Niccolò Fabi: “Melancholic music is cathartic and liberating”

December 2, 2022 Niccolo Fabi released what is now his last album, “Less for less”. An album that the Roman musician presented with these words: “Melancholic music has a cathartic and liberating mechanism. It serves to go further: in this sense less for less gives more. It is one of the first formulas we learned at school”. These are the words of our review.

A risk or an opportunity? Working with an orchestra is a usual stage in an artist’s career: whether it is the first or second option is the result of a series of choices that depend on the moment and how everything is managed. It could be a makeshift album, a greatest hits album in disguise. Or the closing of a circle of a sound journey. For Niccolò Fabi it is certainly this last dimension: “Less for less” is a particular and unique project. Recorded in the studio with the Orchestra Notturna Clandestina directed by Enrico Melozzi, it contains 6 repertoire songs and 4 unreleased songs, and is linked to the concert at the Arena last autumn and the tour next spring; arrives after two different albums: a hyper-minimal one (“A sum of small things”) and one with electronic colours, “Tradizione e betrayo”.

All these dimensions come together in these 10 songs: the arrangements build a “soundscape” rather than exhibiting an intrusive orchestra, as often happens in these operations. Sometimes it is a delicate cinematic “score”, as in the opening of “Andareoltre”, which is grafted onto the minimalism of a guitar arpeggio and some percussion, or even better on “Costruire”, one of the key pieces of Fabi’s production which it becomes a suite in crescendo.

Sometimes it plays on a more rhythmic dimension, like “Ha perse la città”, one of the most beautiful pieces of “Una sum of small things”, and above all in the most beautiful arrangement of this work, “Una good idea”: halfway through the song takes up the rhythmic theme of the strings of “Offeso” and expands it (if it reminds you of “Viva la vida”, also remember that the Coldplay piece is from 2008, while Fabi’s piece was a duet with Fiorella Mannoia for “The cure of time”, 2003).

This orchestral dimension works because it is perfectly consistent with the sensitivity and delicacy of Fabi’s writing, so much so that it is difficult to distinguish the new songs (“Andareoltre”, “Di aratro e di arena”, “Al diinterno dell’amore” and “The man who remains in the dark”), from those in the repertoire. The choice to leave out “Lasciarsi un giorno a Roma”, performed with orchestra in concert, is also helpful: it is unfortunate because it is one of the most significant songs in his repertoire, but his presence would change the atmosphere and bring the album towards the collection dimension.

“Less times less” refers to the mathematical rule according to which two negatives multiplied give a positive: melancholic music is good for the mood. Although here there is not only this atmosphere: there is rather the vision of an artist who used the orchestra, rather than to celebrate himself, to tell a part of his music and his sound poetics.