Alice

Featuring: Jon Hassell, Peter Hammill, Juri Camisasca, Richard Barbieri, Steve Jansen

condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (creasing and light wear)
With original innersleeve.
Having emerged from her long-standing collaboration with Franco Battiato on her earlier albums, which were more defined and concise with an intelligent but now somewhat dated pop style, Alice is now embracing a host of new collaborations and musicians. To map out the album's coordinates, Alice relies on the collaboration of some of the leading exponents of European avant-garde music, including Richard Barbieri, formerly of Japan and currently a permanent member of Porcupine Tree, Peter Hammill, Steve Jansen, and our own Paolo Fresu, who infuses the entire album with the magical aura of his trumpet. She entrusts most of the compositions to "Juri" Roberto Camisasca, in his most inspired period (recently emerging from his 10-year monastic retreat). The result of these intentions is an intense, enveloping album where the delicate rain that shades us from the sun speaks to us of the internal and external human contradictions of our time, from the dreamed-of freedom of "grass moving in the wind" to our marked and cyclical routes in "Cieli del Nord." From our lost but still living memory in the anchorites of "Visioni" to the naive simplicity of "Le Baccanti," who wash their hair in the stream, unaware that that same water is crossed by nuclear submarines. The hermit from another space-time dimension prostrates himself at the feet of a world now compromised in "L'era del mito." Tracing the path of this work is Alice's voice, at times delicate and reflective, at times powerful and evocative, which shapes and absorbs the creative energy of the magical musical ensemble. The result is one of the most beautiful and refined pieces of music ever born (and I'm not just talking about "Italian" music).