leaving open my projectual aesthetic toward the capacity of hetero-reference of the work, and not in an exhaustive sense for which 'we are the here and the now of the world (Dasein)'. In my opinion, the reflections of Romina Daniele that she gives from this extraordinary force to her music are tense in the search for the authentic, of the starting point and of closure, where the other is found in 'being together cast into the world.' It is another shore, another possibility released to the authentic. For this reason, I like very much to conclude with her words: 'the voice plays everything, at high degrees of exposition, in front of the structures of the constructed. And the voice is that which is man. The being-together enigma that stays close to our heart is also at the limit of exhaustion, ed il limite non è dove una cosa finisce, bensì è dove ogni cosa inizia la sua essenza' [and the limit is not where a thing ends, but rather it is where each thing begins its essence]." >> Girolamo De Simone with Masseriadeisuoni.org
NON SOLO PROG (NOT ONLY PROG) JANUARY 19th 2016
Massimo Salari (NonSoloProg) — Jan 19, 2016
Contextualizes the transition from Aisthanomai, the Demetrio Stratos lineage, and the specific CD split.
<< After eight years since Aisthànomai, Il Dramma della Coscienza, Romina Daniele returns to record—an experimental artist in the vocal realm as well as a painter, poet, and photographer. She returns charged with experience, accumulated during numerous live dates carved out over time, and with a vein of Blues that you do not expect.
The singer has registered her capabilities, succeeding in this sumptuous triple CD in demonstrating that vocal experimentation can also marry music in a melodic sense. A bit like what happened to Area with Demetrio Stratos, when with 'Gli Dei Se Ne Vanno, Gli Arrabbiati Restano' they were succeeding in fusing vocal experimentation with the song formula—only a premature death for Demetrio could deprive us of who knows what further developments. But I do not want to banally compare Daniele to this context, because the artist nonetheless succeeds in making her vocal gifts an instrument with a well-defined personality, guided by her own experience.
Spannung is accompanied by an exhaustive and substantial booklet containing elucidating phrases regarding the emotional path of the listening experience. In it, moreover, one can also enjoy the photos that highlight the beautiful and sensual face of the singer, as well as the special aura that surrounds the expression of her face and body. Music and essence corporeal; research and dedication to the Blues, as well as to the classics—the whole under a highly curated guise. One deduces also another detail: the red color that surrounds every image and that gives vigor to her entire personality.
Spannung contains songs recorded from 2009 to 2015 and begins with 'Dasein I.I'; this we will find again in all three discs, like a guiding thread that differs solely by the title in ascending numerical order (Dasein I.II, Dasein I.III etc.). Electronics and voice, vibrato and acute, an intro that leaves one to presage a sound path that is corporeal and researched. The interpretation of 'Summertime,' revisited and corrected by the impetuous bulk of the vocal usage over an electronic base that is once again ancestral, strikes the listener. The warm soul of 'Sycamore Trees' written by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch finds a modern freshness in this new guise, accompanied by overdubbed vocal tracks that grant listening depth. 'Outside Me' is the new version of the song written by the artist herself, 'All’Esterno Di Me,' more rich and emphatic. The more researched and introverted side of vocal and vocalic essence, we continue to find in the subsequent iterations of 'Dasein.' Often the music transmits anguish and succeeds in making itself one with the sounds, but also through interpretations close to the 'Teatro della Voce' [Theater of the Voice].
Blues follows, warming the heart through the classic 'Blue Spirit Blues' of 1930. One of the most interesting moments of the disc, according to the taste of this writer, is the poem 'Assenza (O Soglia Del Mio Dolore),' where the singer in this case becomes narrative; she is accompanied by Emanuele Cutrona on bass. Reading the booklet of the CD during listening, one often encounters the gaze of Romina, intense and profound like her music.
