Why is the sun such a violent place? The guitar and the voice of Sara Ardizzoni ((Dagger Moth) on #neuguitars #blog #SaraArdizzoni #DaggerMoth
I think the effects of the lockdown are beginning to be felt in the medium term. I think that the inability of musicians to perform, to be able to play together, to carry out their normal activities, has generated creative growth, accelerated by the inactivity and self-isolation forced by Covid 19. Each artist has reacted in his own way, ranging from those who almost compulsively published a new piece on Bandcamp, a new improvisation with an almost obsessive cadence, as if to exorcise their own forced isolation with a bulimic activity, to those who are now starting to publish an album, the result of a very careful elaboration and revision work. “The sun is a violent place”, the work of Dagger Moth, stage name of the Italian Sara Ardizzoni, I believe falls within this second creative module. Eclectic and sensitive musician, Ardizzoni had given us some advances of this work with two pieces also published on BandCamp in 2021: “Unleashed”, published on 13 February 2021
and “Withered bloom, shining wounds”, a musical interpretation of the photo by Alessandro Trapezio, which in turn illustrates the piece.
“The Sun is violent place” moves in the wake of his previous work of 2016, “Silk around the marrow” in which the voice and the guitar already formed an interesting and creative unicum.
In “Silk around the marrow”, Sara Ardizzoni already made use of numerous musical techniques, based on a balance of different styles: post-rock, trip-hop, distorted guitars, a dark and immersive sound, singsong melodies looped with millimeter precision, a voice that sang confidentially and whispered, confusing the words.
This latest album manages to go further, six years of difference can be a lot for a growing artist, and you can hear it: the music is thicker, the sound is more complex. Sara’s voice veers towards depths never reached before. Dagger Moth belongs to that restricted category of guitarists who can think beyond the stylistic limits of their instrument.
Ardizzoni easily abuses technology to achieve a sound that seems to be completely alien to the guitar, the instrument in her hands becomes a generator of animated textures with a considerable thickness, whose vibrant surface seems to reach an almost haptic quality: Sara’s music envelops and involves below the subliminal level of the skin.
I believe that these characteristics are also present in the extremely accurate packaging of the CD, with the beautiful artwork by Davide Pedriali, which denotes an almost obsessive attention to precision and detail.
We find the haptic nature of “The Sun is violent place” also in the photos of the album covers, which show the musician wrapped in layers of semi-transparent cellophane, which veil both her face and body, hiding the heart of her artistic work and at the same time creating an opaque narrative, open as many interpretations as possible. “The Sun is violent place” is a work that has been revised and refined in detail, almost to the point of obsession, which reveals itself to multiple interpretations and levels of reading. One of the best things about this ending 2022.
NeuGuitars 