Pholas
Dactylus came from the province of Milan and were formed in the early
seventies. The band’s name was inspired by the scientific name of a
shell and the line-up featured Paolo Carelli (vocals), Eleino
Colladet (guitar), Valentino Galbusera (keyboards), Maurizio Pancotti
(keyboards), Rinaldo Linati (bass) and Giampiero Nava (drums). They
had a good live activity and in 1973 they released a very particular
album for the independent label Magma, “Concerto delle menti”
(Concert of the minds), a conceptual work based on a visionary,
apocalyptic poem by Paolo Carnelli. Soon after the album was released
the band split up and it’s a pity because their experimental verve
deserved more credit. Pholas Dactylus’ sound is challenging,
swinging from jazz rock to quiet, pastoral breaks, from hard rock
guitar riffs to psychedelic rides. The album is conceived as a long
suite and the music flows away without interruptions linking together
the spoken parts. Here words are like notes and the music is a
perfect background for evocative recitative vocals describing
nightmarish landscapes and declaiming ominous prophecies...
The
album opens with a spoken introduction that sets the atmosphere...
“You are going to take a tramway, in awhile you’ll be on an old
battered tramway-wagon looking like you after a black, empty,
paranoiac day... For a while the speed will be the same as usual...
You’ll touch the shoulder of the passenger on the seat beside you
to ask him something... And you’ll realize with immense despair
that he’s nothing but a heap of rags... You’ll call the driver
and you’ll see nothing but the face of the mind’s death... Your
only way out will run through the windows of the wagon but then
you’ll realize that the usual panorama is slowly changing...
Houses, cars and people will take the shapes, the colours and the
smells that your mind will suggest... Your tramway will take off and
will drive you through dimensional doors... At this point you’ll be
ready to accept what Pholas Dactylus have already accepted long time
ago... We are not alone in the universe!”.
Drum
rolls, then the music starts taking a winding path featuring nervous
jazz rock touches and leading to a calm piano pattern from where
tense narrative vocals soar describing a world that is turning upside
down, where flowers turn into seeds, insects turn into larvae... “The
poet digs with iron claws in the sands of a sinking desert... In the
throat of Moses all the words he spoke come back like smoke / Cain’s
blade leaves the wound and Abel is resurrected from the dust / Pilate
can’t find his tongue / Judas climbs on the tree where he was
hanging / Lucifer flies away from the earth roaring / Christ falls
back into his death / Adam’s rib is back while a woman is crying
inside his hip... A melted sun in chains of greedy thirst feeds the
first day with the last one...”.
Then
the tension rises, the rhythm takes off and the vocals grow more and
more passionate and intense while drawing strong images that seem to
come out from a psychedelic trip... “Walking on the roofs of dead
houses / I realize that my pockets are full of sand / Blue sand from
a desert of amethyst / In my nostrils there are seeds of belladonna
and cannabis... You, meaningless little men, half-buried by a rain of
black tarantulas / You, who think you are all right over there / Tell
me, why shouldn’t I travel beyond the doors of another
dimension?... What can you understand if I tell you that a stone
opens and a flower comes out from it?... I see a long queue of human
beings, naked and faceless... I see trees with black leaves... I see
buildings swinging on the ground... I see scarlet abysses, golden
mountains... From the sea gigantic periscopes are coming up... But
I’m feeling good... Yes, I’m fine and nothing else matters!”.
After
a short instrumental break the vocals come back, full of caustic
rage... “The idiots are looking at us and they don’t know what to
do... An enormous terror will grow and gas will spread everywhere...
The planets of our galaxy have melted into a single block, into a
single cluster of fire...”. The music becomes hypnotic, almost
mystic featuring frenzied guitar riffs and spacey keyboards... “How
many lives cut off, meaningless lives... And in the sky an
executioner with his court of pretty women is looking below and
laughing at the people who think that is possible to escape just by
purchasing another brain...”.
