“Va’ dove t’importa, cuore” is a record about emotional defense mechanisms, and Gabriele Martelloni, the Umbrian songwriter behind Sargassi, knows that the most effective ones are the ones that look like jokes. Across ten songs that toggle between electric guitars and acoustic ones without treating the shift as a statement, he builds a rock d’autore album where irony is not a distance strategy but a survival tool, the thing that lets you say something true about love, memory, and failure without performing either sincerity or detachment.
Like the eels that will navigate back across the Atlantic only to dissolve in the spawning waters where they began, these songs understand that arrival requires dissolution. Sargassi does not offer liberation as a destination but as a direction, the title serving less as advice than as permission to keep moving toward the hurt rather than away from it.
For those who don’t know you yet, how would you introduce yourself?
My name is Gabriele, aka Sargassi, and I’m a singer-songwriter from Umbria, a small and charming region in central Italy. I started this project in 2020, and the following year I released my debut album “Circolo Polare Catartico.” In January 2026, my second album “Va’ dove t’importa, cuore” came out. My songs have an acoustic soul and an electric body. I write in Italian, often balancing between irony and melancholy — it’s my favourite way of telling stories about life. I also draw illustrations and comics, and I create music videos featuring an alter ego, a female figure, and an eel — it’s another dimension of the Sargassi project.
If you had to describe your sound in just three words, what would they be?
Authentic, passionate, rock.
Which artists (not only musical ones) or moments have had the deepest impact on your music?
As a kid, I used to listen to my father’s cassette tapes — mostly Italian singer-songwriters who put words at the center: Battisti, De Gregori, De André, Dalla.
The first album I ever bought was “Songs of Faith and Devotion” by Depeche Mode. My desire to play music also came from seeing live shows by U2 and R.E.M., while the genre that truly changed my life was grunge.
I played in a nu metal band, but I also love britpop, American folk, and alternative rock like Radiohead and Beck. The album that convinced me to sing in Italian was “Catartica” by Marlene Kuntz.
What do you feel when you listen to your own songs?
I usually feel a kind of sly satisfaction, like when you finish tidying up a messy room, fully aware that sooner or later you’ll mess it up again.
The most emotional moment is when, after recording and mixing, I listen in the studio for the first time to songs I may have started writing years earlier — songs I sometimes even thought about abandoning.
And then they’re there, alive, coming out of the speakers as if they were saying: “thank you for believing in me.” I’d like to hug them back. My songs are salvation, life, and the will to start over.
If you could collaborate with anyone in the world, without limits, who would be your ideal collaborator?
As a producer, I would definitely choose Brendan O’Brien, who has worked on many of my favorite albums — from Pearl Jam to Stone Temple Pilots, Korn, and Soundgarden.
If I had to pick someone to duet with, I’d say Eddie Vedder, Billy Corgan, or Dave Matthews.
What are you currently working on, and what are your future plans? Is there anything exciting you can share?
Right now I’m focused on promoting my album “Va’ dove t’importa, cuore,” which came out at the beginning of the year via Be Next Music, with distribution by Universal.
Together with Sorry Mom!, my management and press office, we’re planning the live shows to present the record. At the same time, I’m developing the visual side of the project more and more, through illustrated stories and stop motion videos — the latest one is for the single “Ologramma,” available on my YouTube channel.
I’ve also started writing new songs, and I’d love to work on another album as soon as possible.
Can you tell us the story or emotion behind “L’ora d’aria”?
“L’ora d’aria” is one of the first songs I wrote for “Va’ dove t’importa, cuore.” It was recorded at Bonsai Studio in Orvieto by Andrea Mescolini, with Luca Costantini on drums, Emanuele “Lillo” Ranieri on bass, Emanuele Pistucchia on electric guitar, and Giovanni Spallaccia on cajón.
I had actually started working on it back in the days of “Circolo Polare Catartico,” but I felt it wasn’t ready yet. I needed to fix a few things, especially in the lyrics. I’m glad I didn’t rush it. In the past, with other projects, I regretted releasing songs before the creative process was truly complete.
In “L’ora d’aria” I talk about inner prisons and relationships you can never fully escape from. I was interested in that paradox: the defenses you build to protect yourself can end up becoming your own prison.
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