Dperd - Kore

At a time when you have a band creating these mysterious, romantic, and calm-like atmospheres, you might expect something to make it an alternate soundtrack to Ridley Scott’s 1982 cult classic, Blade Runner. But with Italian duo, Dperd, who have been around for ten years, have done something like that and they have made something special with their fifth album. The duo considers Valeria Buono on lead vocals and keyboards and Carlo Disimone on keyboards, guitars, bass, percussions, and cello.

Their music at times is very electronic, gothic, and bits of Alternative here and there and I can hear inspirations from the realms of Bjork, The Cure, This Mortal Coil, and Hail to the Thief-era of Radiohead and with their fifth album, Kore, which is named after of the greek goddess, Persephone, it really has this sound of the dystopian universe gone wrong and the music is almost the aftermath of the war what happened and how we can prevent it from happening.

Valeria Buono’s voice is very gentle and soft. Her vocals will make you feel calm and relaxed as if she is right behind you and let the listener know that everything’s okay and the same with Carlo Disimone’s virtuoso work with the five instruments to make it at times haunting, beautiful, surreal, and touching, makes it feel that the beauty has soared into the blue sky and flying into different lands that you’ve never seen before from beginning, middle, and end.

Songs like; Fa Male and You’ll Be Watching Me, have this surrounding of a middle-eastern dance music atmosphere that makes it feel they had written a ballet between the two pieces while Catena Cieca pays homage to the sinister dark approaches of Devil Doll and Talk Talk rolled up into one with a pipe organ and sinister guitar lines that would send shivers down your spine. Then there’s the soft and gentle ‘80s background hard guitar lines, drum patterns, and Val’s voice going into different movements on the ballad, Io Sono Un Errore.

But its Risalgo il Buio, that is the real deal. What Carlo does is that he imagines it’s the 1960s in the smoky night jazz clubs in London as he and Val imagine they were there teaming up with Miles Davis creating some magic on the Jazzy Rock surroundings to make it a groovy psych beat to the place as the closing 6-minute Train Song goes into some electronic drum and classical piano work.

Then, Carlo does some virtuosity work on his guitar as Val helps her out with her vocalization as if the Train goes to different areas of the city as if you feel you are safe and sound, but around the outside world, it isn’t, and what they brought on this composition is mind-blowing. Kore is an interesting album and the same with the band. It took me a while to listen to and so far, it’s an okay album. Is it a great album? No, but they have brought to the table something twisted and amazing here.