Behind the alias GO.SOUL.MAP. hides one of the most authentic and purest talents of the current Catania music scene, of which, moreover, under other guises and names, he has been an indispensable pillar for over a decade. An artist of immediate sensitivity, not only artistic.
His training is fairly canonical: as a child, he studied piano. From there, as if following the movements of concentric circles, the passion for synths, drum machines, the world of samples and the recording studio. Above all, an uncommon ability to breathe in music. Accepted and found without prejudice, but always with the need to reveal a distinctive track, a signature. Touring between bars, streets, concerts and clubbing. An experience very consistent with the subject matter of this disc. Which is, in fact, the debut of a non-rookie. An ambitious record, because it possesses a sound that is as sexy as it is thoughtful and a writing style, exemplary, that lies on that borderline that, in the stereotype, defines underground and mainstream. Fields that instead it crosses naturally and between which it moves without any particular problems. After all, the music comes not from the malice of the intellect but from the nuances, tender or vehement, of naivety.
Peaceful Sound For Broken Minds is a pop record, pop soul, of modern urban pop. Yes, labels, even in the sense of tags, are definitely that. Of course, it is the way in which ideas are rendered that makes the difference. The record is about the need to find one’s peace, but it is the fall that it shows and not the landing. With honesty and, above all, style. That is, mastery of means and an important file work with which to decline that therapeutic soul pain in which his songs are immersed.
We wait for hours more, the initial “Fall Into The Flame” and “I Am Believe” seem to tell us from there we move on. Hold The Line is where trip hop forgets itself, immersing itself, to the point of blurring, with the retro atmospheres of someone like Curtis Harding. “Pushing” has a space disco cadence that, more pronounced, we also find in the lunar expedition sound of “Watergate”. The exotic visions of “Back In Underwater”, between the stardust of Air and the innocence of Plone, become more cinematic jazz in “Cat With Camera”. Just as in the urban streaks of “Don’t You Worry”, which in upbeat mode would sound like a great reggae song, or “Are U Ready”, or in the disco space funk of “Right Of Me”, the soulful accent of Derane Obika of Living Sounds emerges, a Londoner of Nigerian origin who grew up listening to gospel, Prince and Stevie Wonder, whose voice guides us through the songs of Peaceful Sound For Broken Minds. Which is a new point for that work of redefining the standards of pop today that Space Echo is doing. Throwing the clock overboard, because the time it wants to capture is nothing more than the movement of its hands.