The second CD opens with a traditional 'Oh Rosie,' recorded in 2011. Folk peeks into the background of the artist, a demonstration of visual breadth and experience acquired over time. Beautiful also the cover of Frank Sinatra's 'I Am A Fool To Want You (Take II)' where the sound is not dragged toward the mawkish, but searches instead to grant it intensity and impetus, almost seeking to profane it, dusting it off and screaming it. Another classic of the Blues is 'Backwaters Blues' by Bessie Smith; Romina Daniele makes us understand how important the foundations of modern music are. Here on guitar is Luca De Maio, while on bass is Luca Caiazza. Another traditional piece revisited and overturned is 'I Went To That Place Alone,' only to return to the Blues with 'Timber' by Odetta Holmes. There is also a piece with the band, including drums, that of Manuel Taranto, and it is entitled 'I Put A Spell On You,' intense, heartfelt, and scratching. The second dedication to the Voice-Frank is entitled 'I Am A Fool To Want You (Take I),' overturned like a glove, tottering, a window for a wah-wah vocal brought to the limit between the provocative, the yawn, and the sneer.
The third CD is composed of two tracks, 'La Natura Assente (III),' a lugubrious gymnasium of vibrated and researched sounds, and the long suite 'Dasein III,' in its turn an obscure presence of spectral vibrations. After so many years, Romina Daniele cannot leave listeners indifferent; here, then, is a sumptuous work where research, anguish, and soul meet in a result far from the taken-for-granted nature of contemporary products. Music and sounds for thinking, for colliding nerves, for relaxing, for terrifying oneself, for being amazed, for learning, for warming oneself, for freezing oneself, for...>> Massimo Salari with NonSoloProgRock
SAPERE IN CAMPANIA JANUARY 26th 2016
Vincenzo Notaro (Sapere in Campania) — Jan 25, 2016
Provides an excellent overview of your carrier timeline up to the dual release of Spannung and Absence at the end of 2015.
<<There reaches us from Milan the communiqué relative to the latest musical labors of the most articulate and extraordinarily lyrical voice, as well as technical, born under the shadow of Vesuvius: that of Romina Daniele.
Debuting in 2005 with Diffrazioni Sonore (2010, RDM), a concrete disc for solo voice, she won the Demetrio Stratos International Prize for vocal research; she published in 2008 Aisthànomai, her second disc for voice and electronics, entered since 2010 into the RDM catalog, a label that was born with her collaboration to favor research and techno-aesthetic autonomy. Since 2008 she holds a doctorate in historical-artistic assets with a cinematographic specialization; she passed to studying music technologies at the Conservatory of Milan. Between 2010 and 2011 she published the books: Poesie 1995-2005 (bilingual Italian and English edition); Il dialogo con la materia disintegrata e ricomposta, un'analisi di Thema (omaggio a Joyce) di Luciano Berio; Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, il luogo della musica nell'audiovisione. From 2005 to today, she has gathered—as producer, composer, and writer, performer and vocalist for extended voice and electronic music, as well as a passionate blues singer—institutional recognitions and prizes (finalist at the Premio Nazionale delle Arti, Prize for musical experimentation promoted by the Centro Musica Contemporanea of Milan), meriting the national and international attention of the public and press.
But we come to the current releases. Astride the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016, Romina delivers to the presses no fewer than two works: Spannung (a monumental triple solo album) and Absence (under the name Sheen, in collaboration with Lorenzo Marranini).
Spannung (a German term that stands for 'tension') is her third solo album, a triple audio CD between voice and electronics, textuality and improvisation, soloistic recordings and with the band, extended vocals and blues. As reported in the communiqué: 'The project developed starting from 2009. In the same period, the book Voce Sola, saggio intorno al discorso vocale (released in 2016) was written, which collects and expresses, at all levels, the passion and the uninterrupted urgency for the opening and the research around the authentic problem of being that we ourselves are and that we go searching for: that which by necessity goes for our very being in being itself, the putting into play of every comma of us in the world before it goes in vain. The voice is that which was there in origin, a question of the body and of thought, centrality and fulcrum, and there do not exist other places or sounds of the genre. Therefore, music too is an essential act regarding apprehension for man and his production.'
