The potential of the independent industry is that every once in a while you see something monstrously creative, an unpredictable way of becoming that escapes the framework of “good” and “bad”, “enjoyable” or “not enjoyable” and instead has value in being genuinely new and fascinating. Andrea Pizzo and the Purble Mice’s latest album,“Transhumanity”, is such an example.
A collective of artists from Genova, Italy, that mixes rock, pop and electronic music, philosophy, art, science, and machines, Andrea Pizza and the Purble Mice is born of a vision, one that doesn’t see a clear-cut distinction between things we have put in different categories: humans, machines, emotions, thoughts, ideas, people. In their new album, released in late August this year, those ideas in all their messy glory are explored in a spacious, speculative, and musically experimental fashion.
Led by vocalist and songwriter Andrea Pizzo, along with his wife Raffaella Turbino, who co-writes the lyrics, and joined by various friends and acquaintances like Roberto Tiranti and Riccardo Morello, as well as guest singers like Irene Buselli and Antonella Suella, the band has only released EPs and singles before this debut album, which functions as the first complete window view into their initial vision.
The album opens with the song Ada, which is sung in the voice of English mathematician and writer Ada Lovelace, who was one of the first thinkers to imagine and conceive of applications beyond calculations for the machine. In the song, “Ada” says, “If you can give me poetry, give me logic/Imagination, mathematics are the language/Of unseen relation between things.” In a brilliant mathematicical, logical mind, the collective sees poetry, imagination, language and beauty. In that way, this song functions as a type of a thesis statement for the band’s vision, providing not only interesting music but interesting views of those we have been taught to see in only a certain light. Though in English, the vocalist, perhaps unintentionally, sings in a purely Italian cadence, which brings a certain foreignness to the song’s sound and voice. Not a failure, but rather another interesting aspect of a song that is all about fusions.
More songs follow in the album that are interested in historical, scientific figures, such as “The Current War” that overlooks the rivalry between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. Imaginative, playful, and fun, the song mixes narration with lyrical singing. Its fun, punk-y sound, stands in contrast to “The ballad of Alan Mathison”, that takes a more melancholic, contemplative, and poetic direction. “Hidden Figures” and “Bombshell” are more songs that center known figures, giving them a different voice.
“We are all bots” and “the Machine” are among the album’s songs that explore the possible aftermaths to such relationships with machines. The tracks that stand out the most, however, are “The Space and Beyond” and “”. The former is an adaptation of Versus de Naturis Rerum By Ambrosius Mediolanensis (Saint Ambrose), with added recitative text from The Three Laws of Robotics by Isaac Asimov. The song lingers than nearly all others in the fandom in the instrumental section, with no lyrics except for the recitations, becoming a definite unique standout. “Eternità, on the other hand, might just be the most beautiful in the album. The lyrics, excerpted from the Homeric Mymn to Aphrodite translated into Italian by Ettore Romagnoli, make the only Italian singing in the entire album, strikingly performed by Andrea Pizzo and Antonella Suella in an operatic fashion. The result is an eerie, captivating track that is reminiscent of Florence and the Machine mixed with hardscore electric guitar solos. Overall, Andrea Pizzo is a unique, unusual voice, who alongside the rest of the collective, brings to us a fresh, experimental vision.
