🇮🇹 NON SOLO PROGROCK — Full Album Analysis
May 22, 2026 | Critical Reviews -- Italian avant-garde authority NONSOLO PROGROCK analyzes SHEEN: ABSENCE, celebrating RDM Records' official US market deployment campaign. "An unmissable appointment for anyone who loves music understood as pure art..." 👉 [Read Full Review & English Translation]
RDM Records
5/22/20264 min read
Italian avant-garde authority NONSOLO PROGROCK analyzes SHEEN: ABSENCE, celebrating RDM Records' official US market deployment campaign.
"An unmissable appointment for anyone who loves music understood as pure art, free from commercial compromises and driven by an authentic, human expressive urgency. Welcome, RDM Records—the need for a breath of fresh air was truly felt!" — Massimo Salari, Rock Impressions — May 22, 2026
Massimo Salari (Italy) — SHEEN: Absence Full Analysis Highlights:
On RDM Records: "Makes its debut in the wider recording world... through productions that are certainly anything but predictable in today's musical landscape, seeking out what art, by its very nature, is meant to bestow."
On the Concept: "The marriage between vocal experimentation and avant-garde sound research finds a new, intriguing expression between electronics and philosophy... developing around the philosophical and psychological concept of subtraction."
On Romina Daniele: "A performance where the voice transcends the boundaries of traditional singing... Daniele uses the vocal fabric to scrape, cradle, and weave complex emotional textures."
On Lorenzo Marranini: "Rarefied soundscapes, minimalist drones, and electroacoustic music elements that engage in a constant, and often edgy, dialogue with the vocal lines."
On Track I: "A highly atmospheric introduction, where the empty space between one note and the next vibrates with a palpable tension. Romina Daniele enters this scenario not to sing a melody, but to 'inhabit' the sound."
On Track II: "A tighter, dialectical and psychological clash. An altered heartbeat, a geometric anxiety that tightens the space around the voice... atmospheres close to the heart of the most twilight-hued Thom Yorke."
On Track III: "An invisible work of chiseling, reducing the electronics to the bare minimum... silence is not a pause between notes, but the protagonist itself, while above it, Daniele uses her voice like a body."
Read the Full Review:
[NONSOLO PROGROCK Review] Singer and artist Romina Daniele’s RDM Records makes its debut in the wider recording world, doing so through productions that are certainly anything but predictable in today's musical landscape, seeking out what art, by its very nature, is meant to bestow. This is how the intent is described in the biographical note: “Art and research are a single, essential energy towards the authenticity of existence. We explore absence not as a void, but as an implosion; the resonant threshold where the meaning of poetry reclaims its original foundations.”.
With the Sheen project, by Lorenzo Marranini and featuring Romina Daniele, RDM Records immediately plays a major card entitled “Absence”, just to make its intentions clear. The title is drawn from Daniele’s poem “Absence (on threshold of my pain)”. The work originally saw the light of day in 2015, and is presented today with a meticulous new mastering.
The marriage between vocal experimentation and avant-garde sound research finds a new, intriguing expression between electronics and philosophy, where the two protagonists turn deconstruction and expressive depth into their trademark.
As the title itself suggests, “Absence” develops around the philosophical and psychological concept of subtraction. It is not simply a void, but a heavy absence, a space in which silence, pauses, and echo become compositional elements just as vital as the notes played. It is a work that explores the boundary between presence and evanescence, translating isolation, memory, and the immaterial into music.
The presence of Romina Daniele ensures a performance where the voice transcends the boundaries of traditional singing. Known for her multi-expressive vocation, spanning from avant-garde jazz to sound poetry and contemporary classical music, Daniele uses the vocal fabric to scrape, cradle, and weave complex emotional textures.
Lorenzo Marranini, for his part, takes care of the instrumental and electronic counterpart. His contribution translates into rarefied soundscapes, minimalist drones, and electroacoustic music elements that do not act as a mere accompaniment, but engage in a constant, and often edgy, dialogue with the vocal lines.
“Absence I” is tasked with tearing the listener away from ordinary reality to catapult them into the suspended dimension of the Sheen project, where low frequencies, minimal drones, and micro-sounds dominate, creating an almost cinematic sense of anticipation. It is a highly atmospheric introduction, where the empty space between one note and the next vibrates with a palpable tension. Romina Daniele enters this scenario not to sing a melody, but to "inhabit" the sound. The voice moves initially whispered, as if it were a ghost or an interior stream of consciousness, before evolving into phonemes, tense vocalizations, and extensions that test the boundaries of dynamics. The word loses its purely semantic function and becomes pure sound, flesh, and breath.
In "Absence II", the dialogue between Romina Daniele and Lorenzo Marranini grows tighter, almost bordering on a sort of dialectical and psychological clash. Marranini partly abandons the purely static drones to introduce edgier electroacoustic structures. Deconstructed percussive patterns, glitches, or magnetic manipulations can emerge, giving the track a limping, feverish pace. There is never a reassuring rhythm, but rather an altered heartbeat, a geometric anxiety that tightens the space around the voice. These atmospheres could well be close to the heart of the most twilight-hued Thom Yorke. The voice fragments: whispers alternate with sudden shifts in register, bold glissandi, and vocal layers that create an effect of a split personality. There is a masterful use of breath and forced silence, utilized as a wall against which the voice shatters. The singing becomes at times more lyrical and sorrowful, only to break apart into pure phonemes—the expression of a profound incommunicability.
In "Absence III", Lorenzo Marranini performs an almost invisible work of chiseling, reducing the electronics to the bare minimum of minimalism, where the deconstructed rhythms of the previous track give way to longitudinal, almost imperceptible frequencies that seem to float in the air like dust after a collapse. Here, silence is not a pause between notes, but the protagonist itself, while above it, Daniele uses her voice like a body.
I do not want to rob you of the pleasure of discovering what awaits you along the path, so I leave it to your curiosity to uncover what follows; the fact remains that “Absence” is not a casual listen, but a dense, intellectual, and deeply visceral work that fits perfectly within the realm of research music, the most abstract art rock, and modern creative. An album that demands attention, isolation, and a readiness to let oneself be carried away into unconventional sonic territories.
A definitely unmissable appointment for anyone who loves music understood as pure art, free from commercial compromises and driven by an authentic, human expressive urgency.
Welcome, RDM Records—the need for a breath of fresh air was truly felt! — MS
