A review of Alessandro Cortini's "Forse 2"

I'll save you some time: if you liked Forse 1, go get Forse 2.
For the most part, this is a much colder album than its predecessor, just in time for winter.

Forse 2 starts in space with "Canta" (perhaps where we left off after Forse 1? ). The instruments are cold and old, but the notes are warm and reassuring, until something goes wrong; a change in trajectory? Meteors? Interference.
Bursting through the atmosphere and bearing witness.

"Cerca" feels a bit like "Canta" with the (almost) alert noise which starts off smooth and then gets distorted.

"Conta", at the very start, sounds like a variation of "A Warm Place". Nice. Evolves into questing through huge ice caverns. Then, the caverns start to glow. Reds and oranges, but they are still ice. And there is something alive in these caves.

"Grigia" is sharp and piercing, the light reflecting off the ice. Blinding. Movement in the motes in ones' eye. A melody emerges, high and stinging, then distortion and dissolution. Melting ice / snow.

"Lenta" sounds like something from Forse 1. Plodding, deep, contemplative. Emerges from its own shell and then grows large enough to swallow you whole.

"Luna" is another reminder of Forse 1. Again, there's a strong sense of emergence. At just the right moment, I happened to come out from the sticky, muggy subway and into the chill of an early fall evening. The music reflected that perfectly. Odd abrupt ending.

Something about "Marcia" feels dated, nostalgic.  The record scratch and hiss in the background. That and the delay work very well together. This becomes mesmerizing. Words for the end: photon array.

"Menta" is one of the softest tracks on here. Freezing to death in your sleep. False warmth. The fuzz in the background adds an excellent texture.

The very beginning of "Salta" reminds me of Goldfrapp but then evolves into something that sounds like an early Doctor Who theme...which makes me want to hear Cortini cover the Doctor Who theme. The Who-ness actually takes me out of the flow of the album. The second half of this track is great, supplanting and then obliterating the first half, becoming regal, the rising of a pitch black sun. It's interesting to hear what the removal of a beat can do. The second half of this is my favorite part of Forse 2.

"Strada", which clocks in at just over three minutes, serves as a playful denouement to the massive climax of "Salta"; the perfect counterpoint to its world ending finale. Everything is mellow until all the knobs get turned up and the controls start to smoke and fizzle and explode, leaving us drifting, once again, in space.

Something that keep occurring to me in regards to Cortini's Forse, is how much it has the same quality of some of Coil's instrumental releases, namely, the quality to tell (or, at least, allude to) epic stories without containing a word.

While Forse 2 absolutely sounds like it's in the same galaxy as Forse 1, it's a far less inviting and habitable world; whether it's still and beautiful and sad, like a body found in the snow, or rough and frozen and heavy, like a thick slab of ice, it's always cold. Going along with that drop in temperature, I found Forse 2 to be less dynamic than Forse 1. There are glimpses of dynamism here, but not enough for me, although some might simply call it more subtle.