FIRST AND LAST MIRAGE

 Frammenti is the first (and, for now, the last) album by Mirage, a band active in the early nineties and based in Genzano, a town near Rome. It was released in 1994 on the Mellow Records label with a line up featuring Marco Di Benedetto (piano, keyboards), Giuseppe Iampieri (piano, synth), Roberto Cesaroni (bass), Stefano Cupellini (drums) and Walter Cimoroni (vocals, flute) plus the guests Massimo Frittella (vocals, backing vocals), Diego Confortini (drums), Paolo Mari (guitar) and Rodolfo Maltese (guitar). Their style was mainly influenced by bands such as Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso and the other progressive rock masters from the seventies...

 

The opener “Madre dei pensieri” (Mother of thoughts) might occasionally recall Jethro Tull and takes you on an inner journey across dark, cold landscapes. As in a dream, on the raging waters of an unknown sea, the protagonist longs for a harbour where he can feel safe and put the pieces of his broken personality together. Finally he finds the right place and he can listen to some strange songs during an evening celebration. There he asks the priestess to shout up his name while she sings his fate...

The dreamy “Prisma” (Prism) evokes a precious gift falling from the sky, the end of the winter and the return of spring. In the night the protagonist can already see the light of dawn and, as in a kind of trance, he can breathe his own thoughts as if they were nothing but air. Now, outside every form of reality, he feels happy...

The complex “Il suono del tempo” (The sound of time) depicts with notes and hermetic lyrics the relationship between man and time, the desire to be reborn after death and the search for the truth behind useless appearances. As the protagonist unsuccessfully tries to stop the movement of the golden pendulum that marks the rhythm of life, infinity gathers his thoughts...

 

 

“L’eco dei sorrisi” (The echo of smiles) opens softly with vocals on a church like organ background evoking a game of memories, then the rhythm rises dragging you into a vortex of visions... It leads to the epic “Il giardino del re giullare” (The garden of the Jester King) that depicts in music and words a surreal, timeless inner shelter where you heal your wounded pride and recover your dignity, shout for your joy and cry for your pains without fear, aware of all your mistakes and doubts...

“Le cose del nulla” (The things of nothingness) starts by a short bass solo and tells about an otherworldly and cathartic experience, a hypothetical meeting with Cerberus and an infernal journey to find where the fears and all the things that never arrived are hidden... Then the dreamy, acoustic “Illusione” (Illusion) ends the album with an ethereal atmosphere.

On the whole, an interesting work that deserves a try.

You can listen to the complete album HERE

After the band split up keyboardist Giuseppe Iampieri continued his musical career under the pseudonym of Mistheria turning to metal but he has never denied his first love for Italian prog. Giuseppe Iampieri a.k.a. Mistheria: You might not know that, before to begin my career as a classical/metal soloist and before launching my Vivaldi Metal Project, I got started with an Italian Prog-Rock band called "Mirage". The one shot work "Frammenti" is the album that was released in 1994, the first ever album of my career, an album for which I wrote five songs out of seven, both music and words. It's an album that I therefore remember with great affection even though my musical journey went elsewhere later on...

More info: 

https://www.mistheria.com/