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Francesco Di Bella (Naples, class of 1972) began his artistic career by creating 24 Grana in the early 1990s, a pioneering band of Italian alternative rock, of which he is frontman and main author. In 1996 the group signed a recording contract with La Canzonetta Record, and a few months later the album "Loop" positively surprised music critics for the freshness with which it manages to blend new styles of music, such as dub and trip hop, with poetic lyrics and strong social content. The group becomes hugely popular live, winning national and international festivals, eventually playing in France, Spain, Slovenia, England and Japan, sharing the stage with bands of the caliber of Afterhours, Verdena and Marlene Kuntz. Acqua Santa is the new album released in January 2025: The production of Acqua Santa was entrusted to Marco Giudici, who has designed and then sculpted Francesco's musical ideas into an intimate and essential sound, inspired by artists such as Andy Shauf, The National, Kevin Morby, Wilco, Damon Albarn and Jason Molina. A simple instrumentation (upright piano, rhodes, sax, strings) but of profound intensity to shape soft and delicate sonorities, ethereal yet at the same time incisive and dense, airy and at times rarefied but capable of touching the heart while leaving space for the voice and poetry of the words. Acqua Santa is like the sea that embraces Naples: full of delicate and penetrating poetry, deep and light at the same time. Acqua Santa is also a political album. It is because it swims against the current, reminding us what should be considered a value and what not.
