II

Stefano Fano Roman fell in love with rap in the early 90s like many of his generation. Since the early 2000s, he has been producing instrumentals for a number of rappers on the Italian scene, including Clementino and Paura. Spano. (written with a dot at the end) is a union of intentions, of taste, of sharing and listening, and mostly of attention to sound with guitarist and composer Paolo Spaccamonti. Known in the bravest rooms of the national avant-garde for his solo work, his collaborations (Emidio Clementi of Massimo Volume and Jochen Arbeit of Einstürzende Neubauten, among others) and his adventurous forays into cinema and theatre. Two peculiar individualities that come together in Spano. II. Through their common focus on sound as a tangible, visual setting, which materialises in the guitar loops, in the precise grain of the hi hats, in the rhythms as a state of mind, in the arrangement that becomes centre stage. ‘Alchemist, J Dilla, Madlib or, looking more at the contemporary, Earl Sweatshirt and Ka. In the end, in the background there is always Roc Marciano, the one true God,' says Fano. Roots that find meaning in the sonic ideas they decant from dusty records found in some forgotten shop, in obsessive listening to that precise fragment of that precise track, of nocturnal conversations wandering about rap identities and intentions. As in the first episode (released by Love Boat Records & Buttons), in this Spano. II devotion to the hidden meanings of instrumental hip hop is the driving force. The next step is to make those instrumental rooms even more material, more geographical through the sonic detail that becomes apocryphal religion. When rhythms guide dark reflections, moving anxious steps along the dimly lit streets of a city at night, rather than deluding with invitations to dances that are now distant echoes. When the precious craft of sampling as research reads the urban landscape to distill all its emotional precariousness into small symphonies of uncertain modernity. When the lesson of the narcoleptic beat of the dub meets the circularity of a guitar educated long ago to break out of the patterns forced on it by a system that lacks courage. All this is Spano. II, the evolution of the species. (Mauro Fenoglio)