THE SPACESHIP MATRIARCH

Sticky Brain took form in 2014 in Schio, a small town in the province of Vicenza, on the initiative of Andrea Moro and Mattia Cavallaro, inspired by artists and bands such as Herbie Hancock, Weather Report or Snarky Puppy. After some time spent honing their skills and playing live on the local scene, in 2019 the band self-released an interesting debut album, entitled Looking Forward, with a line up featuring Giorgio Manzardo (sax), Stefano Nardon (keyboards, vocals), Andrea Moro (bass), Giovanni Caruso (guitar), Mattia Cavallaro (guitar) and Alessandro Barbieri (drums). For the art cover was chosen a painting by Lanfranco Frigeri, La matriarca dell'astronave (oil on canvas, 1973). Lanfranco Frigeri is an artist best known for the cover of Le Orme’s Felona e Sorona and in my opinion his dreamy subjects and surreal landscapes perfectly fit the musical content of this album...

The hypnotic opener “Fifty-Fifty” starts softly but soon the dreamy atmosphere gives way to a lively funky jazz passage before taking a darker, mysterious path... Many changes in rhythm and mood follow during a crazy ride of more than nine minutes that leads to the short, carefree “Today Is Friday”...

Next comes “Up From The Grave”, the only sung track on the album. It’s a beautiful piece blending jazz with a touch of psychedelia, Latin rock and reminiscences of the Beatles. It tells in music and words the experience of a revenant coming out of his grave, searching for a melody. His skeleton falls apart while he’s dancing under the moon, just like in a comic book. Then he takes off in a new coloured form escaping from hell...

“Stajass” is a long, complex piece that starts softly with romantic passages and a strong sense of melody. The vibrant middle section then gives way to a final part sprinkled with oriental flavours... The following “Viaggio alla roccia di Morosha” is a lively track with a pulsing rhythm that every now and again reminds me slightly of Area’s La mela di Odessa...

“Biveson” ends the album and features a dreamy first part with echoes of smooth jazz and bossa nova and a second part in crescendo where the rhythm takes off for a finale where you can hear some psychedelic touches.

On the whole, a good debut work in the vein of bands such as Mad Fellaz or Endless Season.

You can listen to the complete album HERE

More info:

https://www.facebook.com/StickyBrain/ 

 

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.