SARDEGNA

It’s time now to set off and sail across the sea heading north west, to another Italian island and autonomous region, SARDEGNA, and its capital CAGLIARI. The city gave us in the past prog artists and bands such as Pierpaolo Bibbò (Official Website) and Gruppo 2001. Gruppo 2001’s keyboardist and singer Piero Marras (MySpace) is still active and is now one of the most appreciated singer-songwriters from Sardinia. The current prog scene from Cagliari features an interesting band, The Yleclipse (MySpace), who in 2008 released a concept album, Trails Of Ambergris, about the history of the island, freely inspired by the events of 1792-1793, when the French army tried to occupy Sardinia.

Other prog bands from Cagliari are Akroasis (Facebook), Julia Ensemble (MySpace), SVM Trio (Facebook), Grandmother Safari (Facebook) I Collegium (MySpace) and the emerging Entity (MySpace), Skull Cowboys (Facebook) and Sistema (MySpace). The other cities of the island have also their prog bands. IGLESIAS is home to Intermundia (Facebook), ORISTANO in the seventies gave us Salis while today it’s the time of a folk rock band called Nur (MySpace). Oristano is also home to Andrea Cutri (Bandcamp), guitarist and composer who in 2012 released a rock opera called Eterno divenire - L'amore di Barrett & Browning. SASSARI, in the north west part of the region, is home to Apollo Beat (Facebook), White Sunset (MySpace), The Sundering (Facebook) and Capside (MySpace) while the little town of Mores is home to Overture (Facebook). 

Then, the province of NUORO has an emerging band called Getsemani (MySpace) and Ilienses (Facebook), a band born in 2018 on the initiative of multi-instrumentalist and composer Mauro Medde from Gavoi and vocalist Natascia Talloru from Tonara. The name of the band refers to the ancient Nuragic people who lived during the Bronze and Iron Ages in central-southern Sardinia, in an area called Barbagia, a natural region located alongside the Gennargentu massif. Their aim is to blend the sound of Sardinian traditional instruments such as tumbarinos, pipiolos, tumborro, corno, triangulu, campanacci di Tonara or cantu a tenore vocals with modern rock instruments such as electric bass, piano, synth and drums. The result is a very particular mix of dark folklore and progressive rock full of experimentalism and original ideas...

Our prog tour of Italy is coming to an end now. Almost every day new bands are formed or bands split up and you can be sure that every Italian prog tour will be different from the previous one. So, after a break in the beautiful Costa Smeralda, you can always take a ferry-boat from the seaport town of Olbia, meet the Tobias Crime Quartet (Facebook), cross the sea, land back on the Italian Peninsula and have another spin!