Piergiorgio Corallo — In via di sviluppo (out November 10)

There are debuts that sound like a starting gun, and others that arrive quietly, almost by accident. In via di sviluppo, the first album by Italian musician and visual artist Piergiorgio Corallo, belongs to the second kind. It doesn’t shout. It unfolds. On November 10 2025, through CD Baby, Corallo releases a record that feels lived-in, built over years of sketches, guitars, and the long silence that comes before you finally decide something is ready.

If you’ve seen his paintings or photos, the connection is immediate. The same sense of geometry, of space and restraint, runs through his songs. Corallo isn’t chasing perfection; he’s chasing proportion. The album’s title means “under development,” and that’s exactly what it sounds like—an organism still moving, breathing, refusing to freeze into one image.

The sound of balance

The first single, “Erase Her Name,” introduced that world. A steady pulse, clean guitars, synthetic air, and a hook that doesn’t insist. The rest of the album expands on it: basslines that crawl like city lights at night, drums that lean forward without rushing, and vocals that sit right at the border between whisper and declaration. There’s power, but never polish for its own sake.

You hear fragments of The Verve, Verdena, Kasabian, maybe even Depeche Mode, but filtered through a completely different grammar. Corallo doesn’t quote. He absorbs, digests, and lets the influences dissolve into something recognizably his. That’s why the record never feels nostalgic; it moves through time the way light moves through dust.

Architecture in motion

Each track behaves like a room connected to another by corridors of sound. The sequencing matters. This isn’t a playlist-era shuffle; it’s a layout, an architecture. The transitions breathe. When guitars cut in, they don’t dominate—they arrive like a character entering a scene. When the synths expand, they widen the horizon instead of changing direction.

Production is deliberately physical. You can feel the space between instruments. Corallo worked with The SoundLAB and engineer Tom Scheponik, who mixed and mastered the record with open dynamics—no flattening, no loudness war. The result is wide, heavy, and alive. Highs shimmer without piercing, lows carry real weight, and the middle range stays human, warm, slightly raw. It’s music that wants air around it.

Words that move like shapes

Corallo writes lyrics as if they were brushstrokes—minimal, instinctive, fragmentary. He avoids the temptation of slogans. Instead of telling stories, he sketches moments: the shape of a departure, a name half-erased, a room after someone leaves. Meaning hides in rhythm, not in declaration. That approach gives the songs their tension; you lean in to fill the blanks.

Even in softer passages, there’s a heartbeat running underneath. The percussion and bass rarely stop; they behave like an engine idling in the background. The energy never drops—it just shifts weight. That constant motion gives the album its urban tone: the hum of machines, the echo of footsteps, the space between movement and stillness.

The eye behind the ear

Because Corallo designs his visuals himself, In via di sviluppo doesn’t separate what you hear from what you see. The cover image, the studio portraits, the colors of the website—they all belong to the same vocabulary: post-industrial textures, worn surfaces, flashes of light cutting through grey. “A song should look like it sounds,” he once said, and here the statement feels literal.

The connection between disciplines is what gives the record its precision. Years spent painting and sculpting taught him to respect proportion and silence. You can sense that education in how the arrangements breathe: nothing extra, nothing ornamental. Where many debut albums try to impress by excess, this one chooses subtraction.

A record that doesn’t beg to be liked

In via di sviluppo doesn’t chase trends. It doesn’t ask for quick validation. It expects patience. You listen once and notice the surface; the second time you start hearing the edges; by the third, you’re inside. There’s melody everywhere, but it’s melody built like architecture—solid, load-bearing, not decoration.

That restraint is rare in modern rock. Corallo trusts the listener enough to leave space unfilled. When the mix opens up, it feels earned. When he finally lets the distortion spill over, it lands like a release, not a pose.

Some albums want to impress; this one wants to stay. It has the calm of something built by hand.

Between sound and body

Played loud, the record becomes physical. Drums push air; bass vibrates under the floor. You can imagine it live, in a small room, lights low, everything running on instinct. Even on headphones, it feels dimensional—like you could step into it. That’s part of Corallo’s design: music that behaves like a space, not a stream of data.

He doesn’t sing for effect. His voice carries small imperfections that act like fingerprints. There’s texture in the breath, hesitation in the phrasing, a human rhythm no algorithm could invent. It’s what keeps the album from floating away into abstraction.

The broader picture

Distribution through CD Baby will place In via di sviluppo on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube simultaneously. But the real center of gravity is his official hub—piergiorgiocorallo.com/rassegna—where artwork, reviews, and updates will appear. The layout reflects the same clarity as the album: minimal noise, one source of truth.

Corallo has built this project like an ecosystem. Music, visuals, words, and curation feed each other. He isn’t interested in branding; he’s interested in coherence. That’s why the record feels both intimate and expansive—every piece comes from the same set of hands.

A slow revelation

In Italy’s independent scene, In via di sviluppo stands out precisely because it doesn’t try to. It’s not a viral artifact, not a quick thrill. It’s a patient document, a bridge between mediums. It remembers that an album can still be a full-length statement—sequenced, intentional, meant to be heard front to back.

Early listeners call it “melodic but grounded,” “cinematic but physical.” They’re both right. It’s a record about construction—how to build something honest without smoothing the edges.

On November 10, it will surface everywhere, starting from midnight. Maybe it won’t trend on day one. Maybe it will grow quietly, listener by listener, like a photograph developing in a darkroom. That’s the spirit of its title. Still forming. Still becoming.

Press & links hub: piergiorgiocorallo.com/rassegna

Credits: Vocals / lyrics / music — Piergiorgio Corallo

Distribution — CD Baby

Mix & mastering — The SoundLAB (Tom Scheponik)

Photos & artwork — Piergiorgio Corallo; Sadaf Gul

Published by The Global Verge.