Progressive RockPost-rock
Self-released · 9 January 2026
“Dramma Sul Ponte” runs nine minutes and fifty-four seconds and is the longest of the five pieces. It covers the mutiny and the seizure of the bridge, and it is where the record is won or lost: Silvia Maffeis works the violin in its upper register, Francesca Badalini drops short percussive clusters from the piano, and Teo Ravelli’s drums push the piece forward without ever settling it into a stable metre. The piece keeps jumping between near-silent chamber passages and eruptions of full electric band, and it never stays in either long enough to claim it.
Badalini has worked with the Cineteca Italiana since 1999. They are a Milan group led by Badalini, a pianist and composer, and what they do live is write new music for silent films from the first decade of the twentieth century, in continuous collaboration with the Cineteca Italiana. This is their second full-length album, a year and eight months after “Decimo Cerchio (L’Inferno 1911 O.S.T.)”, made with singer Claudio Milano. The vocals are gone: the group is now Badalini on piano and electric guitars, Maffeis on violin, Andrea Grumelli on fretless bass and electronics, and Ravelli on drums.
The rest of the work splits the film’s five acts into five movements. “Uomini E Vermi” opens with five minutes fifty of low, sustained pressure: an elastic bass line, slow piano chords, and Badalini’s guitar coming in with distorted riffs over synthesiser textures. “Il Morto Chiama”, seven minutes and six seconds, is the quietest, with the guitar in a clean, bell-like tone and the violin drawing long lines over a dark keyboard bed. And “La Scalinata Di Odessa” starts with unhurried piano chords and fretless ornamentation before breaking apart, which is exactly what the scene it accompanies does.
The album was written to accompany a version of the film recoloured by artificial intelligence. Neither the record nor its presentation explains that decision, and this is a 1925 work conceived in black and white. Heard on its own, the contrast between silence and full band also asks the listener to supply the images: on “Una Contro Tutte”, which closes at exactly nine minutes and ends suspended, I found it hard to tell whether the piano-and-violin epilogue is a conclusion or the absence of one.
Forty-one minutes, five tracks, no label: the record came out on 9 January 2026 on the group’s own Bandcamp, with an Italian physical edition a week later. It is the second album by a quartet that until now had only done this work on stage.
Rating: 8.3/10
Text by Guillem Cardós