🇮🇹 Darkroom Magazine — Conceptual Cohesion Feature
"It is a work that utterly captivates with its incomparable dark emphasis and enviable sonic and conceptual cohesion... a direct expression of raw artistic authenticity. An absolute must-listen."
RDM Records
3/1/20161 min read
🖋️ ROBERTO ALESSANDRO FILIPPOZZI (Darkroom Magazine)
"It is a work that utterly captivates with its incomparable dark emphasis and enviable sonic and conceptual cohesion.
The Sheen project took life in Milan from a shared vision between Lorenzo Marranini (a multi-instrumentalist active in various bands across different genres) and Romina Daniele (an award-winning vocal experimenter and researcher, already highly regarded in these pages), after Marranini had laid the groundwork as far back as 2005. Collaborating also in the management of their label, RDM Records (established in 2010), the two artists shaped and recorded the nine tracks—all titled "Absence" followed by their respective Roman numerals—that comprise this debut between 2009 and 2015.
The work stems from a vital premise: Romina’s poem "Assenza (o soglia del mio dolore)" [Absence (or Threshold of my Pain)], a piece of crucial importance in her body of work because: "...Absence is the lack of authenticity in the world, in the face of which a more personal search becomes urgent and necessary."
This is an honorable manifesto that fully reflects the artistic journey of both Marranini and Daniele. In this remarkable debut, they define a truly dark path, magnificently guided by the words of the aforementioned poem.
The minimal/noir electronics and the darkwave impulses of Lorenzo’s guitar generate leaden, somber landscapes. Against this backdrop, the extraordinary versatility of a gifted and daring singer like Romina shines, unleashing both spoken-word passages and high-caliber vocalizations with surprising variations and unrivaled showmanship. The album moves through: doom-like shifts and austere piano tolls, seductive darkwave flourishes and poignant, evanescent melodies, dark rhythmic pulses and magnetic, nocturnal cadences, industrial-ambient walls of sound and menacing tensions mixed with unease.
It is a work that utterly captivates with its incomparable dark emphasis and enviable sonic and conceptual cohesion—a direct expression of the "authenticity" mentioned above, which for researchers and experimenters of Lorenzo and Romina's sensitivity is simply an indispensable prerogative. An absolute must-listen." — Roberto Alessandro Filippozzi, Darkroom Magazine
