(Post Rock) Il Rumore Del Fiore Di Carta - Fallen / 2007, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

The Silent Ballet wrote:
Score: 7.5/10
The construction of an album is an under-appreciated aspect of good music-making in the many aspects “rock” music takes, post-rock included. I'm not talking about giving your tracks titles that suggest a story, or bleeding one track into the next so that they “flow” - I'm talking about the progression from beginning to end, the arrangement of tracks designed to move the listener to an actual musical/emotional/narrative destination. Progress is made on the best of these albums, and the work actually has a purpose in itself, rather than a mere collection of tracks that tend to fit nicely together that the band loves to play live. Not that there's anything bad about live music - on the contrary, it's one of the most exhilarating experiences music can offer – but the recorded medium must be respected as an alternate way of experiencing music, and treated as something far removed from a live performance. Bark Psychosis knew this, Mogwai knows this, but there are many, many bands who gloss over the actual construction of the album and leap right into tremolo-picking and general “rocking out.” Il Rumore Del Fiore Di Carta, the latest in a long line of stunning Italian bands to grace our pages, certainly knows a thing or two about album development, and has created something remarkable in Fallen, their debut album.
The band sets itself apart from its peers most especially by the use of vocals that actually serve a purpose, as well as through effective use of sampling to add depth to the individual tracks. I can already hear you saying, “Wow, vocals and samples, no post-rock band has ever done that before...” but the difference between a track like “Leon 1954” and the hackneyed, pathetic attempt at songwriting that is “A Song for Starlit Beaches” is that the vocals do not intrude upon the rest of the song. Rather, they mesh organically with the rest of the track, sounding as if they belong within its structure, rather than thrown in to the song by a mere extension of the song's already-bloated length. They also (shock! horror!) actually sing. Not on every track, mind you, but they can do it. The use of sampling generally feels just as natural as the inclusion of vocals, adding to the hazy, psych-rock feel prevalent on most of the album. My one complaint with the samples is the inclusion of the “children playing sample” that seems to be plaguing post-rock and electronic releases this year.
The meat of Fallen is just as tender as the vocal and sample condiments, providing a gourmet meal for the discerning listener. The guitar work is as reliable and powerful as you'd expect a top-tier post-rock band to display, soft and hazy when required, loud and brutal when it's time for a breakdown. The real treats here are the trumpets, piano, and the synth-work. The trumpet makes the otherwise ordinary ambient intro to “Ambassador” a rare delight, surpassing even the climax of the track in terms of auditory enjoyment. “Fallen,” the album's crux, displays the skill Il Rumore Del Fiore Di Carta possesses at building a subtle, almost ambient post-rock track driven by synth and piano rather than guitars. All the loud, more brutal bits come before this track, demonstrating a real understanding of how their album is to function – the climax of a work is not the same as the climax of a track, and the entire album builds up to this synth-washed, vocoder-filled, almost faultless penultimate track. This is the band at its finest, post-rock at its finest, but much of its power does not come from stand-alone greatness, but from all of the work that comes before (and the final track that follows), demonstrating a grasp of how a post-rock release is to function that many fledgling bands should take to heart.
Fallen is a slow-burning, psych-rock-influenced, gorgeously constructed work that presses all of the right buttons. The band has the knowledge of how their release should function, and both the skill and the knowledge to pull it off. Though I believe the band owes a rather large debt to the two bands referenced in the first paragraph, this is not to the band's detriment – on the contrary, they are doing what we tell post-rock bands to do every day: take your influences and add your own style to them. Don't be fooled by those bands that mime their predecessors – this is the real deal, post-rock as we all need it to be. I tip my hat to you, Il Rumore Del Fiore Di Carta, you've done more for the genre with one release than most bands ever will, and if “Fallen” is any indication, you'll keep on getting better over time. - Zach Mills