Absence is conceived and developed from the collaboration between Romina and Lorenzo Marranini (co-founder of RDM editions, a multi-instrumentalist active with various underground bands during the 2000s between Dublin and Milan, of a rock, post-rock, and folk-blues matrix). Of the duo Sheen, Lorenzo composes the electronic musics and plays bass and guitar, while Romina vocalizes texts and sounds, re-composes the structures, mixes, and edits. The album is born from a poem by Romina, Assenza (o soglia del mio dolore), published in 2011 in Poesie 1995-2005, crucial in all of her production: 'Absence is the lack of authenticity in the world before which research more proper is urgent and necessary.' Regarding their works, we tell you nothing other than where to find them: discs of this genre are by now so rare in Italy that they demonstrate simply that it is still possible to do artistic research with authenticity. A research, that of Romina Daniele, that we can lightheartedly define as technically solid, critically complex, philosophically profound and, above all, with a load of emotional poignancy and an inspiration so strong as to turn out magmatic. >> Vincenzo Notaro with Saperincampania.it
DARKROOK MAGAZINE MAY 16th 2016
<<.With this mastodontic triple CD, whose sumptuous digipak packaging complete with an extensive booklet recalls the preciousness of certain classical music collections, the artist of Campanian origin resident in Milan makes her awaited return to the record market, after nearly eight years passed since the preceding Aisthànomai, Il Dramma Della Coscienza. If with her debut Diffrazioni Sonore and above all with the aforementioned follow-up, Daniele had widely earned her due recognitions and awards in the fields of vocal research, earning a gratifying reputation at the highest echelons of international vocal experimentation, with this triple effort she pushes even further her own research, finding that unique dimension that a voice like hers deserves to have.
A mole of material so wide (over three hours overall) as to render arduous the complete disemboweling of the contents within the space of a normal review: no fewer than 31 tracks placed at a point between 2009 and 2015, principally from the same Romina for solo voice and electronics, elsewhere with the assistance of trusted guests on bass and guitar, with a congruent dose—above all in the second disc—of covers of the most classic repertoire of blues and rhythm and blues interpreted in the light of infinite potentials of her vocal cords.
Romina, who in recent years has carried forward (in parallel to the other excellent musical project Sheen, of recent birth) also a literary discourse, publishing various books, has developed over time vocal capacities and a theater in the round that by now distance her from any comparison more or less cumbersome—with the whole opera displaying a completely singular mastery—and with her voice she can subvert with extreme courage classics like 'Summertime,' 'I Am A Fool To Want You,' or 'I Put A Spell On You,' to then leave that in the autographed tracks, where a fine and minimal electronics takes root and willingly the moves from para-symphonic structures, her incredible vocal cords permit her anything: a frightened child, an old complaining woman, a reflexive dark lady, a disillusioned dreamer, a witch in her cave or any other figure she wishes to impersonate.
But her voice is made also—and perhaps above all—to go beyond words, recited or sung that they may be, so much so that it becomes often and willingly sound, howl, rattle, vocalization or verse unconstrained by any boundary of us before it goes in vain, to which the official notes refer. The voice as centrality and fulcrum of an arduous experimental path devoid of boundaries that finds its culmination in the third disc, with those nearly 25 minutes of the lugubrious 'Dasein III' as a worthy closure of a work that moves forward the known boundaries of vocal research. A creative compendium of the highest level, destined to become a fixed point in the discography of this extraordinary artist.>> Roberto Alessandro Filippozzi with Darkroom-magazine.it
CURRENT ARCHIVAL PROJECTS // Romina Daniele’s vocal research and text scores on Sheen's 'Absence' (2026 Definitive Edition) are now live. View the official cinematic promo trailer and technical press sheets at RDM Records.
Out December 24th 2015
Spannung by Romina Daniele is a triple cd audio, with 31 tracks, 36 pages booklet, 3 hours of music, between Electronics and vocal and music experimentation, live studio sessions in solo and with the band.
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