Dear readers, I have a proposal for you that is hard to refuse: to attend the FIFA World Cup without leaDear readers, I have a proposal for you that is hard to refuse: to attend the FIFA World Cup without getting up from the couch, without buying expensive tickets, and without subscribing to yet another paid channel that you will forget to cancel in January. Angelo Romano, known as Bald Chewbacca, has already arranged everything – he assembled a stadium, a crowd, commentators, and political scandals into one sound package. All you have to do is press play.
His new album “Bald Chewbacca at the World Cup” is not about football, but from football. And that is a fundamental difference. Just under thirty minutes – almost like the first half. But if in football you wait for goals during this time, here there is no need to expect the familiar. Commentators’ voices are cut up and stitched into the rhythm, turning into percussion. Anthems do not play – they have evaporated, leaving behind a hum of anticipation. Familiar memes
surface like fans in the third row who clearly did not come for the game.
Bald Chewbacca takes this material – noise, energy, fragments of meaning – and remelts it into a physical sensation of sound. The signature blend remains recognisable: distorted bass lines, synthesisers as if from another dimension, sound as texture caught from the airwaves.
Everything works with a precision where there are no accidental elements. The crowd is not a backdrop, but a dense, at times claustrophobic, matter. For those who follow the project, the album reads as a logical continuation of “Bald Chewbacca at the Olympics” (2024). The same idea and method: a global spectacle as raw material for sonic deconstruction. The Olympics
offered ceremony and the ideology of the body – Bald Chewbacca analysed it coldly and precisely. The World Cup is more chaotic material, and that becomes its main resource. The Sicilian DNA of the project – a tendency towards multilingualism, geographical blurring, a sound from “everywhere and nowhere” – takes on a special meaning here. The tournament itself is Babylonian by nature: dozens of countries, hundreds of voices, one set of rules. Bald Chewbacca decided to turn this chaos into a musical principle.
This becomes clear in the very first track, “Introduction”. One minute – exactly as long as it takes to establish the rules of the game. Or to make clear that there are no rules. A Catholic AI priest delivers a blessing over drone music: the stadium is consecrated, the match may begin. After such a prologue, the album does not accelerate – it immediately bursts into “Argentina”. Argentina in football is a myth, a temperament, Maradona as a religion. The recognisable voice of Diego himself opens the track, and from there Bald Chewbacca compresses this weight into four minutes of dense industrial pressure. The bass presses with the insistence of the stands,
and at the moment of maximum tension, everything cuts off.
At this point, “Falkland-Malvinas Interlude” appears. A politically charged pause: the same islands, two names, decades of dispute. Bald Chewbacca does not choose a side – he records the irresolution. A minute of static tension, like a pause before a penalty. And immediately after – “England”. The track sounds with a flavour of tradition and imperial confidence that has long
ceased to match the results on the pitch. The synthesisers begin solemnly, but gradually slide into a zone of discomfort. In this contradiction, the sound is born. Then the album slows down. “Spain” is one of the longest tracks, and here comes a surprise: no tiki-taka, no grandeur. Instead – fake reggaeton, samples of Spanish urban and Latin music, a sound that roams the streets of Barcelona at night rather than standing on a podium. The expectation of the classic is deceived deliberately, and that is the whole point.
A sharp turn – “Brazil”. The expectation of samba is deceptive. The bass is warm, but anxious. Unexpectedly different is “Curaçao”. A small island, the periphery of big football – and precisely for that reason, close to Bald Chewbacca. The overdriven guitars here sound not aggressive, but almost liberated, as if the music finally allowed itself to exhale. Everything is compressed in the finale – “Texicada (Extended Highlights)”. The name is a made-up word stitching together the three hosts of the tournament: Mexico, Canada, and the USA (“Texas” as a metaphor). “Extended Highlights” – because this is a compact version of what could have been three
separate tracks. The album itself becomes a highlight reel – not of a match, but of an era of perception.
In “Bald Chewbacca at the World Cup”, football ceases to be a theme and becomes a material. Noise, commentary, pauses, politics – everything is translated into a controlled sound system. Bald Chewbacca offers a different way to listen to the game: to take it apart into elements and reassemble it.
I am not a particular football fan, but after listening to the album I wanted to turn on the next match with the sound off – and, perhaps for the first time, hear what is actually happening there.
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