PLANET OPAL, the experimental duo formed by Giorgio Assi and Leonardo De Franceschi, is ready to return to the scene with a new single out on March 14th via Dischi Sotterranei: it is titled I’ve Heard Brian Eno in the McDonald’s Fridge and is the first excerpt from their highly anticipated second album Recreate Patterns, Release Energy, an exploration of breaking and reshaping structures, of shedding old patterns to release new energy.
The project, Planet Opal, – which took shape in 2018 and released its first album in 2021 – moves freely between the pulsating echoes of New York dance-punk and post-disco, mixing them with the surrealist and hypnotic sounds of krautrock. Emblematic of this is this new track, introduced by a raw, stubborn bassline kicking in without hesitation, straightforward and relentless, while the drums stumble behind it, barely holding together, with an octave hi-hat keeping everything afloat by sheer luck.
The result is a lopsided yet unstoppable groove, a crooked punk energy that pushes forward without asking for permission, brimming with tension and irreverence. Then the vocals appear – detached, almost clinical – repeating with deadpan delivery: «I’ve heard Brian Eno in the McDonald’s fridge, I don’t know what he said but has a meaning to me». A phrase caught between the surreal and the introspective, a reflection that lingers in ambiguity.
As producer and voice in the duo Giorgio Assi explains, “I was working at McDonald’s, and every time I opened the tempering fridge in the kitchen, its motor produced a sound very similar to the drone in Brian Eno’s ‘Thursday Afternoon'” A seemingly insignificant detail, a noise that, in the chaos of the kitchen, becomes an anchor – an unexpected moment of clarity, a fleeting escape hidden within the relentless frenzy.
With this new single, Planet Opal turns a surreal snapshot into a tense, hypnotic, and ironically charged track. A song that plays with repetition and paradox, leaving space between meaning and nonsense, between relentless rhythm and the desire for escape.