TIMELESS TIME

Tempo senza tempo is the second and last album by the line up gathered in Sardinia by Adriano Monteduro under the name Reale Accademia di Musica. It was released in 2009 on the independent label Delta Italiana and the line up is the same of its predecessor, Il linguaggio delle cose: Adriano Monteduro (music, lyrics, arrangements, keyboards, vocals), Giuseppe Aramo (vocals, percussion), Antonello Monteduro (piano, keyboards), Manuel Muzzu (bass). The overall sound is more varied than on the previous work and, in my opinion, the quality of the compositions is better but it a has nothing to share with Reale Accademia di Musica 1972 eponymous debut...

 

The ethereal opener “Latenza sogno” evokes falling thoughts that at night get lost into a dreamy blue sea... Then it’s the turn of “Caccia alle balene” (Whaling), a piece against whale hunters, that starts by annoying drum machines and a macarena rhythm and then, luckily, turns into a passionate, melodic environmental declaration inviting you to listen to the beat of the heart of Moby Dick...

On “Paranoia (Déjà vu)” you can find electronic touches and drum machines that contrast with vintage keyboard waves while the lyrics tell of the inner duality hidden inside every person... The following “Vulcano” (Volcano) tries to describe in music and words the feelings and the reflections of a man who, during the night, admires the fiery force of a volcanic eruption...

The lively “Atomo” (Atom) is a short instrumental track with a good interaction between bass and keyboards that leads to the long, evocative “Sogno (Compagno di sempre)” (Dream, companion ever) where music and words paint blurred images, lights and shades, labyrinths of memories drifting away on a misty sea towards never-land...

 

“Thin Colours” is a calm, short instrumental track for bass and keyboards while “Get Back” (despite the English title the song is sung in Italian) mixes tango and electronica to depict a sensation of fulfilment and spiritual tiredness. Next comes the delicate “Tempo senza tempo” (Timeless time), a reflection about time and its abstract relativity...

“Merlino (Mirddyn)” was inspired by the mythic character of the Arthurian legends. The musical landscape and the subject matter could recall the atmospheres of Alan Stivell’s album the Mist Of Avalon (in particular, Le chant de Taliesin) as they try to conjure up the imagine of the old enchanter and wizard running again through the forest of Kelyddon... The following “African Oldoway” is a nice instrumental track that takes us in another direction (the title refers to the Oldoway human skeleton of the type of homo sapiens found in Tanganyika Territory, in 1913). Then “Attimi” (Moments) ends the album with a reflection about time and space where single moments resound like bouncing pebbles on the waters of life...

On the whole, despite the large use of drum machines and electronic effects, I enjoyed the album. Nonetheless the name Reale Accademia di Musica that Adriano Montedurro decided to revive might be misleading for prog fan. Some members of Reale Accademia di Musica’s original line up did not appreciate this operation and Adriano Monteduro dropped the name after this work releasing other albums in the same style as a solo artist, albums that could be of some interest for prog lovers...

 

More info:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ8DQBrtImsL4Iiwh3jxFbg/featured

 

 

THE LANGUAGE OF THINGS

In 1974 Adriano Monteduro released an album with Reale Accademia di Musica, then, after a single in 1978, in the eighties he left the music business and relocated in Santa Teresa di Gallura, in the province of Sassari. In 2008 he exhumed the name of the historic Roman Italianprog band for an album entitled Il linguaggio delle cose that was released on the Delta Italiana label with a line up featuring, along with Adriano Monteduro (music, lyrics, arrangements, keyboards, vocals) also Giuseppe Aramo (vocals, percussion), Antonello Monteduro (piano, keyboards) and Manuel Muzzu (bass). There are no founder members of Reale Accademia di Musica involved in this project and the overall sound is very different from that of the 1972 eponymous album of the band. Here the music is closer to new age than prog while the hermetic lyrics deal with philosophical issues...

 

The calm, reflective opener “Genesi” conjures up the imagine of a bonfire breaking the darkness to let you see the unknown and give breath to the truth... Then “Uomo-Terra” (Man-Earth) every now and again could recall some pieces of Franco Battiato from the eighties and deals with the duality of life and the relativity of time and space. “Il linguaggio delle cose” (The language of things) evokes the mysteries of cosmos and life and in some melodic lines reminds me slightly of Bob Seger’s We’ve Got Tonight...

Despite the English title, the following “Dance With Me” and “Homeless” are sung in Italian. The first one tells in music and words of a moonless night and of the desire to dance cradled by the sound of the sea waves, in harmony with the world, the second one portrays a storybook of wrong choices, dreams of freedom, shadows and lights... 

 

Next comes the ethereal “Infinito” (Infinite) invites you to the show of creation in a timeless time pulsing in the veins of eternity... The closer “La pace nelle biglie di vetro: un mondo nuovo” (The peace in the marbles: a new world) is a very long track (more than 18 minutes!). It’s a piece about the need to push the limits of what human beings can achieve without surrender in front of the raging waters of sea of Life, in a game of atoms where the future runs free... Here the music flows away at a slow pace and the rhythm never takes off.

On the whole, a good album with a slow pace and refined electronic arrangements but beware! It could have a strong soporific effect.

 

ECCE LUX

 Overture come from Mores, a small town in the province of Sassari, Sardinia, and came to life in 2010 rising from the ashes of another band called Sons Of The Rascals. The first line up included Simone Desogus (drums), Samuele Desogus (guitar), Mattia Serra (keyboards, vocals), Salvatore Sassu (flute, guitar) and Stefano Sanna (bass). After a good activity on the local scene where they started to perform progressive rock covers alternated with their own compositions, in 2018 the band recorded and self-released an excellent eponymous debut album with a renewed line up featuring Luigi Ventroni (vocals), Simone Desogus (drums, percussion, vocals), Stefano Sanna (bass), Samuele Desogus (guitars), Fiorella Piras (flute, vocals) and Simone Meli (keyboards, backing vocals) plus the guest Sara Cuzzupuli (violin, vocals). The overall sound is well rooted in the best tradition of Italian symphonic rock and, as music goes through many changes in rhythm and mood, every now and again I’m reminded of another band called Unreal City. Anyway, I think that the art cover by Mauro Mondiello describes the musical content of the album better than many words...

