Listen to the album here: https://linktr.ee/bagnatoroaro
LA NUBE is a concept album created by Emiliano Bagnato and Eleonora Roaro for the exhibition Eleonora Roaro. LA NUBE, presented at mudaC | museo delle arti Carrara from 12 October 2025 to 25 January 2026, and produced by the Municipality of Carrara and Toscanaincontemporanea2025. Since 25 January 2026 at 6.00 pm, the album has been digitally available on major platforms including Apple Music, Bandcamp, Tidal and Spotify. A limited-edition cassette tape of 88 copies, conceived as an artist’s multiple, will also be produced.
LA NUBE investigates the environmental consequences of the Apuan Industrial Zone (Z.I.A.) – between Massa and Carrara – through twelve industrial tracks composed by Emiliano Bagnato. By interweaving songs, abstract instrumental pieces, field recording collages and archival recordings, the album retraces key moments in the history of the Apuan Industrial Zone from the Fascist period to the present day, with particular attention to the Farmoplant (formerly Montedison-Diag) explosion of 17 July 1988 – the last in a series of accidents that led to the dismantling of the chemical complex. What emerges is a reflection on the environmental and social impact of the economic boom and on post-truth narratives constructed by media and industry for political and economic interests.
The project specifically revives the concerns of countercultures and political activism, focusing on protest movements such as the Permanent Assembly of the Citizens of Massa and Carrara, Medicina Democratica and environmental associations active between the 1970s and 1990s in denouncing the impact of the Apuan Industrial Zone on the environment, public health and workplace safety, and in fighting disinformation. In this context, Roaro and Bagnato draw on post-punk aesthetics, particularly industrial, both visually – with animations by Corinne Ingegnieri – and musically. This choice mirrors the language and imagery of the environmentalist and political opposition movements referenced by the project, while enabling a free and experimental use of the extensive body of textual and sound materials collected by Roaro during her research: interviews, archival documents and field recordings. For these reasons, in line with the concept of retromania theorised by Simon Reynolds in 2011, the artists set themselves the goal of composing a record that could plausibly have been produced in the mid-1980s, through a meticulous selection of compositional conventions and equipment, including the use of drum machines and Roland synthesisers such as the historic CR-78 (1978) and SH-101 (1982); a Fender Jazzmaster electric guitar and a Fender Precision electric bass, instruments historically associated with post-punk; spring and plate reverbs, the earliest artificial reverb technologies; and the iconic Eventide H910 harmoniser (1974).Roaro – who in the video ironically embodies the ZIA, a personification of the Apuan Industrial Zone, as a female figure seen from behind, smoking, poisoning and being poisoned – is the voice of the project. The artist rereads archival texts and fragments taken from advertising of the period, and performs three tracks she wrote in collaboration with Sarah Stride: Rogor, ZIA and Residues of Ordinary Madness.