There’s a definite degree of irony in the underlying concept of DC, but certainly not at the expense of the earnestness of their improvisational methods. The two letters are the initials of the surnames of Andrea Dicò and Francesco Carbone, respectively the duo’s percussive and stringed troublemakers. However, DC is also an acronym for Democrazia Cristiana. For a very long time, this was the main Italian party, its history punctuated by repeated scandals; yet nowadays, rather absurdly, they are regretted by a good segment of the local population, dismayed by the country’s gradual collapse in the following decades. Dicò and Carbone are well aware of these implications, to the point of having created a “crossed shield” logo that closely resembles that of the political entity in question.
The music unfolds over six tracks, different in sonority but with an evident commonality of spirit. Basically, we’re standing halfway through a “domestic” kind of industrial and a commonplace-free mesmerism. Dicò and Carbone alternate loops of various extraction with more concrete textural hues, characterized by fractured rhythms and creative exploitation of items such as toys, vibrators, radios, carillons, random voices and so forth. The volume dynamics have been mastered in style by DC, whose acoustic alchemy reflects an innate ability to understand the feasibility of going pedal to the metal in the right spot, and when instead it’s better opening the window to enjoy the (rigorously nebulous) view, as the road leads to the polluted marshes of the urban suburbs. The only quasi-oneiric episode is “Il Sogno Di Giulio”: barely perceptible background disturbances and additional field recordings escort Carbone’s guitar engaged in a series of fingerstyle-cum-delay variations and Fripp-ish distortions (circa “Swastika Girls”). A perturbed daydreaming, inexorably destined to be erased by further doses of cynicism.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 