Italy’s dream pop outfit Amycanbe is definitely one of Europe’s better bands and, with a little luck, might soon make a big splash in North America with their forthcoming EP, White Slide, slated to drop April 19 via Open Productions.
Made up of Francesca Amati (vocals), Mattia Dallara (keyboards), Mattia Mercuriali (bass, guitar), and Marco Trinchillo (drums), Amycanbe recently released “White Slide (Live),” the title track from the impending EP.
According to the band, the track “originally started as an instrumental demo by Marco Tinchillo for a dance side project.” But after hearing it, front woman Amati decided she needed to sing it, so she composed lyrics for it. The live version isn’t anything like the studio version. The latter is flavored with electronic dream-pop hues, while the live version presses with psychedelic dance dynamics.
The live version isn’t anything like the studio version. The latter is flavored with electronic dream-pop hues, while the live version presses with psychedelic dance dynamics.
Formed in 2002, Amycanbe began life with just Trinchillo and Mercuriali, but expanded to a quartet three years later, when Amati and Paolo Gradari were added, followed by cutting a demo EP, Yellow Suit. In 2007, they released their debut album, Being A Grown-Up Sure Is Complicated. A few years later, they dropped another EP, entitled The World Is Round, followed by another album, Mountain Whales, on which the band grew to five members, adding guitarist Glauco Salvo. And then in 2014, the band reverted to four members once again, including the addition of Mattia Dallara, who not only played on the next album, Wolf, but produced it.
“White Slide” opens on droning synths and a taut tick-tock pop flowing into a pulsing dance groove that shifts to a dream-pop melody riding spiraling synths and a compact piano. Indulgent guitar shimmers surge and swirl, as the rhythm assumes greater muscularity.
Amati’s voice, silky and nymph-like, infuses the lyrics with warm tendrils of color, along with exotic inflected timbres, like wistful wisps of whispery articulation.
“White Slide” projects a phantasmagoric ambiance rife with spectral, kaleidoscopic whorls of color traveling on swarming harmonics.