Italian post-rock band, En Plein Air release a new album on Fluttery Records. They have been signed to the label in Summer of 2008 and they are the second band the we have signed. They released their 4 song EP “L'alba Irradia L'inutile Parola” in February 2009. The EP has got great reviews in their country and the rest of the world.

Let's have a look at our description for their music.

“Violin and cello brings you to the ocean of nostalgia and melancholia, lovely guitar melodies are the dolphins swimming with you; but it doesn’t mean that you may face chaotic storms with guitars and drums gone crazy. It is En Plein Air from Rome, Italy we are talking about. Their music can find a place in the genre of post-rock but when you listen to them, you realize how their classical and jazz influences affect their music.

Their live performances both in their country and abroad are said to be pleasing. A magazine calls watching them live “smells like the wood of the ancient instruments projected into the future”. One more interesting detail: They are the first group in Europe to play live for virtual pub of the game 2nd Life.”

The beauty of the music still remains, but the ocean is getting warmer.

It was the same year they started writing new songs for their debut. They had experienced something awful while recording it; they left their instruments in the studio after the rehearsal, they discovered they were all stolen when they arrived the studio the next day. They haven't lost the will and went on recording the self titled debut in the Play Wave studio in Rome. Soon after the recording sessions, the album has been sent to Metropolis Studio in London, UK.

En Plein Air have moved forward to another step with this album; all seven tracks are welcoming the new rising sun. Self titled album starts with calming piano entry and the song is followed with distorted guitars and violin climbing to the edge. Various instrumentation, various feelings follows. Guitars to strings, electronics to drums, each member collaborates to the beauty at their best.

On it's 16th release, Fluttery Records is very proud to have such gifted artists in the label.

REVIEWS

Saltinaria / Scritto da Giovanni Villani

RATING : 8/10 - Those who know me well, know my predilection for instrumental music. Let it be clear, I don't dislike the other music but I prefer the played part to the vocal part, for different reasons: first, because I'm a musician (especially a bassist) and because I can not absolutely sing. Also, seriously, I firmly believe in the unearthly provenance of Arts and Beauty in general (Immanuel Kant agrees with me, I heard him yesterday).

What is the music if not a hook, which raises the mind and soul from death of daily "human too human" (op. cit.); a continued relief, a force that can give us peace and quiet, energy and adrenaline, calm and excitement?

A force which, personally, I find the highest degree in instrumental music: from J.S. Bach to Trenz Reznor.

Coming to En Plein Air, I recommend listening to their latest omonymous work for the Fluttery Records, because you will find (I hope) the confirmation of my thesis: through an original blend of classical instruments , like the violin, to the synth, they get that fantastic and never banal balance that only real musicians are able to find: all instruments are combined and nobody oversteps the other (who recorded them made a great work too).

How not to mention the many emotions of "En Plein Air": a veritable avalanche. Personally listening to "Waterloo" I jumped off my chair: besides a masterful use of instrumentation, the En Plein Air in their tracks include traces of everyday life, recordings that seem to be (probably are) taken directly from the street; in doing so, emotionally saturated atmospheres collide with reality, causing emotional thuds, worthy of best thriller (I repeat, "Waterloo" just scared me).

If you only have intrigued by talking of the first track, enjoy "En Plein Air"

Caleidoscoop / Jan Willem Broek

The great, ever growing label Fluttery Records excels in releasing high quality and especially unorthodox post-rock bands from all over the world. Portugal, Russia, England, Denmark, Serbia, Norway, Canada, Japan, and so forth: Fluttery manages to find the extraordinary bands every time. In 2009 the Italian sextet En Plein Air debuted with the mini cd L'alba Irradia L'inutile Parola on the label. On that release they showed that, like other bands on the label, they can create some unorthodox sounds within the worn-out post-rock genre. Now the band from Rome is back with their self-titled full length. Eric Caldironi (guitar), Giovanni Federici (guitar), Ludovico Lamarra (bass), Marzia Ricciardi (violin), Aron Carlocchia (synthesizer, piano) and Adriano Proietti (drums), here and there complemented by Federica Vecchio's cello, again perform their wayward instrumental crossbreed of post-rock, library rock, wave, neo-classical, dark ambient, and electronics. What stands out in all 7 tracks is that they are drenched in melancholia. That is the case both in the more cinematic, calmer parts, and in the epic, blazing parts. By the way, if it is hard, then it is really hard. They build up towards such explosions nicely, but do not continuously switch between soft and hard. Nicely undulating, they meander through genres, bringing to mind different musical references, such as Mono, Giardini Di Mirò, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Dirty Three, Sigur Rós, Les Fragments De La Nuit, Clogs, and Robin Guthri at different times, but always focusing on the post-rock influences. It is an exciting and very varied CD, filled with surprising and breathtakingly beautiful elements. A fantastic CD that manages to captivate until the last nanosecond.