FLOWERS AND KITES

Kite is the second album by Roman band Camelias Garden and it was self-released in 2015 with a largely renewed line up featuring Valerio Smordoni (lead and backing vocals, keyboards, acoustic guitar), Simone Contini (drums) and Alberto Cari (bass) plus the guests Manolo D'Antonio (electric and acoustic guitar, backing vocals) and Gian Marco La Serra (piano, keyboards, backing vocals). It was recorded between 2014 and 2015 at Kate Creative Studio, LRS Factory and Studio Nero (Rome) and confirms the good qualities of their debut album from 2013 entitled You Have a Chance, with its light harmonies and refined arrangements mixing echoes of sixties psychedelia and pastoral atmospheres. The artwork by Isabella Latini in some way depicts the musical content...

The opener “Rise” is a short acoustic ballad with strummed acoustic guitar, a slightly pinch of psychedelia and soaring harmony vocals that could recall The Beatles. It describes a new dawn, a peaceful moment to start a day full of expectations and leads to the following “Making Things Together” veined of West Coast influences and positive vibrations that tells about a love story on the road...

The long, evocative title track has a slow pace and a dark, romantic mood. It describes in music and words a strange meeting in a cold starry night conjuring up visions where dreams and reality melt like if they were following the flight of a kite with its ups and downs: blind, light, beyond the limit of what’s real on a frame of subtle skies...

The soft, dreamy “Red Light” is about a kind of psychedelic trip through a beautiful place full of flowers and trees where a charming girl could drive you mad playing with colours and blending the red light of the rising sun with the magic of the surrounding nature. 

“The World Inside You” is another ballad with strummed acoustic guitars and percussions in the background that could recall the Beatles, especially in its final part. It’s about a kind of spiritual rebirth and evokes the inner power that everyone owns and that can heal the injuries of life... Then the closer “Useless” mixes a touch of electronic, modern sounds and filtered vocals with a pinch of spirituality and oriental philosophy.

Although defined as a simple EP the album reaches almost half an hour length and it’s longer than may albums from the sixties or the seventies. All in all, a pleasant listening.

You can listen to the complete album HERE

More info:

https://www.facebook.com/cameliasgarden

MEMORIES FROM THE PRESENT

After a long hiatus, Juglans Regia are back with new energies and ideas. In 2019, more than ten years after their previous album, Visioni parallele (2008), the band from Sesto Fiorentino released an interesting EP entitled Memorie dal presente (Memories from the present) with the original line up featuring Alessandro Parigi (vocals), Antonello Collini (guitar), David Carretti (drums), Lapo Martini (keyboards) and Massimiliano Dionigi (bass). After all this time their friendship is still intact and the flame of their passion burning to give form to their personal mix of hard rock, metal and prog. The evocative artwork by Sara Parigi can give you the idea of a motivated band ready to seize the moment...

The powerful opener, “L’imperdonabile” (The unforgivable), is a kind of manifesto of the band’s come back where the music and lyrics invite you to stand up facing the difficulties of life, fighting for your dreams to come true. If you fall get up, it would be a pity to give up without try hard again, unforgivable! Electric guitar riffs and keyboard waves wash out illusions and deceptions backed by a solid rhythm section...

The following “Maschere” (Masks) alternates raging parts to lighter passages depicting a sensation of solitude and alienation: even in the middle of a crowd e person could feel absent and distant from reality, other people pass by hiding themselves behind appearances, time runs out... But the music you love can still stir your emotions and set you free from the chains of an ordinary life. All you have to do is open the doors and follow the harmonic tracks in the air you breathe...

Next comes “Primo istinto” (First instinct), my favourite track on this album. It begins softly by a delicate piano passage and a soaring electric guitar solo, the mood is dreamy but as the vocals come in the dream turns into a nightmare, the rhythm rises, the atmosphere becomes dark and disquieting... The cryptic lyrics evoke something threatening coming up to the surface from under your skin, the fear of the dark and of the unknown, you catch a strange look in the people staring at you, then there’s an explosion as your soul separates from the body... 

“Le virgole del tempo” (The commas of time) closes the album with bursts of energy and some reflective moments. The music and lyrics evoke nocturnal landscapes where rain, fog and darkness fall down covering unavoidable secrets and vain ambitions, pushing you to reflection. Eventually the border between dreams and reality melts under the thundering sky of this restless, mysterious night...

On the whole, a very good album. Welcome back Juglans Regia, don’t give up!

