Porta d’Oro’s (Golden Door) buoyantly ethereal debut album, Cosí Dentro Come Fuori (Both Inside And Outside), is the solo project of Giacomo Stefanini and sees him hone a myriad of influences into a thoroughly hypnotic and deeply meditative journey.

Based in Milan, Stefanini has been a mainstay of a range of Italian DIY punk projects over the past decade, including Mirrorism, Kobra, and, most recently, Festa Del Perdono.  The latter is, perhaps, the most relevant reference point as Porta d’Oro shares a similar lo-fi inventiveness and poetically inclined aesthetic.  A woozily dub infused rhythm section is overlain with fuzzy synths and flares of taut post-punk guitar, augmented by flourishes of brass.  The lyrical themes are fragmented and impressionistic, with a largely spoken word delivery, sometimes, in solemn solitude and, at others, tantalisingly layered.

The opening track Conta I Passi La Lepre (The Hare Counts The Steps) with its languid blend of strummed guitar and tinkling piano lures you into the album’s embrace, which can at times feel almost ephemeral.  Yet whenever it threatens to dissolve, it reasserts its grip with surprising vigour, such as on the unexpectedly strident Bleah! and the entrancing slow-build of Un Sasso Nero (A Black Stone).

As Side Two opens, both the title track and Lá (There) are built around eerily minimalist, impossible to shake melodies.  The darkly swirling Notte e Giorno (Night And Day), with its chanted mantra climax, then follows before all of the intertwined elements that have preceded converge on the prophetically titled and incrementally dissembling closer Tutto Crolla (Everything Collapses).  Intriguingly, the album’s mood is one that seems to shift to reflect your own, somehow being both quietly hopeful while rooted in a melancholic pragmatism.