Alcantara - Tamam Shud PV023

Alcantara – Tamam Shud

Progressive voyages Review PV023

Alcantara is an Italian formation around vocalist Sergio Manfredi Sallicano and guitarist Francesco Venti. With ‚Tamam Shud‘ Alcantara has released their second full album. Between the debut ‚Solitaire‘ (2019), and ‚Tamam Shud‘ (released in June 2025) there was a kind of single release with two tracks in 2021.

Alcantara describe their new album as follows:

„Tamam Shud flows like an inner film, where psychedelia meets progressive rock, blues dissolves into the ether, and the voice becomes a ritual instrument. The title — which means “it's over” in Persian — is key: what is closing is a cycle, but what is opening is a boundless sonic vertigo.

It is a layered, profound album that feeds on rarefied atmospheres and cosmic openings. Alcantara’s rock does not seek immediate impact: it creeps in slowly, like sand in time, revealing its strength in the details and the silences.

Cinematic liquid guitars, often in slide, halfway between the American desert and the shores of the Mediterranean. Warm, earthy, essential bass and drums: they build hypnotic and deep grooves that are never predictable. Keyboards and synths creep in like fog: they hint, evoke, open up landscapes. The voice is whispered, lyrical, often more evocative than narrative. The singing is in Italian and English, as if wanting to cross emotional boundaries.“

This seems a very good description of what they do. The first thing that is catching attention is the album cover design. They have used the works of Italian painter Massimo De Stefani, and that alone suggests that what we will find here will be artistically driven and tasteful.

So, off we go...

The first track ‚TerryG‘ starts off with foot steps on gravel, and jumps straight into a haunting rhythmic guitar underneath a melodic, somewhat stoic feeling  vocals in English, before Sergio switches to an Italian passage, that is picking up on intensity. Also the guitar makes an excursion into an increasingly urging narrative. The entire track is taking you onto a floating kind of journey over a bit more than eight minutes, building up its intensity over the course of the flow. It is that kind of track you will wake up with in your head, right out of the blue – haunting in a subtle manner.

Next up is ‚Il Distacco‘, it seems to mean ‚The Distance‘. Changing the mood with etheral guitar sounds that reminds a bit of the singing of whales. It feels a bit as if the protagonist is very far off, and has more closeness to the sound of the stars than any earthly matters. After almost two minutes, Sergio’s vocals set in, this time – not unexpectedly as the title is Italian – in his mother tongue. The song keeps its etheral and floating nature, adding in a very tasteful way more and more instrumentation. A very good example, how Alcantara are masters in subtlety. Almost without noticing their entry, more and more instruments add to the experience, swelling up and down in intensitiy, serving only one purpose: making the song a whole and rich experience. This is a track that – in itself – is taking you on a trip, joining the protagonist to immerse in their experience. The vocals conclude in English, the only English you will hear in this track, stating repeatedly ‚I am full of love‘. What might read a bit like some spacy hippy trip is rather a very real excursion into an artistic driven universe of sounds, which keeps you captivated over its entire close to nine minutes.

‚Distant Star‘ is the single release off the album, and it was a very good choice to pick this track. It is a bit less of that ‚sneaky‘ nature, and drills its way instantly into your brain with an appegio guitar kicking off the track, and the vocals joining in almost immediately. The guitar work carries and shapes the track, alongside the unagitated vocals. Half way through the track, the mood changes, and after a dramatic upbuild, it continues with more emotional intensity. Musically, many layers are adding continuously over the course of the track, making it yet again a journey, that – in a tasteful and sophisticated way – marries consistency with change. A haunting track, similiarities can maybe be drawn with Riverside, mood-wise.

And then we find ourselves in a different setting, the scene for the title track ‚Tamam Shud‘ is being set with a backdrop of various distant noises, which reminds a little bit of a carnival scene, ending with a transition from helicopter noise, into the actual track. The language of choice for ‚Tamam Shud‘ this time is Italian, interchanging with English passages. A very gentle beginning with some acoustic guitar, intelligently placed electric guitar soundscapes provide the backdrop to the calm vocals. Almost five minutes in, we get an E-guitar that is underpinning the mood of the song very well. It feels like a gentle touch, an embrace that provides seven minutes of stability and comfort in a world gone crazy.

The next track, ‚Sail‘ is painting pictures of a boat rocking on gentle waves, seagulls passing by, a clear blue sky. ‚I sing to you‘ stands out, followed by a carefree sort of humming, and carries on the mood of the previous track. It feels like a protective lullaby kind of song, and we find the whale like guitar singing again, on which we can float for the rest of the 6+ minutes song, that is closing the experience of the album. A little bit of Italian is sprinkled into the mainly English sung vocals. The song is sending us off with an optimistic outlook to the last track of the album,

Wodwo/Vertigo

‚Down, there’s a road ahead, and I’ll be there‘

Occasionally we get a little bit of oriental vibes, very subtly placed, and maybe not even intentional. Violins are adding to a different feel, although the style remains clearly Alcantara. The lyrics seem to contemplate over what remains after passing away, at times it feels like falling and floating in unknown spaces. And although the track ends with a violin sound that reminds of a scary movie, the carries an optimistic tone. The last line ‚Down there’s a road ahead‘, seems meaningfully placed.

Meaningful and artistic. A suitable summary for the entire album. The compositions and the contributions of the instruments, vocals, and even the language, seem to follow one higher goal: to create a coherent, in itself conclusive, piece of art. And – although the tracks do stand on their own – the almost 45 minutes long album it is exactly this.  

Let us hope we will see more of this in the future.

Tamam Shud is available on vinyl and in digital.

Website: https://www.bandalcantara.com/

Bandcamp: https://bandalcantara.bandcamp.com/album/tamam-shud

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bandalcantara

Author Claudia Kanzier