Andrea Laszlo De Simone's new album is a chiaroscuro of the soul.
It is a story of time and about time which from the night comes to light through its sensations, moments, suggestions, glimmers, rays, diffractions, refractions and shadows.
“A very long shadow” recounts the passage – poetic and perceptive – from night to day, in an internal journey that moves between sensations, glimmers, diffractions and silences. A work that seems to breathe together with light, investigate it, dissect it, then letting it dissolve in sound.
More than an album, it is an aesthetic device. An impressionist, literary and visual unicum, which inhabits that border area where song becomes the language of art.
The 17 tracks, including five instrumental moments, compose a coherent mosaic, in which the author orchestrates – with rare skill – fragments of psychedelia, chanson, orchestral pop and musique concrete. Each interlude becomes a narrative breath, each passage a camera movement in his personal symphony of perception.
Laszlo builds a musical universe that does not belong to the present, but observes it with clarity: an anachronistic and therefore necessary gesture. In him the Italian songwriting school, French melancholy, the prog heritage and the formal freedom of those who use sound as material coexist. There is a sense of totality that recalls the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk: music, image and thought merge into an expressive continuum. The visual project – a filmic poem of fixed paintings and suspended landscapes – is not a simple extension of the record, but its semantic shadow, its sensorial counterpart.
Laszlo writes about “intrusive thoughts”, about those mental areas that never dissolve, but continue to project lights and shadows within us. He is a romantic author in the purest sense: not nostalgic, but aware of the vertigo of feeling. His voice seems to come from elsewhere, as if time had stopped in an echo chamber where every word bounces into a new form of truth.
“A Very Long Shadow” is not a masterpiece, nor does it pretend to be. Nor is it a seminal album, much less does it offer lyrical or musical innovations – Battisti, Battiato, Dalla, De Andrè have already crossed these territories, as have Radiohead, Sigur Rós, Mum, Verve and so on – but that's right.
It's a good album, lucid and profound, all the more significant when compared to the mediocrity that surrounds it. In a soundscape often saturated with appearances and devoid of vision, Laszlo returns music to its highest function: to illuminate. Not the world, but those who look at it.
Andrea remains a secluded artist, almost in subtraction. A “non-character” who makes confidentiality his most authentic form of presence. A shy, reserved character who does not invade with his presence but still manages to enter the soul with his lyrics and his artistic intuitions. The opposite of appearing, an oxymoron in a society like ours that is too flashy but not very bright.
A record to see, a film to listen to, a thought that plays.
And which leaves, after listening, a long, necessary shadow.
nb. I close the review with his words:
A Very Long Shadow is an audiovisual project in which I tried to bring to light intrusive thoughts, those that are constantly present within us even when we are thinking about something else and which end up casting long shadows on our existence. To do this I used a simple metaphor, that of the process of shadow formation.
I chose to represent a “point of light” through fixed shots of reality, an “object” through song lyrics and “shadows” through music.
Why did I do it?
Because of my shadows, I'm afraid.
It wasn't easy to find the formula to visually convey this concept.
The biggest difficulty was to break away from the video clip effect that moving images and music together tend to suggest.
Hence the choice to opt for fixed paintings of moving reality.
I published the entire visual part that accompanies the album in advance, but without the music and playing the ambient audio of the paintings in its place.
My hope was that the subtitles with the song lyrics, in that visual and audio context, would resonate in your head like thoughts do.
Now, with the publication of the music and the musical paintings the project is complete.
Thank you so much everyone for kindly welcoming my very long shadow.
TRACK BY TRACK
1 – the darkness
It's a musical moment that represents the advancing shadow. It is the moment in which non-formalized thoughts and moods pervade us and distance us from concrete reality.
2 – tactile memory
The experiences and sensations we have felt during our life leave a deep mark in our memory.
Even our hands and eyes are capable of remembering.
Sometimes the past chases us even when we don't want to, other times we are so afraid of forgetting.
3 – neon
I have a terrible relationship with this type of lighting and yet somehow it fascinates me.
Neon for me is restlessness.
4 – the night
It's a melancholy song, but at the same time happy.
It's that melancholy that has the sweet taste of when you remember the good old days with an old friend. I don't know how to explain.
It is a request for help formulated in front of a starry sky.
5 – guilty
It is the more or less latent sense of guilt that accompanies us.
It's the image I have of the present… and it's a rather severe image.
6 – when
“When” is a moment of difficulty, of overwhelm in which the mind suggests alibis to justify errors and contradictions.
It is the moment before assuming responsibility, the irrational moment in which we reject the idea of having any.
It's an awkward yet human search for understanding.
7 – I will wait
It's time that gallops.
It's the sense of bewilderment and loneliness you feel when you find yourself as an adult only to discover that you haven't understood anything about existence other than the fact that there is probably less to understand than there is to accept.
8 – for you
It's a song I wrote for my daughter.
My children are my happy thoughts.
9 – a better time
It is a painful assumption of responsibility.
A confession full of shame, which seeks neither justifications nor absolution.
It's the lowest moment, the one in which you lose everything because of yourself.
Paying the right price for the mistakes made, however, paradoxically, is perhaps the greatest relief.
10 – diffraction
A small moment to let thoughts spread in all directions.
11 – fully
It's a particular song.
It has extremely positive lyrics that invite you to live life to the full, yet emotionally it almost sounds like the letter of a suicide.
It's a song that hurts me.
12 – gliding on the sun's rays
“If reason brings you all its lights, close your eyes and blow.”
The meaning of this song is all here.
13 – glimmers
They are the spaces into which light insinuates itself.
And sometimes they are the thing we need most.
14 – what I once was
It is the sad awareness of having been better than what we have become and it is the difficulty of being better today.
15 – refraction
It is the instrumental that emotionally and melodically introduces “It's Not Real”.
It is a moment of abstraction, a point of observation from which reality appears illusory.
16 – it's not real
From the point of view of meaning it is, perhaps, the synthesis and manifesto of this album.
The intrusive thoughts, the questions, the doubting of ourselves and what surrounds us.
What do we know about ourselves? What enlightens us? What drives us? What dominates us? It's not real.
17 – a very long shadow
This song is both the farewell and the point of origin.
A final sentence that contextualizes everything we have heard before.
It is the title placed at the end.
TO LISTEN NOW
a better time – fully – gliding on the sun's rays
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
Impossible. Take the right time to let Andrea's very long shadows envelop you.
SCORE: 8.00
TRACKLIST:
1 – The darkness
2 – Tactile memory
3 – Neon
4 – The night
5 – Guilty
6 – When
7 – I will wait
8 – For you
9 – A better time
10 – Diffraction
11 – Fully
12 – Gliding on the sun's rays
13 – Glimmers
14 – What I once was
15 – Refraction
16 – It's not real
17 – A very long shadow
DISCOGRAPHY:
2012 – Ecce homo
2017 – Man woman
2025 – A very long shadow
