Il Cielo di Baghdad — Export For Malinconique

When glockenspiel is listed among the instruments it's not very likely that things will become rough. Italian indie group Il Cielo di Baghdad indeed aim for more dreamy sounds, full of melancholy.

Generally a very mellow mood is set, with abundant glockenspiels and furthermore anything at the trio's disposal. Warm analog synths, a vocoder (in opener Stanno tutti bene), piano and the classic rock instruments bass, guitar and drums. In the fifth track, Save Your Forest, we find some dissonance to slightly disrupt the mood. The style could be described as Japanese postrockers Mono meeting halfway with Jóhann Jóhannsson's album Dís. The melodies do tend to get a bit same-ish, but by limiting the total playing time to a mere 33 minutes this doesn't become problematic. What does become such is that the guitars return in the sixth song and the detuned appearance which seemed intended in Save Your Forest doesn't seem intentional this time. Towards the end of the record this is recurring a few times and it does hurt the atmosphere there.

The nine tracks pass like one suite, but Export For Malinconique could've been a bit more heavenly had the guitars been in tune where they should've been. As it's just a few instances I can't say it ruins the entire experience, and according to the bandname it is the heaven of Baghdad here, so it can't be all peace and love. But it definitely costs them a kudo.