Album Review: Bald Chewbacca – Bald Chewbacca at the World Cup

It can’t be easy being an Italian football fan and musician, especially as the country failed to qualify for the World Cup, again.

The doomy intro to Bald Chewbacca at the World Cup, appropriately titled Introduction, has the air of a premonition about it, as if welcoming you to a party that you’re unable to fully attend.

Throughout the album Bald Chewbacca, the musical persona of Palermo, Italy, singer-songwriter Angelo Romano, finds inspiration in the place where music, art, and football meet: on the pitch, the terraces, and the media.

Via a series of cut-ups, repositionings, and samples set to hard electronic beats and bass lines, Bald Chewbacca takes us into a distorted, reworked version of reality, taking samples out of context and giving them new meaning in music.

If you know your football, you will recognise some or all of the references within the tracks. If you’re not, you’ll still be able to immerse yourself in the miniature worlds that Romano has created. Personal favourites are Spain and Brazil (many of the tracks are named after iconic footballing nations), their tropical, reggaeton, and Latin textures transformed into something experimental and magical.

You could easily see the whole experience working as an art installation, such is its visual nature – in fact, there is an accompanying video album on YouTube. As an album, it is daring and imaginative, not a tribute to the commercialised nature of the sport but to the people who make it a communal work of art.

Bald Chewbacca at the World Cup was released on the 27th of March – it can be streamed on Spotify and downloaded on Bandcamp. Learn more about Bald Chewbacca and his music on Facebook or Instagram.