giulio fagiolini: dietro a un vetro

Dietro A Un Vetro is the debut album from Giulio Fagiolini. Giulio's calm and short piano sketches may easily take you to Japan; they instantly feel innocent, clean, pure, and wistful. Perhaps the most instant reference point would be Joe Hisaishi. For those that don't know, Joe Hisaishi is the composer for almost all of the Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli films. The music is so simple, so direct, and just so childlike; it imbues the films with a certain old-world (or at least, not of this modern world anyway) innocence. The line between sickly-sweet and this is very fine indeed, but Joe Hisaishi always matches the mood and gets just the right amount of innocence in such a beautifully restrained way. To say the music of Giulio Fagiolini might leave you with the same feeling as Hisaishi's music is all you need to know, hopefully. In an age of innate greediness and willingness to use an instrument or genre to soullessly pilfer, Dietro A Un Vetro is incredibly refreshing. It's simple, pure, direct, and innocent. The power of music to remind one that there is something so pure, despite all the grime, is a bit of a revelation really.