LABYRINTHS AND MIRRORS

Hailing from the province of Treviso, Il Labirinto di Alice took shape in 2017 between the towns of Asolo and Montebelluna with a line up featuring Christian "Gino" Agostinetto (vocals), Daniele Forner (guitar), Daniele "Lele" Petrin (guitar), Matteo "Ford" Favero (keyboards, synth), Andrea "Simba" Basso (bass) and Enrico "Maestro" Pasetti (drums). Soon after the birth of the band they started performing live on the local scene honing their skills and had the chance to share the stage with other emerging prog bands such as Basta! or Endless Season. In 2018 the band self-released an interesting debut album entitled (Ri)Passi featuring four long, elaborate pieces where they showcase good musicianship and creativity blending vintage sounds and fresh ideas. Although every now and again their music could recall Le Orme or other historic bands from the seventies, the operatic, theatrical vocals and some heavier moments remind me of newer bands such as Absenthia, Le Porte Non Aperte or Panda Fight Club...

The opener “Il vicolo losco” (The sinister alley) if full of classical inspired passages and echoes from the seventies. The music and lyrics conjure up the image of a mysterious, silent woman. Blinded and betrayed, she speaks in an ancient language that nowadays nobody can understand, she’s lost in time, old fashioned and haunted by scoundrels who insult, plagiarize and hurt her. She feels crumbling down, falling to pieces carried away by the wind while nobody seems to care for her. Who is that woman? Well, she’s the Music Herself, she’s dying but still breathing and could still be saved and revitalized by the passion of some brave, daring people who would get rid of the stereotypes and of the market laws...

The following “Il mercante del suono” (The sound merchant) is about the role of the musician and begins by heavy electric guitar riffs and organ waves backed by a nervous rhythm section. Then a calmer part follows where the music and lyrics describe a rising sound that slowly finds harmonies and chords, metamorphosed by emotions and feelings… A new burst of energy sweeps off the dreamy atmosphere. The sound can’t be stopped just by shutting off a mouth, you can’t catch it with your fingers, you can’t shoot it down… The mood become tense as the rising sound now veers back to the instruments that gave it birth and personality because it does not forget the skins and woods where it comes from thanks to hits of the merchant… Who is the merchant of sound? A magician or just a skilful musician?

Il Labirinto di Alice 2017

“Malessere cronico di una mente impotente” (Chronic illness of a powerless mind) is a sarcastic track telling about an apathetic life regulated through a glass from where you can drink drops of fake smiles, disorder and endless lies. Here nothing is sure but pain. So, you get addicted to the glass and fall down to relax in the enchanted garden of memories… Listen to the silence and remember who you are to get free of your chains!

Then comes “Lo specchio di Ilda” (Ilda’s mirror), a beautiful track dealing with virtual reality and manipulation, loss of identity, madness and rage that ends the album with an emotional crescendo.

Despite the title, – “(Ri)Passi” refers to the words rehearsal and steps and could evoke the idea of a poor demo – in my opinion this is an excellent debut work for a very promising band!

You can listen to the complete album HERE

More info:

https://www.facebook.com/LabirintoDiAlice/

VENETO (part 2)

North of Venice lies TREVISO, which in the past gave us prog bands such as Capsicum Red, Asgard and Apryl (from the nearby town of Conegliano). Today here we can find Faveravola (Official Website), a band formed by some veterans who have been active since the seventies and who in 2007 released the beautiful concept album Contea dei cento castagni.

Interesting contemporary bands from this city are also Aphelion (MySpace), an instrumental project featuring metal influences, and Magnetic Sound Machine (MySpace), highly recommended to jazz-rock lovers. Other bands from Treviso that deserve mentioning are Antilabé (MySpace), Geo’s (MySpace), Epoca (Reverbnation), Lyn (MySpace), Safarà (MySpace), Quarto Vuoto (Facebook) and Synderesi (MySpace). In Treviso there are also the headquarters of the independent label specialized in prog Lizard Records. Then, from the nearby town of Montebelluna comes bass player and composer Alberto Rigoni (MySpace), from Asolo come Il Labirinto di Alice (Facebook) while from a beautiful place north of Treviso, Cison di Valmarino, comes an interesting melodic prog band called Ephemeris (MySpace). Another town north of Treviso, Vittorio Veneto, is home to an interesting band called The Former Life (Facebook) and the little town of Motta di Livenza is home to a talanted band called Il Fedelissimo Bracco Branco (Facebook).

