Giancarlo Erra - Departure Tapes

"Departure Tapes" is the 2nd solo album by Nosound frontman and multi-instrumentalist Giancarlo Erra.  This album was made in a difficult time in Giancarolo's life as his Dad passed away.  There is a note in the CD which says, "Dad this album is for you: it was a rough and bumpy ride for the two of us, but it was well worth it".  One of the tracks on the album is also called "A Blues for my father".  Now no matter what you think of the album, I think Giancarlo did the absolute right thing in making the album when he did. We all go through difficult times in our lives but sometimes the best way to deal with these times is to channel you are energy into something you love doing, regardless of the finished result.

It just so happens that in this occasion the results are quite spectacular.  I got into Nosound around 2017 and instantly bought their back catalogue.  They are a band which have developed and progressed over time.  "Scintilla" and particularly their latest album "Allow Yourself" taking some risks in the direction of their music, experimenting with strings and in the latter keyboards. In 2019, Giancarlo Erra released his first solo album "Ends".  Unlike Nosound this was a purely instrumental album that I struggled to get into at the time.

When the first "single" from "Departure Tapes" came out it was the self-titled track. The edited track comes in at 7 minutes.  I listened to it a few times and like "Ends" it didn't really grab me at all so I didn't bother listening to the other couple of singles before the album release.  When I did first listen to the album though the story was much different.  This is when I found that the title track was actually a masterpiece sitting at 16 minutes long. I must have listened to it at least 5 times now and this track, like the rest of the tracks pass by so quickly. Which is a very good thing for an album as it is a difficult thing to achieve with albums with longer tracks on it.

The album is made up of 6 tracks of varying lengths.  You have "Dawn tapes" sitting at 6 minutes, "Previous tape" and "169th tape" sitting at 2-3 minutes and then "A Blues for my father" and "Unwound tape" coming in around 7-8 minutes.  Not surprisingly the general mood of the album is more ambient and atmospheric than "Ends".  There are some more upbeat moments like in "Unwound tape" which takes me back to some of the tracks in "Allow yourself" by Nosound.  But this time Giancarlo has fleshed out the ideas a lot more.  As the tracks on Allow yourself were a lot more short and to the point and of course with vocals.

 I have gone back and listened to "Ends", Giancarlo's first album in the build up to this release and it is a lot better album than I remembered. Perhaps at the time I wasn't giving it the attention it deserved.  I do think though that "Ends" is a better starting point than "Departure Tapes" if you are listening to Giancarlo Erra for the first time.  To me it is more accessible.   The differences between "Ends" and "Departure Tapes" are quite stark and shows a man who is continuously pushing his creative boundaries.  In "Ends" he brought in a string section which was used in many of the tracks.  While in this record, although there are still some strings they are not nearly as prominent.   The piano, keyboards, synthesisers and other electronics and programming are more prominent though and are the foundations to the album.

 Overall, this is a great album that I think really needs to be listened to as a whole entity rather than individual tracks.  It's like a water colour painting. If you divided the water colour painting into different sections and only looked at one section at a time, you are not getting the full picture and more often than not, you wouldn't appreciate it.  For me this happened with the edited version of the title track and when I sat back and listened to the full thing, I appreciated it a lot more. Although I realise it may be a quandary for artists as you can't really release a 16 minute track as a single to promote it.