toni bruna

Toni Bruna is the son of Istrian refugees settled in the outskirts of Trieste after WWII. It is for this, perhaps not so obvious reason, that he writes and sings in the dialect spoken in this city.

The choice of creating in dialect is not an attempt to protect it from its constant transformation, contamination and foreseeable disappearance. It is a choice ruled by natural circumstances. The dialect is an intimate element of one’s identity, it is the verbal code learned through the natural imitation of sounds perceived since childhood.

One’s own language is the only truly possible language.

Trieste is a place where most people seem to have no past, a city whose history is but a sad approximation. This is a place where everything is fragmented: language, territory, memory.

Toni Bruna uses these fragments as raw material for his creations. Fragments are combined into forms, forms become poems. Poems become music.

Could this be a new folklore?
If so, it is a dreamed folklore, and invented folklore. It’s an imaginary folklore.

His songs have no defined structure. Asymmetric and unexpected, they are built upon a single detail (a word, a sound), from which everything else develops. Sometimes images are created from this process, visual tracks that stem from a profound observation several layers underneath the surface of everyday things. Sometimes the subject of the observation is invisible to others, unimportant or ethereal. However, the narrator is always present, tangible, earthbound.

Formigole is the title of his first LP and the minitour that accompanies it.

Two choices against the current: an entirely self-produced album and a tour concentrated in the city of Trieste and surroundings. These choices were purposefully made to establish a different relationship with the public from the start. The locations are not to be neutral territory, they are intended to suggest, insinuate, instigate. Thus, the proposition of concerts in places like: an abandoned train tunnel, an old cable car, and the ruins atop a hill where the border between Italy and Slovenia is located.

Places that connect directly with the themes chosen by Toni Bruna: the border, the relationship between cultures, memory and oblivion. But the idea also stems from a desire to stimulate the public, inviting people to partake in unexpected and often uncomfortable situations. The aim is to ask for an additional effort, to see things from a different point of view, to ask oneself questions, to create new neuronal connections!

Through a radiograph of Trieste’s marginal humanity, we can also distinguish other, global marginalities, as well as bucolic and oneiric landscapes, lucid social critiques, hallucinations and celebrations of unknown heroes who get lost in ordinary life. Such matters are the essential substance of the ten tracks that form the body of the album.

The voice and guitar that make up the core of the album were recorded with the help of Triestian musician and producer Abba Zabba in a house secluded in the mountains of northeastern Italy. Toni Bruna then produced and recorded the remaining elements in an attic on via Rossetti, in downtown Trieste.

The following musicians also participated in the project: Marco Abbrescia in the double bass with arch, Alessandro Martini in the double bass pizzicato, ukulele and voice in “pai de la luce,” and finally, Massimo Tunin performed the trumpet in the entire album as well as the glockenspiel on the track that titles the album.

Together, Toni Bruna and Abba Zabba carried out the mixing. Marcus Rossknecht, musician, producer and dj from Hamburg, was in charge of mastering the album. He is most known for his work with German electronic music label Kompakt, as well as with musicians like Matias Aguayo.

Finishing off the piece is Jan Sedmak, another Triestian artist, who created the cover illustrations and graphic design.