Amalfi Coast Sunset: Italian deep house with Elara on La Terrazza
Amalfi Coast Sunset is two hours of Italian deep house for the hour when the sun goes down over the sea and the terrace is still warm. It is Mediterranean minimal deep house at 122 BPM in F minor: a tight deep kick, a clean sub, a gliding syncopated bassline, swung hats, live bongos and congas, muted nylon guitar and Rhodes chords. A soft tenor saxophone bends over the harmony, and a low bowed cello joins the last chorus. One close, warm female voice sings every song in Italian.
Each song is a short chorus about one small thing someone left behind, a long sunset groove, then the chorus again with one line changed. A father's wood plane lies on its side with a curl of wood still in its mouth. A dog's ball waits under the hedge. Each object keeps someone who is gone or far away, and by the last chorus the hand that held it opens. In Un bottone alla volta she sings "Ti chiudo la camicia", buttoning his shirt one button at a time because dressing him is the slowest way to keep him in, and at the end she leaves the collar open. In L'acqua sul comodino a glass of water by the bed goes down on its own, and the last chorus turns to "stanotte bevo al posto tuo": tonight I drink in your place.
Elara, an original Signal Art character, holds the screen in La Terrazza. This is a Living Loop, a format created by Signal Art: one character inside a world built for the album, moving without a seam under the whole programme. In a yellow silk summer dress with a blue sash, she dances barefoot on a white terrace above the sea, under lemon trees, while white curtains move in the wind.
Twenty-nine original songs make forty-four tracks, fifteen heard twice as Part I and Part II. Put it on for a summer evening, a coast drive, dinner on the balcony or a slow hour by the sea.
