Elli de Mon – Raìse

2025, the Turning Point Year.
Raise: Roots.
The new album, released by Rivertale Production, is a concept work about the village where Elli grew up, based on a legend that has always intrigued her. It tells the story of a man who got lost and, through wandering, finds himself again. The story of Orso—this is his name—is rich with pagan symbols. Later, the Church canonized him as a saint, but what has always fascinated Elli is the man himself: his limitations, his crises, his desire to step outside of himself and encounter his own mystery, by descending into dark wells that are hard to climb out of.

To give voice to this tale, Elli could only use her native tongue—the Vicentino dialect—seeking to translate into music the tones, melodies, and nuances of meaning she always heard spoken by her grandparents, and which she could not find in standard Italian.

To create the imagery of the places, rites, and faces tied to this legend, she used a different setup than her usual one-woman band: strings (especially the double bass, which Elli is formally trained in), guitars, percussion, drums, harmonium, dilruba, sitar—and above all, the voice, taking center stage with a variety of tonal colors.

The result is an album that begins in gospel and ends in stoner rock, passing through ancient modal ballads and reimagined traditional songs with a dark twist. It’s a work of contrasts, of fullness and silence, that goes beyond the boundaries of a single musical genre.

Live, she will no longer be alone on stage. To bring this ancient yet universal story to life, she has brought in Raise: Marco Degli Esposti and Francesco Sicchieri, on guitars and percussion/drums respectively.