Over the past several years, under the Julinko moniker, Italian experimentalist, Giulia Parin Zecchin, has cast shadows on those who have dared to enter her world.
A vigorous force in the north-east Italy creative community which has eventually led her into the stable of Maple Death Records, over a three-album reign, Julinko has shed creative skins at each time of asking. On her latest, Naebula, not only is it her greatest creative leap, but also her most expansive.
Immersed in devotional composition, Naebula sees Julinko at her most delicate and dark. A ritualistic performance that flays the skins of her past works, Naebula is a voyage across the high seas. A journey where hallucinations and ghostly presences drift in and out of these songs as the storm draws closer to shore.
Beginning with an organ likened to a black yawn from bowels of doom, Osmos and Peace of the Unsaid sees Julinko marshalling the same frontiers as Anna von Hausswolff and Amanda Votta. Where the latter is concerned, Unleash and Throw Ashes! sound like a response to Deep Fade’s lighthouse drone odyssey in 2024’s Further. The kind of fractured folk that darkens doors and haunts hallways.
Julinko - NaebulaOn Cloudmachine, Julinko takes a different track, feeling her way through the damp terrains of a forest deep into the night. Parting with a gothic-tinged tale likened to a nursery rhyme, it calls to mind PJ Harvey’s White Chalk. Naebula’s centrepiece, Kiss the Lion’s Tongue, follows a similar path but turns wickedly, as Julinko orchestrates a protracted drone that emits a soft ambience that almost reaches the heart of no-wave.
Amid a thick wall of guitars and static synths, Julinko continues to shape shift with Skin Dress – a rich tapestry where humanity and the environment join as one. It’s a far cry from the droning mass of Jeanne de Rien where Julinko’s performance finds her summoning her disciples. So too Samadhi – an organ-based piece shaped for séances, which is fitting as the hallucinogenic neo-noir of Hora et Devoura closes the doors of the Julinko broadchurch.
Reaching as far as she ever has, on Naebula, movement is never forced. Instead, Julinko follows the spirits who guide the music to where it needs to go, epitomising what devotional music is. To submit to another force, letting the results unravel, and accepting them as they are. That’s the freeing nature of Julinko’s Naebula. An all-encompassing time travel through sound.
Naebula is out now via Maple Death Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
