OSANNA

By 1974 with the release of this album "Landscape Of Life" the band had decided to take the more commercial route. They sung in English here, and they clearly shouldn't have. There's some cringe-worthy moments with those vocals. Throw in some ballads and we have a watered down album that isn't close to 4 stars in my world. Still, this is OSANNA and there's some good stuff on here like the 10 minute opener mainly, which recalls their earlier music. The title track is quite good as well. I like the electric guitar playing over the acoustic guitar, and the way they contrast them too. "Two Boys" rocks pretty good but "Fog In My Mind" and "Promised Land" are so disappointing, unless you like sappy vocals. "Flume" is pleasant and the closer is quite good.

So a hit and miss affair from these legends who were about to fold the tent.

The album opens with Oro Caldo (Hot Gold in English), the shorter one of the two side long suites. It opens with this quiet and calm atmosphere with the sound of Mediterranean marketplaces in the background. Eventually the quiet marketplaces become loud and fast melodies of experimentations and riffs. It again quickly fades into a more folk dominated composition. This album does a lot of switching between quiet and loud parts, with one of my favorites of these parts being right before and right after the ten minute mark. Anyways, the song expands into another riff section with goes into D'anna and Rustici trading solos that eventually culminates into Vairetti doing a scream, which then fades into another quiet section. After this section is over, it stays at an almost carnival sounding piece for around two minutes before going into the next song, Stanza Città (City Room in English), which is a reprise of the intro and under two minutes. Not much to say about except that I like the backwards talking.

Side two is entirely taken up by Animale Senza Respiro (Breathless Animal in English). It is also my favorite of the three songs on the album. It opens with a more heavy sounding part that repeats over and over until going into another one of those quiet moments. Though instead of it being more folk dominated like Oro Caldo, this song takes a more ambient route and combines the members doing some free improv with ambient music. The power eventually comes back and leads to an almost blues inspired piece that, in my opinion, shares a lot of similarities to Pictures of a City by King Crimson. This is another one of my favorite parts of the album, but somehow Osanna manages to build on this perfection and creates one of the most beautiful folk tunes I have ever heard. Yet somehow Osanna was still not done with the perfection, and it goes into another one of those ambient tracks before blasting some of the most emotionally driven music through an almost heavy prog sound. I've seen the translations of the lyrics, and they definitely match the emotion of this part and the entire album. All the perfection that was building up by this point had its throat cut, and all of it spilled out like Osanna had just exhausted themselves. After another experimental and ambient part, we get a reprise of some of the sections in this song before an incredible drum solo near the end. And finally, after all this perfection Osanna has made in this album, they go back to the beginning of the song, this time with lyrics. This was where I originally thought the album ended, but Osanna puts something close to a hidden track near the end that, in my opinion, sounds a lot similar to Sysyphus Pt. 1.

And after all of that, I was left speechless. This is easily my absolute favorite RPI album, and I wish that Osanna had continued to make this type of music instead of going back to short-form songs. In conclusion, the album is near perfect. Being drenched in Mellotron, heavy riffs, aggressive flute, and emotional structures, it's no wonder this is considered one of Italy's finest masterpieces. This is an absolute essential for prog and RPI, and it shows some of the most talented men of Italy when it came to music. 5/5!

"Oro Caldo", the first of the album's two epics and for me the one that stands out the most, has a sound so symphonic and airy that it could make even Philip II dance smilingly. The beginning is as beautiful as it is volatile, with a captivating flute that repeats the same notes until the right moment when the mess has to begin. The track speaks deeply, poetically and tangibly about the passing of time, the overbearing ordinariness of everyday life and the ever intricate mind of the average citizen. It is easily one of the best progressive rock epics that can be used to exemplify the common talk of why Italian progressive rock sounds so clean and genius. This song laid the Italian foundation along with Zarathustra for how a song has to be written long enough and good enough to stand alone to represent one of the sides of the album and its entire concept. Oro Caldo will undoubtedly remain forever in the history of progressive rock and the fine-eared listener (that's not to say I consider myself one of them, haha). "Stanza Città" is a short break that entertains and relaxes a bit with Oro Caldo's mixed melodies (in reverse, overlapping) after this charged epic and also gives us time to stand back fresh, with a new focus, to prepare for the next song. This first side leaves expectations very high.

