Omar Pedrini is a serenely restless musician

Omar Pedrini his first album, “Beatnik – The Tattooed Boy from Birkenhead”released it in 1996. At that time it was still in the Feara few years later the Brescia band split up, the group's last album was in 2002, “An Aldo anyone on the magic train” (read the review here). Twenty years ago Omar Pedrini He then inaugurated his solo career by participating in the Sanremo festival and publishing the album on 5 March 2004. “Vidomar”. Here follows our review of that album released two decades ago.

Omar Pedrini is a serenely restless musician. Someone who wants to move forward, despite everything and everyone. This is why, just under a year after the announcement of Timoria's long break, we find him with a solo album “Vidomàr”. And that's why this album was presented on the stage of the Sanremo Festival, that stage which – according to Omar himself – had sunk the band, which in 2002 ranked last with “Casa mia”. This time Omar came 15th (out of 22), but made an excellent impression at the Ariston: he won the artistic commission award for the best text (ex-aequo with Marco Masini) and, according to this writer, his was one of the two or three best songs of an overall poor festival.

For the record, “VidOmàr” is not his solo debut, because Pedrini had already released “Beatnik” in 1996, when his band was still on track. But now that the Timoria are gone, Omar is free. He is free to make the music he wants, without patterns. Well, listening to this album you have the feeling of feeling like a free man. That he plays the music that he wants, and that in all these years he hasn't wanted or been able to do. In “VidOmàr” there is love for the 70s, already amply demonstrated by the latest Timoria.

And there is a passion for black music, from jazz to blues. It can be heard in the small things (the delicate jazzy solo of the ballad “Da qui”) as in the larger ones (the funky structure of “The best part of me”, the soulful one of “Ho solo un’anima” and its blues counterpart “Blues Soul”). And you feel that Omar couldn't have done these things with Timoria, for obvious reasons: he was the leader, but a band is made up of different individuals, while when you're a soloist you don't have to answer (almost) to anyone. Consider also that, in the meantime, he has become independent: having ended the relationship with Universal (which had Timoria under contract and which did not renew it for Omar as a soloist), he is now released by Panorama, a newly formed label headed by Cose Di Musica, an established management agency for Italian artists.

“VidOmàr” is the musical testimony of this serene restlessness. Omar doesn't hide on this record; opens in an almost embarrassing way, as in the final reading, which gives the album its title, an explicitly autobiographical story on the origin of his first name (derived from Omar Sivori, crazy champion of Juventus in the golden years) which derives from a almost philosophical digression on sports artists. “VidOmàr” is a record that convinces with its frankness: it is a work whose songs seem transparent, so much so that they remind you of its author.