Customer Reviews

Contatto

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Throughout the web, you'll find this album listed variously as a solo album by Lisa Kant, the lead vocalist of Fiamma Fumana, and as an actual Fiamma Fumana album. Officially, it is indeed Lisa's "solo" effort, but all four members of FF are pictured on the CD's insert, and the distinctive sounds of the other three FF members - Lady Jessica, Alberto Cottica, Medhin Paolos - are heard throughout, especially that of Medhin, the dj who performs the electronica.

I liked Contatto from my first listen, and it quickly became one of my favorite albums. Released in between the first and second FF discs (1.0 and Home), Contatto is quite different from the FF albums, yet is still flavored by distinctive FF characteristics. All Contatto songs appear to be original compositions, and the album is not founded upon Northern Italian traditional folk and women's music in the way most FF tracks tend to be. Still, the electronica, which is a defining presence on FF albums, plays an even more central role here. Lisa also takes her vocals to another level, arguably displaying even greater versatility and range than on the FF albums. In fact, the level of virtuosity she achieves here is nothing short of stunning. Her singing is beautiful and emotive - sometimes a delicate, vulnerable whisper, at other times poised and commanding. Another distinctive feature of FF music is the often unexpected and delightful presence of Alberto Cottica's piano and acoustic guitar, which are often subtly interlaced throughout the electronica. To its benefit, Contatto has many such passages. Lady Jessica's pipes and Alberto's accordion are also notably present at times. So, despite my earlier statement that this album is different from FF albums, it still bears distinctive FF sounds, and it's difficult not to think of this music as Fiamma Fumana.

I want to mention one other point: Some sites (at this writing, not Amazon) have sound clips from Contatto, but I have found that these clips don't do the album justice. They're too brief, and thus make it seem as though the songs all sound more or less alike, which is not at all the case. Each song is very distinctive, though they do hang together well as an album. Additionally, the clips don't capture the dramatic changes in tempo, tone, and vocals which occur in many of the songs (another hallmark of Lisa's vocals and FF in general). I would suggest that if you like Fiamma Fumana there's a pretty good chance you will ultimately like this album. In any case, don't judge it by the sound clips. There is a video of one Contatto song, Fiera, floating around the web (sometimes listed simply as "Contatto"), and if you like this song, it's pretty likely you'll like the entire album.