Polmo Polpo – Kiss Me Again And Again

This was hands down, undisputably my favorite record that came out in 2005. Sandro Perri has been making beautiful music as Polmo Polpo for several years (loose Italian translation: "octopus lung") but the funny thing is, it's usually a really unique brand of cinematic, thick and textural ambient. Using everything from slide guitar, accordian and timpani drums to samples of heartbeats, orchestral loops and jets taking flight. A beautiful, awe-inspiring amalgam of sound, yet none of it happens here.

On "Kiss Me", Perri translates, transforms, and pretty much infinitely reinterprets a cover of Dinosaur L's original funk-club rocker. What you are flung into upon letting the needle drop is a sea of swirling dissonance, only it isn't dissonance at all. Instead it's the sound of several separate yet equally emotive guitar parts, all fluxuating in volume constantly, one occasionally letting itself rise to the surface to establish some trace of a groove to follow. Backing the track's constant evolving is a barely changing house beat (played on what sounds like a live drumkit) and a few different basslines that change as well, only not as much as the guitars. The track throbs in this warm harmony, and later in the trip, we hear droning keyboards, a violin, and alot of effects applied. The music lasts for 21 minutes, and you'd swear if the record didn't run out of space, it could just go on forever.

What is happening here is not so much different than Perri's previous works. The sounds and textures used are all that's changed. Still present is the experimentation, and the point Perri always seems to be trying to make is still very clear: harmony from chaos. What initially sounds like 3 or 4 songs playing at once really turns out to be a sea of melodies, clanging into each other at first, but then apologizing with a kiss as time passes. So literally, and figuratively, the album really lives up to it's title.

Sandro Perri is a genius, and the production of something so complex proves that, "again and again and again and again...".