You can listen to the complete EP HERE

More info:

https://www.facebook.com/juglansregiaband/

UNDERGROUND TRIP

Hailing from Milan, Cellar Noise took shape in 2013 on the initiative of Alessandro Palmisano and Niccolò Gallani with the aim of blending  classic seventies prog with modern influences in their new original compositions. Once found the right formula, after some line up changes and a good live activity on the local scene, in 2017 the band released an interesting debut album on the independent label AMS/BTF entitled Alight, a conceptual work about a surreal trip on a London Underground train. It was recorded, mixed and mastered at the Zerodieci Studio in Genoa with the help of Fabio Zuffanti, Luca Nasciuti and Roberto Vigo and with a line up featuring founder members Alessandro Palmisano (guitars) and Niccolò Gallani (piano, organ, synthesizer, Mellotron) along with Francesco Lovari (lead and backing vocals), Loris Bersan (bass, classical guitar) and Eric Bersan (drums, percussion) plus some special guests such as Chiara Alberti (cello), Luca Tarantino (oboe) and Giulia Zanardo (flute) who gave their contribute during the recoding sessions to enrich the sound. The result is very good...

The opener “Dive With Me” is a long, beautiful instrumental track that sets the atmosphere and starts by the sounds of an underground station. As by magic, a charming music rises from those confused sounds... Then it’s the turn of “Underground Ride” that conjures up the image of a man, a commuter wrapped in his own thoughts and fed up by the daily grind. He gets lost in a kind of parallel world and you’re invited to follow the trip of the protagonist diving into his dream. The art work by Francesca Serpi might give you an idea of the scene... “Once he got on the train, he started to observe the names of the stops printed on the signs. As he watched, the words came to life and started to fuse with the visions from his imagination. Each name generated different places, characters and stories that moved in the dreamlike dimension as the train moved on...” (quote from the liner notes).

“Embankment” begins by a delicate piano pattern, then the music veers from a dreamy mood to Gothic atmospheres. The music and lyrics tell the story of a girl that day after day meets the ghost of a beautiful young man during her commuting trips in the subway and finally establishes a contact. Then she jumps from the train to follow him in the world of spirits, the afterlife. A wonderful track and a very strange way to depict a suicide on the underground rails...

Cellar Noise 2017

The following “Temple” starts by a classical guitar arpeggio, then the atmosphere becomes dark and the rhythm slowly rises while the lyrics evoke the stage of a crumbling, abandoned opera theatre. The shadow of an old caretaker slowly moves around, drawn into a whirlwind of emotions and memories for a last, tragic show...

The nervous, aggressive “Blackfriars” conjures up images of riots and rebellious acts contrasting with the words of unscrupulous politicians disguised in men of peace who try to canalize hate and manipulate the crowd... The it’s the turn of the calm, introspective “Move The Stone” where the visions seem to stop for a while and a frozen, hidden memory emerges as the protagonist comes back to reality...

The closer “Monument” is the last stop of the journey, a piece where music and lyrics try to depict the new awareness of the protagonist and convey a healing feeling of freedom. For him it’s time to take another train and a new direction leaving behind the chains of his false self and grey routine...

On the whole, an interesting concept and a beautiful album...

You can listen to the complete album HERE

Alight (2017): Other opinions:

Michael “Aussie-Byrd-Brother”: Cellar Noise's 2016 debut `Alight' is an absolute symphonic knockout beginning to end, lyrically being an observation on the mundanity of modern life but managing both stark and hopeful themes, and a work that perfectly blends vintage prog-rock and current sounds… (Read the complete review HERE)

More info:

https://www.facebook.com/cellarnoise/

THROUGH DIFFICULTIES TO THE STARS

Per Aspera ad Astra, the fifth studio album by Taproban, was released in 2017 on Musea Records with a renewed line up featuring Gianluca De Rossi (piano, organ, Minimoog, Mellotron), Roberto Vitelli (bass, guitars) and Ares Andreoni (drums) plus a couple of guest musicians such as former Taproban’s member Francesco Pandico (drums, percussion) and Antonio Marangolo (sax). It contains some reworked tracks from two previous album (Outside Nowhere and Posidonian Fields) and only three new pieces. According to the liner notes, the album is dedicated to the heroes of space explorations like its 2004 predecessor, Outside Nowhere, of which it is practically a new version with some substantial cuts and additions. The title of this work, in Latin, means “through difficulties to the stars” and the art cover, taken from a tableaux by Daniela Ventrone entitled Tramonto sul mare (Sundown on the sea), reflects the subject matter depicting in vivid colours the mythological flight of Apollo’s chariot upon a raging sea...

The opener is the title track of the 2004 album, “Outside Nowhere”, a long and complex instrumental suite that describes a mission in space, from the launch to the come back in a new world. Here the piece is slightly shortened (the section named “The Last Goodbye”, featuring Alex Papotto’s sax solo, was cut out) and reinterpreted by the new line up with energy and passion: in seconds they shot through veils of crimson and pink and gold and blue into the piercing white of day... (quote from A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke). Even if the sequence of the different sections is slightly changed, in my opinion the final the result is as good as the original version.