The dreamy opener “Intro” is just a short instrumental track that sets the atmosphere and leads to the excellent “Lux et Ombra” (Light and Darkness), an amazing piece sung in Italian and Latin and dealing with the eternal contrast between Evil and Good. The music and lyrics evoke dark fallen angels, winged demons and damned souls burning in the flames of hell waging war against the illuminated, divine power of science and knowledge: everyone expects to win on the border between Darkness and Light, in an endless fight raging in a world without glory... 

The melancholic “Il mendicante” (The beggar) starts by a touching, classical inspired, solo piano passage, then soaring vocals backed by the other instruments begin to portray the image and feelings of a desperate, solitary beggar who’s on the brink of committing suicide by jumping from a bridge into the icy waters of the city river...

The following “A Deer In The River” begins with an acoustic guitar arpeggio and is a bitter-sweet piece dealing in a surrealistic way with the problem of emigration. The music and lyrics tell of the fate of a woman who had to leave her little country village on the banks of a river and go in a big city to earn a living. She never feels at ease in the metropolis and her feeling of nostalgia is always strong. Eventually, before passing away, she comes back to her old hamlet and becomes a deer longing for peace in the river...

The following “Crop Circles” is a long track with a mysterious atmosphere and a science-fiction theme. At night a spaceship lands in the middle of a wheat field. Suddenly the wheat start to dance under a strange green light but there’s no sound nor fear... Meanwhile a farmer sleeps and dreams in his house, unaware of what’s happening in the field. At dawn, when the farmer and his family wake up, everything seems in order but in wheat field there’s something new... It’s up to the listener imagine what!

Overture on stage, 2018

The last track, “Ephesia’s Chime” is a dark, disquieting piece where the music and lyrics tell about a child game turned into nightmare. There’s murder and betrayal, hidden secrets that lead to madness and a storm of haunting melodies and voices coming from the unconscious... Here every now and again the music and the subject matter could recall the deep red colours of Goblin but the band manage to add their own strokes of colour to the musical tableau in an effective way.

On the whole, I think that this is a really good work although the band seem definitively more at ease when using their mother language...

You can listen to the complete album HERE

Overture: Overture (2018). Other opinions:

Michael "Aussi-Byrd-Brother": Controversially performing in both English and Italian, their music is full of lush electronics, grand guitar runs and piano prettiness alongside flute, violin and double bass, and their debut offers everything from elegant symphonic touches, classical grandiosity and jazzy detours, all taken even further by charismatic theatrical vocals in the rich vintage Italian prog tradition... Sung in Italian, the music flows with so much naturally romantic passion and vigour, but in English it's a little clunky in comparison... (read the complete review HERE)

More info:

https://www.facebook.com/overtureprogressiverock/

FIVE EXERCISES OF STYLE

The Sundering came to life in 2010 in Sassari as a heavy metal band. After some line up changes, in 2012 they started to work on new original pieces turning to a different, more elaborated style adding more colours to their musical palette by incorporating in their sound different influences ranging from psychedelia to hard rock and prog. In 2018 they finally self-released a debut album entitled Pentameron with a line up featuring Filippo Lacana (vocals, cello), Fabio Cuccu (guitars), Davide Mura (guitars), Carlo Berretta (bass) and Lorenzo Murineddu (drums, percussion). It’s an interesting work where the band showcase good musicianship and a passionate love for classic rock and prog. Lorenzo Murineddu and Carlo Berretta took also charge of the nice artwork that in some way tries to describe the musical content of the album... 

The opener “Rush In The Forest” is a long track where the music and lyrics depict a strange Celebration of the nature. Imagine a beautiful, uncontaminated valley and a soaring, haunting singing that draws you deep into the forest. Behind the trees you can see the source of the music, happy people dancing in circles to the frenzied rhythm of a lysergic tarantella: a peculiar mix of PFM and Blind Melon! 

The following “Life On Earth” conjures up the image of a lonesome hobo, a solitary man wandering like a ghost in a big city. His home is the street, his only friend is a dirty dog, his only pleasure is playing an old guitar and singing for the passer-byes in this time of emptiness. There’s the shadow of Tim Buckley on his back… 

Then it's the turn of the short, careless “Take A Blow”, a kind of exercise of style full of energy and rhythm that blends funky and hard rock, Led Zeppelin and Django Reinhardt with a pinch of red hot spicy flavours to tell that the world can’t be just black or white. 

The nervous, nightmarish “Freshness In The Night” blends psychedelia, hard rock and jazz and takes you on a crazy ride on the empty streets of a big city, under the mocking light of a sparking moon. You can almost feel chilling waves of tension coming up from the deepest of your soul... 

The long, complex “Call Of The Sea” features the guest Elisa Brett on classical guitar and ends the album with heavy, electric passages full of energy and softer sections that take you on a long journey across the sea, from the California to the sunny shores of Brazil… 

On the whole, this is a good album, even if it doesn’t shine for its originality. In my opinion a touch of Hammond could have improved the overall sound and the use of the Italian language for the lyrics could have added more distinctive colours to the final picture, but never mind! I enjoyed it anyway… 

You can listen to the complete album HERE 

More info: 

https://www.facebook.com/thesunderingofficial/

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!