The great albums keep rolling in 2023. This time it is for the debut from Bosco Sacro. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from this band, but there was something about the cover art that drew me to it. The album is called Gem, and it will release on February 10th through Avantgarde Music.
Bosco Sacro comes to us from Italy. I have to admit that I did not immediately peg them as an Italian band. The lineup includes Giulia Parin Zecchin on vocals and lyrics, Francesco Vara and Paolo Monti on guitars, and Luca Scotti on drums. All four members are seasoned musicians.
The band plays a reserved and emotional sort of music called dreamgaze, which has deep influence from ambient, shoegaze, and doom. Their sound is basically the combination of those three genres, with some added psychedelia. The music here is quiet, vulnerable, and eccentric. I would even call it eerie and haunting, but in a specifically organic, natural context. This music sounds like the whispering winds as they flow through the solemn and dark forests of your mind.
I really like this kind of music. I like how unusual and strange it can sound, especially Giulia’s eccentric and excellent vocal performance, which is pretty far outside the norm. I like how she utters more than words, offering sounds and tones that bring the music to life, sometimes seeming deep and unnerving, and other times simple and beautiful. The guitar work and drums add to this, too, dangling and hovering with faraway coldness and imminent emotion, too. The shoegaze part of the sound is distant and dreamy, not the loud and towering type that is so common.
So, that’s what you can expect. You hear gentle shoegaze guitars, faint doom riffs at times, ritualistic atmosphere, mysterious vocals, and a hazy, hovering sort of writing. It isn’t for everyone, I know, but for those who like this sort of ambient, highly textured experience, this is one of the first great examples this year.
Gem isn’t a long record; it contains six tracks and lasts about 30 minutes. So, yes, it’s not an elongated experience. I first heard the single, “Fountain of Wealth”, which is full of whispers and shadows, and honestly reminds me of Dead Can Dance at times. It is a song of elegant darkness and subtle layering, and I really like it.
The other tracks don’t disappoint. “Ice Was Pure” opens with brighter tone, but one that is just as mysterious; it feels rather abstract in the second half. “Be Dust” has the heavier moments on the album, and it gives eight minutes of evolving, building doom atmosphere contrasted with some of my favorite vocals on the album. I really like that one.
I tend to think of the last three tracks as one song, honestly. “Emerald Blood” opens with a doomy front and some deeply interesting textures, but then it fades gracefully before rising again in “Les Arbres Rampants” (which means “creeping trees”). This track takes that gorgeous silence, and it builds it into something emotional, enigmatic, and vibrant to my ears. The album closes with “Bosco Sacro”, meaning “sacred grove”, and that feels appropriate. It is, perhaps, the catchiest song on the album with subtle vocal hooks and gentle music. Much like the album itself, it does not try to impress through theatrics, but feels incredibly authentic and peaceful.
Bosco Sacro is not your typical band and Gem isn’t your typical debut. You won’t find technical fireworks here or epic moments. No, this album is about quiet ritual and dark emotions, and perhaps how these are tools to finding treasure within ourselves and the planet around us. It is a spiritual record, but one that finds the divine in every richly detailed leaf and every regal blade of grass. It’s the sort of album that, once it is finished, I feel the desire to sit in silence, considering the sound of my own breathing.
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Find Bosco Sacro online:
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The PROG Mind 