This album brings together Dania Shihab, an Iraqi-born, Tasmania-raised, and Barcelona-based experimental artist, and Rosso Polare, the Milanese duo of Cesare Lopopolo and Anna Vezzosi. The collaboration grew out of years of mutual admiration and intersections, uniting around their largely improvised, often dystopian, and always widescreen soundscapes.
Key inspiration for the collaboration stemmed from the evocative anti-colonialist work of Martiniquais poet Aimé Césaire. The album’s titles come directly from the English translation of one specific piece by the poet: ‘Have No Mercy For Me’ (‘N'ayez point pitié de moi’), a sensorial work exploring hidden, damp depths – and strong forces. This music operates much like Césaire’s words, approaching its topic askance, launching surreal imagery and sounds at a canvas to evoke generational anguish and decode stories left imprinted in memories, hidden deep within impenetrable ‘swamps’, both natural and manmade.
Voices whisper and chant (sparingly), field recordings crumble underfoot, bassy keyboard tones flood and seep below, bowed strings grind, and freeform winds freak out. The ritual quality of Dania & Rosso Polare’s respective back catalogues is still key, yet feels newly haunted by ghosts of past cultures once plundered by the pirates of colonialism and left to rot.
This is truly transportative and primordial music. Sent back and forth over the course of a year, these recordings continue to live and breathe long after their creators’ departure, more than the sum of their parts. The trio forge a new kind of radical sonic impressionist syntax, ghost-hunting for folklore and traditions left hidden in the wake of history.
credits
released March 12, 2025Credits
All music Dania and Rosso Polare
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux
Words by Aimé Césaire
Press text Tristain Bath