Italian Experimental Progressive
Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare
More than a band, the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare was a collective dedicated to the study and revaluation of Neapolitan and Mediterranean musical traditions, with multi-vocal parts and acoustic guitars, flutes, percussions and all kinds of ancient folk instruments. Their founder, spiritual guide and executive producer was Roberto De Simone, main author of musical research and arrangements. The foundation dates back to the second half of the '60s, but it was only in 1971 that the first hom…
M.elle Le "Gladiator"
Before Franco Battiato went flying into the sun of mininalist avant prog... he gave us this absolute classic of an album. A dense ambient electronic album with some avant sections that hint broadly on where he would be heading in the years down the road. This album was the culmiination of his early electronic period. The avant hints that were dropped in Sulle Corde di Aries are even more pronounced here, and possbily more fully realized. A incredible album.
The opening track, Goutez Et Comparez,…
Sensation's Fix
A monster rarity finally reissued: this is the very first album from Sensations' Fix - and together with "Portable Madness" and "Fragments of Light" one of the three titles published in 1974, a collection of psychedelic compositions, in which glimpses of 'cosmic' music can already be noticed; those elements would soon become a trademark in the group's repertoire. The twelve compositions present here were part of demos that Franco Falsini had sold to the record company, which decided to publish …
Boomerang
A masterwork! Cadmo where a jazz-prog trio that had their debut on the legendary Vedette label (Metamorfosi) in 1977. While their members [Antonello Salis (keyboards) Riccardo Lay (bass) Mario Paliano (drums)] are nowadays considered among the best jazz musicians in Italy, in the seventies they still enjoyed mixing up several musical influences, so please expect a musical range that starts with Soft Machine-alike freeform crescendos, wild jazz rock in the best Italian tradition and tribal/ethnic…
Principe di un Giorno
LP version. "Principe di un giorno" is the first and only album by Celeste, a Ligurian group born from the ashes of Il Sistema, a band with a considerable potential that, however, never managed to release a proper LP. Recorded between 1974 and the following year, "Principe di un giorno" was only published in '76, kept in the drawer by a label that kept saying they were waiting for the right time to release it, just to put it in the stores at the wrong moment!The almost non-existent consideration…
Palepoli
Third album, and Osanna best one, "Palepoli", from 1973 sees the band at their peak. The album only contains three long tracks and is housed in a nice gatefold whose inner picture is based on the band live stage background. 18 minutes of sheer heavy progdom is 'Oro Caldo', a raw jambalaya of moody atmosphere, experimental samplings, greasy garage dirt, and some flat out classic symphonic prog with a great-sounding mellotron - and other unique and wonderful synth sounds - from Lino Vairetti.…
Il Canto Dell'Arpa E Del Flauto
Lovely reissue for a mid 70s uncategorizable album with a deep minimalistic/estatic feel, eastern indian/tibetan tinged passages, repetitive patterns and a massive use of flutes, bongos, harps and Indian instruments. The artist himself mentions the English band Jade Warrior as a strong influence. Nevertheless also Aktuala or Franco Battiato can be cited. Higly Recommended
Juke Box
The highly neglected record by Franco Battiato! Originally intended as the soundtrack for TV movie 'Brunelleschi', it was rejected — allegedly, for being "not appropriate enough". Their loss. It is also the first official collaboration with Giusto Pio, at the time engaged as violinist in the RAI orchestra of Milan, as well as first violin at Orchestra - Teatro alla Scala. Over the following decades, Pio and Battiato formed a close collaborative relationship – chasing each other across genre and…
La Valle Dei Templi
Perigeo were founded in Rome in 1971: five professional musicians, all of them already largely active in the jazz and rock circuits of those years, who gathered in the studio to wisely blend together the two aforementioned music genres: this is probably the first example of jazz-rock music in Italy, admittedly influenced by Miles Davis and that legendary “Bitches Brew” that just two years earlier had shocked the jazz scene worldwide.Purists among the music critics were then unhappy about such an…
Tappeto Volante
Exclusive reissue in a digipack CD format of all of the three Aktuala releases; "Tappeto Volante" is the third and last one of this series, made by an 'open musical collective' from milan, a fixed nucleus with many different contributes from guest musicians. As the Third Ear Band have always been inserted in the international prog panorama, the same happened with Aktuala, who were real music pioneers able to blend world, ethnic, jazz and avantgarde music.
