‘I am silver and exact. I am not cruel, only truthful.  I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart.  Now I am a lake’ (Mirror, Sylvia Plath)

Ora Sono Un Lago (Now I Am A Lake) is the second album emerging from the collaboration between Francesca Bono (synths, vocals) and Vittoria Burattini (percussion), and follows up their 2023 debut, Suono In Un Tempo Trasfigurato (Sound In A Transfigured Time).  Its inspirations lie in the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Patrizia Cavalli, and their shared exploration of the constant battle to overcome disenchantment with life’s daily mundanities.

Bono’s synths form the album’s cornerstone.  The melodies are brightly crystalline and glimmer with an elegiac fluidity as they ebb and flow.  However, the mid-range registers pulse with a darker foreboding, one imbued with a nebulous sense of a threat that is not yet revealed, lurking just out of sight.  Her vocals are wordless yet powerfully evocative.  Ethereal melodies and spectral whispers are instinctually braided throughout.  Burattini’s drums lock into a limber motorik beat, not afraid to give space, nor on occasion to assert themselves with a more industrial-tinged bombast.

The duo’s assured craft ensures an admirable tautness to the song writing, one that allows their ideas to flex and evolve, but never to unravel, nor to lose focus.  Prove D’Esistenza/Il Gesto (Proof of Existence/The Gesture) deftly juxtaposes mechanical rhythms and mournful incantations, before segueing into the haunting choral chants of the beguiling Nuda Vela (Naked Sailing).  From there we are embroiled in the ominously simmering Acrobata (Acrobata) and then lured into the embrace of the woozily enticing Il Volo Dell’Angelo (The Flight Of The Angel). The atmosphere conjured is utterly immersive.  It invites a reflective, engaged stillness and a willingness to yield without resistance to its densely layered entreaties.