Peace for Indie ended: how this return of dogs is

A guitar riff and a sampling of a “stalker” dialogue, science fiction masterpiece dated 1979 of Andrej Tarkovsky. Thus begins “Post mortem”, The new dog album. The disc was released on streaming platforms this morning, surprisingly. The announcement came through a post shared on social media from the record company of Niccolò Contessathe 42 Records: «Nobody expected it. We were waiting for it. “Post Mortem” available now in streaming and download. Good listening». Not a word of more. The disc contains 13 songs in all: 12 songs and an instrumental track, the one that gives the title to the album. Countess had not released a new dog album for nine years, as many as they have gone from “Aurora”: It was January 2016 and that India Pop of which the singer -songwriter had been gray eminentity since the time when “the 18 -year -olds”, in 2010, forgived sounds, lyrics and aesthetics of the new Roman songwriter, was at the maximum of its splendor.

Before the inevitable sunset. Calcutta was shooting Italy with the tour linked to the album “Mainstream”, the album that in fact opened the doors of the Arci circles to the teenagers (to which the same countess contributed as artistic supervisor). Tommaso Paradiso’s Thegiornalists, not yet the “Space Cowboy” of the solo debut, would soon have made a bang with “completely”. Then they would arrive Coez (who in truth already existed as a rapper, but would only turn in 2017 with “I do a mess”, co-produced by Countress), Gazzelle, Carl Brave and Franco126.

The projects he has worked in these years

In these years Niccolò Contessa did not remain stationary. Quite the opposite. In addition to Coez, who has joined both “I do a mess” and in the following “is always beautiful”, he produced the two albums of all phenomena, the songwriting project of the former rapper – and member of the Tauro Boys – Giorgio Quarz Guarascio, in addition to Esseho’s singles. At a certain point he also signed, as an author, some songs for Italian pop star: “waves” for Marco Mengonifor example, and “breath” for Michele Bravi. In 2022 he also participated in the Sanremo Festival, as an author: there was his paw in “Your father, my mother, Lucia”, the song that Giovanni Truppi brought to the event that year. Furthermore, between 2018 and 2023

He composed three soundtracks, those of “too much grace” by Gianni Zanasi, that of “The predators” of Pietro Castellitto and that of “Enea” by Castellitto himself. As for the music of I dogs: in 2018 a new song came out, “hidden in full sight”, followed between 2020 and 2022 by three other unreleased, published in an impromptu way: “At the end of the dream”, “Another God” and “Fiore”. In 2023, then, the “Split album” “The Baustelle dogs” came out, engraved together with the band of Francesco Bianconi.

The closure of the circle

With “Post Mortem” Countess He seems to resume the speech where he interrupted him with “Aurora”. To close a circle. The album appears from nothing from the fog of nostalgia that seems to have wrapped the indie pop phenomenon (or what remains), with Gazzelle that in “We not” recalls that 2017 that “will not return”, Tommaso Paradiso who in the video clip of “Overwhelming blue blue” dusts off the images of the concerts of Thegiornalist and those of the video clips of the hits that between 2019 and 2019 brought the trio of the Italian music first Of the turbulent end of the group, Carl Brave and Franco126 who chat in the backstage of a twin concert as in the old days, rekindling the hopes of the fans to see them again soon also on the stage.

The dogs bring everything back home

Marracash is mentioned: peace has ended, for the Indie. The disc sounds like a sort of gauntlet To that scene that, at least in his dawn, seemed to have a lot to say and who then in the end ended up canoning himself, to reduce himself to a string of clichés and clichés not only sound but also of content. In the 13 tracks that make up “Post Mortem” – the pieces have been written, recorded and played by Countess himself, who produced them together with Andrea Suriani, who has always been his right arm – we find all the elements that characterized records such as “The surprising debut album of the dogs”, “Glamor”, “Aurora”.

Between .Electronics, New Wave and Lo-Fi Countess spacles between existentialism (“I”) and irony (Simone, Arianna, Filippo, Antonio, the protagonists of “Black hole”, seem veteran of the Localara del Pigneto scene, populated in the two thousand and ten thousands of “false nerds with nerd glasses, fashionable anorexic and anorexic out of fashion, bulimic that deal with fashion, nihilists with cocktail in their hands who dream of being famous as Vasco”), Reflections on society (“FCft” is a piece on its unlikely desire to conform) and Various intellectualisms (in “Felice” cites Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka; in “Davos” cites “The enchanted mountain” by Thomas Mann). In short, the dogs bring everything back home. And Countess closes that passage that had opened fifteen years ago.

The strategy

Countess He did not want to give interviews to tell the album. After all in “In the part of the world in which I was born “sing that “We are essentially interested in artists what they ate, where they go on vacation“. He has always kept a bass, very low profile: at the beginning, when “the 18 -year -olds” and “Wes Anderson” began to circulate, loaded on Soundcloud, he did not even want to reveal his identity and the anonymity contributed a little to creating hype around the project. At the time he promoted his music with Polaroid of various breeds of dogs. At this lap has spread from the press office of self -timings in which even his face is not even seen (The photo you find above is archive: it is of the “Aurora” tour), like the one above.

He specified that he had chosen to put «.At the center of all music», Ending up mentioning a Sanremese mantra (“I put the music in the center” is what the artistic directors of the event have been repeated for years, from Claudio Baglioni to Carlo Conti, passing through Amadeus). “Everything that is to be discovered is on the album,” reads the press release. “Will there be a tour?“, He would be asked – and to ask him – citing Simona Ventura. As always when there is half a countess, few certainties and a lot of mystery. Meanwhile, there is this album. And it’s already a lot.