The gritty and aggressive sound characterizes the debut album from Luigi Pianezzola, known as Torba. The Italian producer mixes Punk, Industrial and Electronic music to achieve an interesting and personal sound.
Luigi Pianezzola’s project Torba was born during the Covid-19 lock-down. His experience has seen him as a touring musician with The Soft Moon for almost ten years. On this first full length, Torba pushed his music to the limit, as he said: “It was a space to do whatever I wanted. It felt good to do something ‘wrong’, because when recording for somebody else, you have to work with the cleanest sound. When I’m doing my stuff, I try to push it as hard as I can to do everything wrong.”
The raw, distorted and aggressive sound starts directly with the first track, “Prelude”. The drum kick is syncopated like a heartbeat and is surrounded by a fat sub bass. Some chopped vocal samples and dark Industrial sounds rise until they disappear leaving behind the kick and the bass. A more hammering kick welcomes you in “Deal”, introducing an apparently obscure path. But after one minute everything is clearer: the same rhythm as before is now accompanied by a slightly acid arpeggio that pushes the pace and engages your ears to this new scene. The feelings this song gives me are similar to those I feel during a well-made horror movie: the sensation that something that you don’t know is coming and its subsequent arrival. I don’t know if “Punto” (Italian for “point”) is the fastest song on this album, but surely it’s the track that makes my head move continuously. The pressing distorted bass riff intro could be the perfect start of any Metal and Industrial song, but when the Electronic drums come in, you know that this sound/version is its perfect fit. Industrial synths, a voice that sings “don’t let me be myself”, a snare that sounds like hitting a metal barrel, and a beat that resembles a tribal rhythm added to the end of the song and stopping my head moving. “Wire” was the lead single for the whole album. An intricate synth arpeggio introduces the heavy and distorted song. As said by Pianezzola, this song is a dark inversion of a dance tune, inspired by the wild nights he finds himself in. “I was thinking about how much time I’ve spent in a club in a super deep situation. I’d ask myself why I do it - and then I’d do it again.” The techno beat with its long tail to act as a bass is accompanied by dark melody and distorted sounds that bring us down to a darker path. The only collaboration on the album is “Dare”, co-produced by Riccardo Menin (A.K.A. Cantona from the band Mont Baud) and Edoardo Pellizzari of Overdrive Studio. He came with an idea, some lyrics and a draft of a club song. The result is an Electro-Industrial banger that is a little slower and cleaner in sound than the other tracks, but very catchy. Like in “Punto”, we find another banger riff in “Lies”. This time the track starts fast, but with just a little Acid Synth, and then the distorted guitar comes in and the headbanging is here again. It’s like going up and down; the “clean” part alternates with the “dirty” one, creating a sonic roller coaster. And then we found ourselves falling. “Caduta” (Italian for “fall”) introduces us to the last songs of the album. A repetitive and slow sound provides rest for our ears for 3,5 minutes while soft synths and bass are pushing us into a growing darkness. After a small “Interlude”, a wave overwhelms us: “Onda” (Italian for “wave”) is built on a slow-moving climax, wrapping the listener in a nocturnal atmosphere. “Sides” follows the same pattern as “Onda”, a calm rhythm slowly growing to become even brighter in its climax. With “Rider”, we’re entering a Dystopian future with vibrant synths and delicate sounds wrapping up the end of this record.
“I like to use acoustic sounds or samples; then I over-process them to destroy it one piece at a time,” Pianezzola says. “I love to use a bit reduction and digital distortion to keep just the tone and try to destroy everything else, to get to the very essence of the sound.” With this record he gathers all his past music experience, with I Am Titor, Bruuno and with The Soft Moon. About his experience with The Soft Moon, Pianezzola says “That changed everything for me, playing with The Soft Moon and knowing Luis most of all. He really shared a lot about everything… he always wanted us to feel like family and a band before being just tour musicians, so we were always talking about music. It opened my mind, because he didn’t care about the music itself. He cared about the feeling and the energy connected, not about the technical stuff, so I took it a lot from him.”
For me, Torba did an excellent job with this record, mixing aggressive songs with other more calm ones in a very interesting way. Surely, Luigi is a talented producer, and I wish that he will continue experimenting with sounds and inspiration.