Taproban on stage, 2017

The first (relatively) new track is the short “Fragments Of Life”, a reinterpretation in a softer key of the first section of the aforementioned suite, “At The Fifteenth Orbit”. It is followed by three other tracks from Outside Nowhere: “Il difficile equilibrio tra sorgenti di energia” (The difficult balance between energy sources), where music and lyrics describe an endless conflict between spheres attracting and repelling each other until they’ll melt into the void, then the powerful, aggressive “veS ml’ taHghach (A Klingon War Dance)” with reference to the species of swarthy, ruthless humanoids in the science fiction series Star Trek and finally the reflective, melancholic “Nexus” where, after the beautiful sax solo and the heartfelt vocals by Gianluca de Rossi, you can hear in the background the last words of Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov before crushing to the ground on April 24, 1967, after nineteen orbits around the Earth. The new versions are all convincing and perfectly match together.

Then it’s the turn of two new instrumental tracks. The first is “D.I.A.N.A.” (Domotic Interface Artificial Neurological Android) that every now and again could recall The Alan Parsons Project and maintain a sci-fi atmosphere as suggested by the title that refers to home automation. The second is the beautiful “Agata Lost In The Mirror Whale” with its sumptuous display of keyboard virtuosity. 

 

The last two tracks are both taken from 2006 album Posidonian Fields. “Entwinings” and “Octopus!” have been reworked and linked together to form something new and even the lyrics are different from the original version. Here music and lyrics describe the meeting with the marine creature from a very personal point of view... “You know an octopus is smarter than a dog, and would probably make a much better pet. It’s a wonderful, clever, very emotional creature, an octopus. Only we never think of them that way”... (just a short quote from the novel Sphere by Michael Crichton to give an idea of the content of the piece!).

On the whole, I think this album could be an excellent addition to a prog collection: nice packaging, great music... even if you already own Taproban’s previous works I’m sure it won’t be a waste of money!

You can listen to the complete album HERE

More info:

http://www.taproban.com/

https://www.facebook.com/taprobanband/

HYPNOS AND THANATOS

Tale Of A Dark Fate is the second album by Florentine band L’Albero del Veleno and confirms all the good qualities of its predecessor from 2013, Le radici del male. It was self-released in 2017 and was distributed by Black Widow Records. The recording sessions were carried out by a slightly renewed line up featuring Nadin Petricelli (keyboards, synth), Claudio Miniati (drums), Lorenzo Picchi (guitars), Michele Andreuccetti (bass) and Marco Brenzini (flute) plus the help of the guests Jacopo Ciani (violin, viola, strings) and Cesare Valentini (choir arrangement). The result of their long, painstaking work is an instrumental album conceived as an opera in two acts inspired by the legend of the venomous tree from which the band took its name. The storyline is simple: a man falls asleep under the tree to never wake up again. Although there are no lyrics nor specific liner notes, the art cover and the drawings you can find in the booklet by Stefano Matteoli give a clue about what the music is about...

The first part of the album, “Act I – Hypnos”, is divided into six parts. It starts with the short “Prelude - The poison tree”, where a nice piano pattern is backed by a threatening rhythm section. In the booklet the image associated with this piece portrays a tree resembling to a Medusa head, with poisonous snakes as branches... It fades out in the first part of Act I, entitled “Morpheus” after the Greek god of dreams, son of Hypnos, god of sleep. Here the influence of Goblin is apparent from the very first bass lines that paint the musical canvas with strong deep red brush strokes...

The music goes on with the dark, threatening atmosphere of “Phobetor”, the personification of nightmares that appeared in dreams in the form of animals or monsters and resided in a part of the underworld. Then the tension eases for a while during the short “Interlude I - Momus” where comes in the personification of satire and mockery. This little scherzo or trick of destiny leads to the disquieting “Phantasos”, named after the God of surreal dreams where, quoting Alexandre Dumas, the breath of death reacts violently against life and darkness kills the light.

The track entitled “Interval” is nothing but fifteen seconds of silence, just a little pause before “Act II – Thanatos”, that is divided into five parts and describes the passage from sleep to death. The first section is entitled “Clotho”, after the goddess responsible for spinning the thread of human life. The music has a solemn pace, an obscure mood and every now and again could conjure up strange phenomena... 

Next comes the nervous section entitled “Lachesis” and related to the goddess measurer of each thread of life. Here, after a nervous start the rhythm calms down as to indicate the acceptance of fate. Then it’s the turn of the ethereal “Interlude II – Ananke” where we meet the personification of inevitability, compulsion and necessity, the mother of the Fates and the only one to have control over their decisions...

L'Albero del Veleno

The following section is entitled “Atropos” after the goddess who chose the mechanism of death and ended the life of mortals by cutting their thread. The Grim Reaper enters the scene wielding her scythe with a surge of energy underlined by fiery organ waves and raging flute notes, then boldly marches towards the unknown... The final section is entitled “Postlude – Moros”, after the god of impending doom, the one who drives mortals to their deadly fate. This delicate and evocative part with piano and violin in the forefront is a kind of elegy of intense beauty that ends the album with a nocturnal atmosphere and a sense of infinite peace...

On the whole, a very mature work where the band showcase great compositional skills and musicianship mixing classical music and rock with extraordinary freshness and gusto.

You can listen to the complete album HERE

More info:

http://www.alberodelveleno.it/

https://www.facebook.com/alberodelveleno