A journey "in which we start again from ourselves, from the idea that together we can overcome the darkness" of difficult years, from the pandemic to the war.
It is one of the keys to understanding, says Leo Gassmann to ANSA, his second studio album, La strada per Agartha, to be released on February 24 on all digital platforms and in physical format (Virgin Records/Universal Music Italia). three years after the first, Strike, who had arrived on the wave of his victory in 2020 at Sanremo Giovani with Vai bene così.
Once again Gassmann brought his career to the Festival first, with Third Heart (written, among others, together with Riccardo Zanotti of the Nuclear Tactical Penguins, also co-author of another of the 14 tracks on the album, the pop rock Volo rovescio) and for the evening of duets the medley with an artist "
who is a friend and a teacher to me", Edoardo Bennato: "Together we have also written an unpublished work which will probably be released later". Gassmann faced his second Sanremo "with more maturity, I already knew how intense the emotion would be you try, but the festival surprises you every time.
I left it - explains the musician, born in 1998 - as a boy and returned as a young adult, but the festival never ceases to strike our heart and our stomach". Inspired in the title by the fantasy novel The Smoky God (1908) by Willis George Emerson and the underground kingdom he imagined, Agarthi, the concept album gives shape to the dream "of making music with one's friends to communicate in a different way, looking for other sounds than those we are used to".
The album is opened and closed by the voice of Massimo Dapporto, with the ad hoc version revisited by Giancarlo Scarchilli of one of his poems that acts as an intro: "Listening to Massimo moves me, I also immediately think of my grandfather. He is a man who he puts his heart into what he does, gentle with immense humility, from which I learned so much. With those words it is as if I were a child again, he makes me believe for a moment that there is a world without wars, inequality where one is free to be what one is".
Then we continue with "the encounters along the disc that ideally accompany the discovery of the beauty of music".
A journey in which, in addition to Zanotti, artists such as Lodo Guenzi of Lo Stato Sociale, co-author of the song "Siamo a mezzo";
Giovanni Caccamo signing one of the album's intimate hymns, "
My freedom", while in the final one, "Figli dei Fiori, there is the Indian singer-songwriter Raul Kamble.
With the British band Will & The People, Gassmann released "Without You" in English: "It brought out a completely different way of exploring music and living it - he underlines - in Italian my hopeful and cheerful part comes out more, in English my introspection also comes out more".
Gem Archer and Andy Bell, guitarist and bassist for Noel and Liam Gallagher respectively and J. Sharrock drummer for Gorillaz play on 'Goddamn'.
In addition, the young singer-songwriter immerses himself in songs that he loves, proposing again with Edoardo Bennato in "I wish that for you", 'Lunedì' with L'Ennesimo and with Matteo Costanzo "In un addio".
And there is the tribute to Lucio Dalla with '
Dear Lucio': "Singing it gives me hope, even in this period in which there isn't much around. It was important to write it, I worked on it in a period in which I felt very alone and when it happens it often happens that music save me. I had just finished listening to The Year to Come and I thought I'd respond to that letter, to that masterpiece of Italian music. My song doesn't try to match its beauty, but it contains all my gratitude and my love for Dalla".
For Gassmann, places like Sanremo or the talent shows are "wonderful machines where you can learn a lot but which also pose risks. You don't start thinking about popularity when you build a dream. For me, the most important thing is to try to reach many different people, create a nice human understanding".