“Scars” is the first album by Trauma Forward and it was entirely composed by Jacopo Bucciantini
and Davide Lucioli. It is a concept-album which tries to answer the question «What can I know about myself? » through an
ineffable journey in fictious and surreal places. “Scars” was published at the end of 2016 for L.M. European Music, then distributed
by Lizard Records, after almost five years of work, two of which spent recording. The album has been unanimously appreciated by
critics and it is the first chapter of a philosophical music trilogy.
Every album by Trauma Forward is linked to a phenomenology which explains precisely the stylistic choices and intrinsic semantic meanings.
We advise to read it only after having listened to the album, not to influence it.
Phenomenology of "Scars"
Anthropomorphic talismans with wooden limbs understood that they were trapped since their birth into a rusty maze. Delusive visions and almost unsustainable oppression were flowing at its centre. They managed to find an exit only when they begun to hope it really existed.
Outside the labyrinth there was nothing: an insignificant extent of void, touched by a mantle of opaque red light, where many boxes were lying, full of void too. Every box but one, containing a shining epiphanic simulacrum.
That simulacrum was wore by one of them and it modified the perception of reality and manifested the presence of a decadent building nearby, paralyzed in an eternal vesper. There it was also an old railway, about to be crossed by a train; nevertheless, the more it seemed close, the more it was far, still in a continuous becoming.
The comprehension of the concept moved the masked mannequin very far away, through an invisible wagon; it arrived in a humid prairie, caressed by a gentle breeze. There it played with a kite which flew away and showed the caducity of that pleasant nature, clenched inside the vitreous clamp of a lie indeed.
The naked talisman, instead, waited in vain more and more. It decided to pass through the underpass nearby since it was deluded. So, it reached a mine where the sand was extracted from other sand, then stored in a huge, unbridgeable, hourglass. A kite fell from the sky at its feet but, due to the absence of wind, it could not fly again.
Out of the translucent sheet through a polygonal wound, the masked mannequin entered a thick forest of conifers, increasingly hug by darkness, step by step. A tremendous snow blizzard, then, took it by surprise and it tried to find shelter, but it reached the centre of a frozen lake; its surface cracked, and it sunk. Soon, its wooden limbs resurfaced but there was a frozen lake no more, instead sweet waters of a fountain, hidden among bushes on a smooth hill, warmed by a tenuous summer afternoon.
The naked being, down in the dry cave, saw torches burned by emerald flames that were projecting anthropomorphic shadows on the cold rocks: impious devices were budging false profiles back and forth, deceiving observers. Nearby, a sun graven on stone, with a deep hole on its centre, was dripping obscure fluids; it viciously sucked the unwary mannequin.
The masked entity, far from the fountain, got to a mossy path among crop fields. Forward it run into a crossroads, divided by a oaken sign, prescribing to ignore itself.
The unmasked mannequin was spitted from an iron pipe upon a paddle of gluey tar. There it found another simulacrum, which it was black instead. The anthropomorphic figure wore that mask and went through a nocturne hilly landscape, full of gates and danger signboards. The grass, farther, was dying and making room to purple ash that was inexorably polluting the waters of a foamy pond. Evilly, the obscure mask hid the swamp to the being, which was close to the unsafe edge.
The mannequin with the white mask was coming from the other side of the swamp and it saw the other being sinking in the contaminated liquid. Apathetic at first, the talisman then tried to help the other, getting where the other was drowning, by a battered raft. Nevertheless, it was not able to rescue the other one which got to the fundal. During the descendent it hardly managed to remove its mask which disintegrated in many dense black tears. It softly died in the depth, free from perils.
Since its soul was painful because of that mourning, the mannequin was drifting on the raft. It saw, in the distance, a majestic willow on which branch there was a rope with a noose; for a moment it thought to see its twin hanging there. It jumped on the water for the desperation and, sinking in the darkness, it lost the perception of the waves that were caressing it.
The living puppet, regaining its senses, realized to be in a gloomy room that was ripped by a keen ray of light coming from a fissure; there was a door. Outside the room, the mannequin saw a flourishing garden, decorated by well-ploughed fields and shining pools. Further, there was the foot of a hill and on its top, it seemed to be someone in backlit. The talisman run with all its energies to the top and once he got there, he crumbled exhausted. So, it raised its head and saw a friendly hand that was offered to help it stand up again.