"Tappeto Volante", published in 1976 alw…
l'Egitto prima delle Sabbie
** Small restock available, nice price **Mindblowing! The last album of what could be called Franco Battiato's "experimental prog" period, L'Egitto Prima Delle Sabbie consists of two sidelong compositions strictly arranged for piano only, without any vocals; and even more intriguingly, neither of the performers on the album are Battiato himself. He limited himself strictly to the roles of composer and producer. After Battiato's many different sonic explorations and efforts throughout the '70s, s…
Sconcerto 1978
Yet another 'out of time' band from the glorious golden season of Italian progressive rock, Il Baricentro - a name that does not coincidentally reveals the musicians' origins (Bari/center, Puglia) - were founded in the mid-'70s by brothers Francesco and Vanni Boccuzzi, out from the ashes of Festa Mobile.The debut "Sconcerto" saw the light in 1976: a beautiful instrumental jazz-rock LP, in which keyboards dominate over every other instrument. Despite the season of punk, new wave and disco music s…
Aktuala
Finally repressed on CD, milestone reissue! This reissue is enriched by a booklet with rare and unreleased pictures, plus the bonustrack "Flauti" by Walter maioli... Following the same path as Third Ear Band in England, Embryo or Gruppe Between (and even Limbus 4, Kalacakra and Popol Vuh), Aktuala tried to mix together the western musical tradition with african and asian instruments, rhythms, cultures and avant-garde forms, creating a pioneering new form of music that went beyond anythin…
Arrow Head
Osage Tribe were an Italian Prog band who released just one album in 1972, "Arrow Head", before splitting up and disappear - even if all bandmembers went on playing in other groups as Duello Madre, Capsicum Red, The Trip and Il Volo. The band was founded by Franco Battiato, who left right after the release of the single "Un falco nel cielo" to pursue a solo career that's still active nowadays. The other musicians then significantly changed their musical style, moving towards a hard rock-based pr…
I Fiori Del Sole
Restocked, reduced price. Originally released by the legendary Cramps Records - one of the most remarkable assemblies of avant-garde recording in history, Michele Fedrigotti and Danilo Lorenzini’s long overlooked LP - I Fiori Del Sole, is among of the great works of to emerge from Italy’s incredible movement of musical Minimalism. Both Fedrigotti and Lorenzini are renowned classical pianists, with the bulk of their respective careers dedicated to realizing the works of others. During the 1970’s…
Aria
A very important artist from Naples, Alan Sorrenti released his first album in 1972 on the legendary Harvest label. Aria is an absolute Italian prog classic, with two different sides: the first only contained the long title track, a dreamy psych-suite starting with acoustic guitar and based on the marvelous instrument-like voice of Sorrenti, and exploding in the final part with a memorable violin solo by Jean Luc Ponty. Side 2 was softer, with three tracks, two of which also appeared on …
Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso
High quality vinyl reissue with remastered sound. Legendary Italian progressive rock band Banco del Mutuo Soccorso released its first LP in 1971 on the label Dischi Ricordi. The lineup included Vittorio Nocenzi (keyboards), Gianni Nocenzi (piano), Francesco Di Giacomo (vocals), Renato d'Angelo (bass), the newly arrived Pierluigi Calderoni (drums), and guitarist Marcello Todara, who would soon be replaced by Rodolfo Maltese. Although plagued by poor sound quality (something frequent with Italian …
Alpha ralpha Boulevard
"Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" is the only album released by I Numi back in 1971: issued on Polaris label (the same as I Teoremi) in a small batch of a thousand copies, it is today one of the rarest Italian progressive rock LP's. Already reissued in CD format by AMS Records, it is finally, for the very first time in almost fifty years, reissued on vinyl with gatefold cover, a faithful reproduction of the original version.I Numi were founded in 1967 by musicians from three different beat groups. Their …
Abbiamo Tutti I Suoi Problemi
Picchio dal Pozzo is regarded as one of the most original, impressive and highly respected of all the experimental groups to have come out of Italy in the 1970s. They share their original label with Henry Cow's Concerts, and were early invitees to the canonical Recommended Sampler. Aldo De Scalzi, Andrea Beccari, Giorgio Karaghiosoff and Paulo Griguolo all met at infant school and began playing Teleman, Corelli, Bach and Mozart together in their school orchestra. In 1969, Aldo's brother, one of …
To Allen Ginsberg
Regarded as the link between Italian acid folk, Library music and Krautrock, Living Music was a collective of Italian Musicians, artists and poets active in the counterculture and student movement of Rome in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Taking their name and concept from the New York experimental theatre group ‘Living Theatre’ husband and wife duo Umberto Santucci (jazz critic, graphic designer (Brainticket) and photographer, library composer) and Gianfranca Montedoro (Jazz and rock singer, m…