Following up on several recent darkwave features that we’ve run on the likes of Pink Turns Blue, Revolution Above Disorder, Permafrost and Toronto’s own darkwave / postpunk duo TRAITRS, today we present the first listen for yet another smashing track. This time the group in question hails from Italy and their name is VONAMOR. ‘Take Your Heart’ is a captivating dark track set to a motorik backbeat with an addictive necromantic mood, reminiscent of Fever Ray, Woodkid and select Bowery Electric tracks, also recalling Swedish legends The Knife more and more as the song develops.
A trio comprised of sisters Giulia Bottaro (voice, bass, metal flute) and Francesca Bottaro (drum station, sequencer, sax, clarinet) and vocalist Luca Guidobaldi, the band is rounded out for live performances with the involvement of Francesco Bassoli (guitars and loops) and Martino Cappelli (guitars, mandolin, bouzouki, oud, loops).
‘Take Your Heart’ is the lead track from their forthcoming debut‘VONAMOR’ album. Produced by Lucio Leoni, this 8-track collection will be released in February 2022 via Time To Kill Records (TTK). Sonically, this song feels like a slow-drip of anxiety and shady mystic atmosphere that gradually builds in intensity, culminating in a fever-filled chilling chorus and a haunting wave of chanting. A superb offering – we look forward to seeing what comes next for this trio.
This is a quick-paced track, recalling the best dark pop of the ’80s, with a tandem of male and female voices, confronting each other without reaching a mutual understanding, the addictive rhythm all the while inciting dance and movement.
On ‘Take Your Heart’, the incongruities of language are a humorous counterpart to an imperfect world, made up of discord, virtual realities, and fatal detachment from spontaneity and lightness. The first female voice is answered by the addressed male voice, although he ultimately answers from “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns”.
A game of Dionysian invocations, of accusations and misunderstandings – all of it held together by a deep love that overcomes death. ‘Take Your Heart’ is an invocation to life, to love, to irony, to spontaneity in line with the poetry of VONAMOR’s music. Theirs is a story of unexpected timbres, resonating at the very intersection between darkwave and electro music. The band’s roots date back to 2016 Rome, when their focus was to communicate images, authoring various scores for short films. This morphed into the trio as we know it today with its contemporary taste and allure, literary echoes, imperious art-pop and enigmatic aesthetics.
“VONAMOR is an escape plan, our treasure island, a thick and savage jungle that gives you the chance to let your prayers and whispers reverberate like a church. We used the music in this album to walk paths that we hadn’t known before, to connect Rome to Paris to Berlin to Beijing, to mix techno music with folk, to let our voices and bodies mingle and dance to an incredibly weird yet familiar beat, and finally to search for a boom of love and light into the dark of our everyday’s life: yes, VONAMOR is a boom!” says Luca Guidobaldi.
In the past year, the band has released two singles, which are also featured on this album – ‘Never Betray Us’ and ‘Fast-Forward Girl’, accompanied by a clip directed by Diana Arbib and cinematography by Alessandro Rosa and featuring the dance performance ‘Moto Perpetuo’ by Anna Basti.
“Through our darkwave music and words, we search for the question, the ambiguity, the multiform influence of a variety of demons. We feel the urgency of questioning ourselves, our fellow human beings and the reality around us,” says Giulia Bottaro.
Francesca Bottaro adds, “With VONAMOR, we turned such a feeling into a sound of female and male voices, wrapping bass-lines and electronic beats, woodwind instruments chasing and caressing you, till we make you dance and move and love with us.”
As of November 25, ‘Take Your Heart’, will be available across online stores and streaming platforms, including Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, Spotify and elsewhere. The full-length album will be released, both digitally and on CD, in February 2022. It can be pre-ordered directly from Time To Kill Records.
TRACK LIST (digital)
01. Empire + 2049
02. Lucky You
03. Never Betray Us
04. Take Your Heart
05. You the People
06. Mother Night
07. Fast-Forward Girl
08. Wilderness
CREDITS
Music and lyrics written and performed by VONAMOR ©℗ 2020
Giulia Bottaro (vocals, bass, metal flute)
Francesca Bottaro (drum station, sequencer, saxophone, clarinet, synth)
Luca Guidobaldi (vocals)
Francesco Bassoli (LP – guitars and loops)
Martino Cappelli (live performances – guitars, mandolin, bouzouki, oud, loops).
Edited by VONAMOR
Recorded in Rome at Monkey Studio & L’Albero Recording Studio by Lucio Leoni & Luca D’Aversa
Artistic production, sound engineering and mixing by Lucio Leoni – Lapidarie Incisioni
Mastering by Elephant Mastering
Art direction and design by Francesca Bottaro
Photography by Marco Stramaglia
Label and physical distribution: Time to Kill (TTK) Records
Digital distribution: Believe Intl
Artistic production by Lucio Leoni. Digital distribution by Believe International. Label and physical distribution by Time to Kill (TTK) Records.
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