From Apparat to Moby and Elvis: the new records to resist Sanremo

At the gates of the Sanremo Festival, the Italian releases are reduced to the bare minimum, but fortunately the international ones are not. In short, to resist the songs of the Riviera festival there are various possibilities: from the sought-after records by Moby and Apparat to the Elvis soundtrack, an album that collects 27 recordings present in Baz Luhrmann’s new project. It’s not over, again on February 20th, there will be the returns of Mumford & Sons and even, on the pop front, Hilary Duff. The joint album by Inoki & Vacca, produced by Zibba, will be one of the Italian rap cracks in this period in which the songs competing at the Ariston will dominate.

Elvis Presley – “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert”

The original soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is released via Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, and RCA Records. The album will be available from this Friday – coinciding with the IMAX premiere of the film – in digital and CD format and from April 24th in double LP, with two color variants (black and Translucent Orange and Yellow exclusively on Amazon). In the making of his 2022 film “Elvis,” Luhrmann and his team discovered negatives and footage long hidden in the Warner Brothers vaults, originally shot for the documentaries “Elvis: The Way It Is” (chronicling his August 1970 Las Vegas residency show) and “Elvis On Tour” (filmed during 1972 concerts across the United States), as well as previously unreleased 8mm footage and never-before-heard audio of Elvis which tells about his life. Luhrmann and his team spent years restoring this material, collaborating with Jonathan Redmond, Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production and many others. What was revealed about Elvis, in addition to his iconic and inimitable energy as a performer, was the man behind the myth, «totally at ease on stage, capable of perceiving the true love of his fans and communicating himself with an intimacy and humanity, like no other artist», as Luhrmann himself explains. Regarding the inspiration for the album’s new medleys and remixes, the director said: «We were constantly asking ourselves: what would Elvis do if he were here today? How could he experiment, where could he go? He was always a musical explorer, looking for different flavors and sounds.” The film and soundtrack, accompanied by remixes and medleys, reimagine and interpret Presley in bold new visions and offer an authentic testimony to Elvis’ performances in the 1970s.

Mumford and Sons – “Prizefighter”

Since they didn’t release any records for seven years, Mumford and Sons decided to somehow make it up to their fans. So after “Rushmere”, released last year, another album of unreleased songs from the band has now arrived. “Prizefighter” was produced by Aaron Dessner of The National and registered between the walls of the Long Pond Studio cottage in New York. The band described this project as a period very creative and spontaneouswith writing sessions that gave birth to many new ideas and sounds. Frontman Marcus Mumford said that with Prizefighter the band feels “in the best creative shape ever”, with a sound that is serious and playful, with hints of energy, introspection and hope. Among the guests of the fourteen songs also Hozier and Gracie Abrams.

Moby – “Future Quiet”

The artist’s 23rd studio album marks a new minimalist and ambient chapter with select vocal collaborations. In recent years Moby has divided its releases between releases of rearranged versions of its repertoire and new music, with an eye towards reflective soundscapes. After “Reprise” (2021) and “Resound NYC” (2023), works of orchestral reinterpretation dedicated to his catalogue, the American artist also published “Ambient 23” in 2023, an immersive project of ambient music conceived as an experience of stillness and introspection. Now Moby returns with “Future Quiet”. The new work continues that discourse of introspection, but does so through a language more centered on plane and atmospheric textures.

Apparat – “A Hum Of Maybe”

Berlin-based musician, producer and composer Apparat (aka Sascha Ring), returns with his sixth studio album, “A Hum Of Maybe”. It is a complex and personal project, which carries with it the weight of the years that have passed since his last project, 2019’s “LP5”. It took shape after a long period of creative block, in which his connection with music seemed lost, buried and untraceable. To overcome this block, he challenged himself with a resolution: to come up with a song idea every day, free from pressure, judgment and the pursuit of perfection, no matter how rough or incomplete the sketches were.

Inoki & Vacca – “Road Foundation”

A project that combines two radical paths. The album was pre-announced by a series of freestyles published on Instagram. Among the most symbolic moments that preceded the announcement, Inoki rapping on the basis of “Accalappianani”, Vacca’s cult song, and Vacca singing on “Non mi avevere mai”, one of the most representative classics of Inoki’s repertoire. An implicit passing of the baton, which becomes a declaration of respect, shared history and common identity. “Fondazione strada” was born as a natural meeting between two figures who marked different eras. The production of the entire album is entrusted to Zibba.

Hilary Duff – “Luck… or something”

Welcome back to the 2000s. Maybe Generation Z doesn’t know it, but millennials do: Hilary Duff was the first real “teen idol” launched by Disney Channel. Those were the years of “Lizzie McGuire”, one of the channel’s most loved and idolized series worldwide: Duff played the protagonist and her character, extremely popular among teenagers, inaugurated a new model of youth celebrity at the beginning of the 2000s, helping to anticipate the path followed in subsequent years by other future stars such as Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez. Now, eleven years after her last album, Hilary Duff, now 38 years old, returns with a new album of unreleased songs, “Luck… or something”, focusing on the revival of those years. In support of the album he also announced his first world tour in twenty years. And together with the album also comes a docuseries directed by Sam Wrench, which will follow the behind the scenes of the comeback, including the preparation for the album and the tours.