STILL is the musical project of Milan’s Simone Trabucchi, who previously released under the name of Dracula Lewis, a moniker through which he would develop his own take on ‘folk’ music.
As STILL, he explores the histories that connect his hometown of Vernasca with Ethiopia and Jamaica, enlisting a cast of collaborators to join him on his debut album under the pseudonym, entitled I, which you can stream in full above ahead of its release via PAN this Friday (September 15).
The impetus for the record, a riotous meshing of dancehall rhythms and bass music, came from a visual arts project undertaken by Trabucchi called ‘Negus’. The project consisted of a series of sculptures, installations, a book and a documentary screened at last year’s Unsound.
"’Negus’ revolves around a cleansing counter-ritual performed by Lee "Scratch" Perry in the Vernasca Square where 80 years earlier, an effigy of Haile Selassie I was burned," an accompanying press release for the album explains. "The documentary then follows a trajectory connecting Italy’s overlooked colonial past seen through personal history to a reverberation of symbols in Ethiopia and Jamaica. Within STILL, he connects these research threads, evolving their sonic and linguistic aspects further, where ‘computerised riddims’ sustain a shared gospel channelled through a polyphony of voices."
Trabucchi and three of the Milan-based Italian-African vocalists that feature on I, namely Devon Miles from Nigeria, Freweini from Erythrea and Keidino from Italy, will make their live debut as STILL at this year’s Unsound in Kraków in October. For more details on that, click here.