Leaving Treviso, still heading north we enter the province of BELLUNO and the amazing alpine area of the Dolomiti, where we can listen to Idea Ostile (MySpace), Crazy Valves (Facebook), Sirgaus (Facebook) and Campo Magnetico (Facebook), born in 2014 from the ashes of a band called John Silver Band (MySpace).

And now back south, to PADUA, the city of Saint Anthony, 40 km west of Venice. Padua is also the birth place of the famous architect Andrea Palladio, whose XVIth century villas in the area of Padua, Venice, Vicenza and Treviso are amongst the most beautiful of Italy, and of Giovanni Battista Belzoni, adventurer, engineer and Egyptologist to whom is dedicated a new concept album by the prog band from Turin Arti e Mestieri, Il grande Belzoni. In the past Padua gave us bands such as Eneide, Mellonta Tauta (Bandcamp), Daphne (Bandcamp) and Audio (Bandcamp) while the contemporary prog scene features bands such as the promising Empirical Time (MySpace), the folk jazz Calicanto (Official Website), the theatrical Lamanaïf (MySpace) and Maieutica (Facebook), the psychedelic Astralia (MySpace), Laatia (MySpace), Hypnoise (MySpace), and Collettivo Androgino (Reverbnation) or the metal influenced Centrica (MySpace) and Twinspirits (MySpace).

In the seventies one of the very few bands linked to the right wing movement, La Compagnia dell’Anello (Official Website), also began life here. The band is still in activity and they’re working on a new album. According to some interviews with the band, it will be a self produced double album in two parts. The first will be heavily prog influenced and will feature a concept inspired by the work of the poet Ezra Pound. The second will feature some new tracks and old unreleased stuff re-arranged. At the moment a new track is available, a piece dedicated to a pilot of the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana, Giovanni Battista Boscutti, who died in 1944 fighting against the Allied forces that were bombarding the city of Padua.

South of Padua lies ROVIGO where we can listen to a good contemporary band called Anfiteatro (MySpace) and to the metal influenced Eloa Vadaath (Reverbnation). Rovigo is also home to composer and multi-instrumentalist Marco Ragni (Facebook) and Alessio Trapella (Facebook) who collaborated with Le Orme and in 2022 released an interesting solo album entitled La ricerca dell'imperfezione. Here there started an interesting band called A Piedi Nudi. Their guitarist, Nicola Gardinale, has changed musical direction and has formed a blues-rock project called Nic-G And The Mogsy (MySpace).

Leaving Rovigo, we head now back north to VICENZA, which in the past gave us bands such as Abissi Infiniti and Top Left Corner. Now it’s the time of Absenthia (Official Website), an excellent band that combines tradition with heavier sounds and in 2009 released an excellent self produced debut album, Tenebrae Vincunt. Other local bands that in my opinion it is worth mentioning are Malus Antler (Facebook) and the jazz-rock Vertical (MySpace) and Mandela (Facebook). Not far from Vicenza, in a town called Bassano del Grappa, which in the past gave us bands such as Antephonia and Slogans, you can find a very good CD shop, Pick Up Records and listen to an interesting band called Glincolti (Official Website), the jazz-rock Endless Season (Facebook) and to Mad Fellaz (Facebook) while Schio is home to Sticky Brain (Facebook)

We conclude our visit to Veneto in VERONA, the city of Romeo and Juliet, also known for its landmark ancient Roman amphitheatre, the Verona Arena, which is internationally famous for its large-scale opera performances. You can find here a good contemporary prog scene featuring excellent bands such as the jazz rock D.F.A. (MySpace), Logos (Official Website) and Astrolabio (MySpace), a new band born from the ashes of Elettrosmog (MySpace), a band that in 2007 released an interesting album entitled Monologando.

Other prog bands from Verona are the neo prog Marygold (Official Website) and Iperuranio (Official Website), the young and very promising Gran Torino (MySpace) and Side C (MySpace), the experimental Reqviem (MySpace) and Le Maschere di Clara (MySpace), then Il Rumore Bianco (Facebook), Rosenkreutz (Facebook), Calia (MySpace), D’Anima (MySpace), Moto Armonico (Reverbnation), MonnaLisa (Facebook), Alchemy Victory (Facebook), Oltremare (MySpace), Castelli in Aria (MySpace), Masons (MySpace), Il Fauno di Marmo (MySpace), The Oneira (Facebook), the metal influenced Methodica (MySpace) and the folk-oriented Domus de Janas (MySpace). A good venue for prog lovers in this area is the Club il Giardino.