Florence’s Conncrete Noir unfurls their latest album Romance Ruins with the steady confidence of someone who has spent far too much time wiring together their own inner machinery. There’s no grand entrance, no stormcloud pose; just Piero Fragola leaning into his tools, sending out tones and murmurs that feel lived-in rather than lofty. The music feels like a familiar room that’s been rearranged by ghosts behind your back. It’s patient work, and Fragola treats it with the same focus you’d give a slow-burning fuse.
Fragola leans into this sense of collapse with a calm hand. The modular synth becomes his co-conspirator, spitting, humming, gnawing at the walls. Bass rumbles in the gut and stays there. Guitars: Fender one moment, Gretsch Dobro the next…slice through the haze with an almost ceremonial certainty, as though they’ve been dragged from some forgotten chapel to testify. Voices arrive like messages left on the wrong answering machine at the right time, carrying more truth than comfort.
The video for Shadow in My Veins, directed by Piero Fragola, spirals through its own monochrome trance, cutting its vampiric figures from the kind of light that once kept saints trembling. Everyone on screen looks caught between staying put and slipping through the cracks: faces edging toward the brink, hands rehearsing the same old rites: a drink poured; a fateful tarot card as its coaster. Time folds in on itself, and the film treats every loop like a dare. Change or stand still? Either way, you’re getting swallowed.
When the bracelet appears at the end of the film, pulled from a hollowed book, it lands with the weight of a pact. Bodies change. Faces shift. Desire walks in circles and still ends up someplace new.
Watch the video for “Shadow in my Veins” below:
Romance Ruins is a record that runs on collision—electronics crash against breath. Rhythm knocks on the ribs until something inside answers back. Fragola courts collapse, then builds a cathedral from the debris. Romance burns itself down; yet the ruins still glow. This is the heart of his idea: affection turns wild, wildness turns ruinous, ruin feeds the next surge. Renewal through wreckage; beauty from the bruise.
Think of Romance Ruins less as an album and more as a stubborn spark in a wet world: Fragola knows collapse waits nearby, but never treats it as the last line. The core idea – romanticism as destruction and rebirth – runs on instinct. His hero isn’t a Byronic drifter but a scavenger, piecing together feeling from electronic wreckage. The “ruins” become the frayed edges of meaning itself.
Listen to Shadow In My Veins below, and order it here.
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