Nero Kane is the nickname of Marco Mezzadri, a songwriter and musician already known in the Italian underground scene and aiming to make a mark on the rest of the world with his debut LP Love in a Dying World.
Previously, Kane released Lust Soul under the name NERO in 2016 but has changed tacts and is now focusing on an intimate, minimal and decadent path. Folk-rock-blues voice and guitar combine European roots with American desert sounds in a project full of dark and emotional visions. The album was recorded and produced at Valley Recording Company in Los Angeles by Joe Cardamone (The Icarus Line/ Holy War), who has also collaborated with Jesus and Mary Chain, The Cult, The Stooges, Warren Ellis and many others. The LP was released by American Primitive, an art collective founded by Cardamone and can be seen to describe a soul moved by melancholy dreams and in need of deep emotions in a solitary world. Love, death, decadence and loneliness are the themes expressed and two of the songs are inspired by a hymnbook from the American Presbyterian Church bought from an old antique dealer near Joshua Tree during Kane’s journey through California.
Opening with ‘Black Crows’ a haunting organ riff melody takes hold and doesn’t let up, accompanied by an ethereal vocal style this is a track that’s not for the faint hearted and serves as the perfect introduction to the album. ‘Desert Soul’ follows, with Neil Young esq. vocal harmonies and a playful guitar riff interwoven between a tapped tambourine and minimalist percussion; somehow this track pulls off the art of having lots going on yet sounds beautifully simplistic. ‘Living on the Edge of the Night’ lives up to Kane’s aim of minimalism whilst ‘I Put a Spell on You’ adds swathes of reverb that further add to the ethereal tone of the album created in the opening track. ‘Now the Day is Over’ is an aptly named track as it creates an air of foreboding from the offset and descends into a form of madness, courtesy of complex layers of fuzz.
‘Because I Knew Not When My Life Was Good’ stands out from the predecessor tracks, channelling a hint of the characteristic sound of All Them Witches which will appeal to many. It brings many of the elements we have heard before and builds on them, creating something different and attention drawing. ‘Dream Dream’ is once more aptly named, listened to with eyes closed in can invoke a dream like state whilst ‘Eleonor’ adds a female vocal and exudes a menacing beauty, the type of which is almost too much to listen too; almost. ‘So Sad’ does pretty much what its name suggests with a weeping acoustic guitar dominating, and concluding title track ‘Love in a Dying World’ brings everything together under one neat umbrella to round off.
If singer/songwriters are your thing and you prefer a minimalist approach, with influences including country western, psychedelia and desert rock, you could do far worse than listen to Nero Kane.