Then
the rhythm calms down while the vocals take a prophetical tone and
describe the apocalyptical advent of six iron angels coming down from
the sky. The angels can’t speak, see or hear because they’re
without mouths, eyes and ears... The first one will spread his limbs
on the ocean that will become black while needles of sun will
puncture the breasts of the earth provoking putrefaction and death...
The second one will put his roots into desert lands becoming the tree
of trees... The third one will go down into the abysmal ditches
slaughtering the monsters of an imaginary sea... The fourth one will
use a straw of alabaster and will suck up every kind of drugs... The
fifth one will prevent the awakening of the colossus with feet of
clay and the sky will be obscured by ships of platinum while millions
of animals of every kind will be absorbed by the solar well and each
one of them will be sent to a different star... The sixth angel will
rebuild the Atlantic tower and finally on earth only one language
will be spoken... “Then He will come down like rain on the streets
/ And there will be peace on earth until the disappearance of the
planets... He will rule, that’s what I say to you!... And the fate
of followers of Baal will be doomed!”.
After
a calm, pastoral instrumental interlude the recitative vocals resume
their prophetic tone and say that what has been narrated earlier is
nothing but the start of a new walk... “Our goal will be joining
forever with the peoples who are already waiting for us / And dipping
with them into the universe of the universes, into the dimension of
the untouchables / And once arrived we will arise and die again and
again in different forms / Since the body could be one, ten, hundred,
thousand, billions... but the mind is only one!”.
Spacey
sounds and hints of a fiery tarantella lead to a spectacular
accident... One of the ships of the sands is wrecked on the blue
dunes and electric guitar and jazzy piano passages describe the
scene... Masked men and women drown in the sand and then fade away
into an orange cloud that turns black, then the thunder of Death...
“A death that is not death because there was no life before...”.
The
music stops for a moment, then a sound of sea waves... The music
starts up again and the rhythm becomes frenzied... You can listen to
people shouting “I buy and sell second-hand brains!”, then a new
vision comes out from the mist... Tiny sea creatures were weaving on
your body a soft carpet swarming of life, life that was slowly
leaving your limbs and your lungs... when, suddenly, a faint light
rose at the bottom of the black maelstrom of fear and a white shining
lily blind your consciousness and someone throws you into a desert of
black pearls... “Time and space have disappeared!”.
The
music flows with sudden changes in mood and rhythm while the vocals
depict other nightmarish visions... On the shoreline a bearded man
collects rubbish while the sea stinks of oil, there’s no wind and
the sea is full of dirty wrecks and useless objects... A red monk is
preaching and a green little girl is dancing to the rhythm of the
sea... A little boy of stone with a broken arm tells of a slaughter
of white doves and of human skins stretched under the sun to dry...
“And at the same time His eye / Above the cells full of larvae
kills! Kills! Kills! Merciless He kills... Then He picks up the
corpses and throws them into a burning abyss... Then new lives, new
bodies, new minds will fill the earth... Then demons dressed in white
will spread a new light, light coming from new worlds... Damned souls
of the cosmos, forever impressed on the front of...”.
The
last word is cut off, the vision is suddenly interrupted and the
album comes abruptly to an end. Apocalyptic visions dealing with
nuclear disasters, pollution, war... Science fiction or poetry? You
can like or dislike this work, but it’s undeniable that it’s
definitely unique and original...
You
can listen to the complete album HERE
Pholas
Dactylus: Concerto delle menti (1973). Other opinions:
Jim
Russell: Daring and truly original in a genre often wrongly
accused of simply following the lead of others, this album is a must
for Italian fans and will likely move onto my top 25 Italian list.
For its ability to merge controlled tension with borderline chaos, to
merge a heavy darkness with other section of pure musical fun... I
believe it would easily appreciated by fans of Osanna, Cervello, or
RRR, also Gentle Giant, maybe Zappa and Gong fans as well...
(Read the complete review HERE)