"Animale Senza Respiro" is the entirety of the album's B-side and, therefore, the album's closer. A somewhat convoluted closing and, to my taste, a little less symphonic and pleasant than the other epic of the album, but still with its virtues to highlight (the bar has been set very high!). It continues with the same metropolitan theme, but the album takes a new eclectic turn with a sound quite oriented towards early King Crimson and Van Der Graaf Generator albums (specially Islands and Pawn Hearts, respectively), with saxes taking over the song every time they appear. The melody of the album makes the "very heart of the album" quite clear: Side 1 is the optimistic one, and side 2 is the pessimistic one. While Oro Caldo focuses on a more positive and loving vision through cultural sounds, children playing, a man singing happily, men singing together happily and instruments that seem to glow from euphoria, Animale Senza Respiro proposes chaos, disengagement, merciless criticism and the most eclectic Italian maelstrom you will ever hear.

Palepoli poses the two faces of society through the most sensitive expression of the human being and is clearly a candidate to be the most hierarchical Italian album of the 70s. A play that you can't miss!

The nicely titled Prog Family starts off with the solemn then fiery "Tema", which rolls smooth on into "Animale Sena Respiro", reborn a very modern-sounding Prog number. I was just listening to a track by CHICAGO ("Once Upon A Time"), and I can't help but think of them now since this is such an apparently big ensemble. Everything is nicely mixed and mastered, clear and purposeful from the onset. Fusion, classic and modern Prog (thanks to the newest and youngest additions to the band proper), and dramatic Italian idiom all present! I forgot until this point that this album covers a lot of ground from previous Osanna material. A compilation of rerecordings, really (the majority of the album). For me, for much of these tracks this is my first time hearing them.

If anything is hokey or they seem too 'comfortable' haha, I'm noting appropriately, but really everything is so well performed. No surprise here. Much of it is fresh. "Mirror Train" is one, for instance, where for every part I wasn't such a fan there were, say, 4 things that were so satisfying and beautiful they won me over. There were unfortunately a number of tracks in the middle and backend that lacked this charm. I'm realizing I'll have to hear much of these then in their original form in due time (who knows when I'll get to it?).

The first bit of Jackson getting his chance to shine is on "L'Uomo". But also met, particularly on the second verse, with beautiful string ensemble.

The first apparently newly released track here is "Fuje 'A Chistu Paese", which to my ears at times sounds like the fusion of Italian Prog and Zeuhl. Very rhythmic and at times jazzy, but also has a tribal sort of nature to it. In the middle section, most dies down and then revamps with this really awesome, lively synth lead, joined by guitar to the gallop of the drums. The next track first recorded on Prog Family is "My Mind Flies", a quieted and quick interlude of sorts. Then it was "Solo Uniti", which had a really great melody and the jangle of acoustic guitar(?) and great guitar-strings leads [Unfortunately this track and a few others had some digital breaks and skips... Strange.].

Other tracks of special note are "Vado Verso Una Meta", some excellently performed Heavy Prog (notably featuring violin lead), and "Theme One", one of my favorite compositions (for BBC Radio 1, written by George MARTIN) covered I would think famously by VdGG.

"L'uomo" opens the album with a surge of energy. This new version of Osanna's debut album opener is brilliant, more aggressive than the original one and with an almost rapped section emphasizing the lyrics. The following "Ce vulesse ce vulesse", is a piece from "Suddance" ("Ce vulesse") that here is revitalized with the addition of a second part ("Canta chiù fforte"), harder and angrier than the original one...

The dreamy "Medley acustico" bounds a short excerpt from "Palepoli", "Oro caldo", with "My Mind Flies" from "Preludio, tema, variazioni e canzona" and "L'amore vincerà di nuovo" from "L'uomo". The effect is interesting, but you can't really resume and condensate such pieces in just five minutes and I feel that something is missing here...

The ironic, funny "Taka Boom" is a new track dealing with the risks of internet addiction leading to a virtual life disconnected with reality. On line you can find everything, you can burn every book and every film because you don't need them any more, even sex can be experienced on line and pleasure stored in a file... Until the body of your virtual partner, hacked by viruses, will blow up!

Next comes another medley, "In un vecchio cieco - Vado verso una meta", with two pieces from "L'uomo" that were bound also on the 1971 album (although in a different order) and here are in some way simplified and played in a more straightforward way. Then the canzona from the second album in its new dress, "There Will Be Time", leads to "Medley Train" where a piece from "L'uomo", "Mirror Train", is enhanced with a new middle section featuring rap style vocals in the dialect of Naples, "Treno senza stazione" (Train without station).

The new versions of "'A zingara" (from "Suddance"), "Oro caldo (Fuje 'a chistu paese)" (an excerpt from "Palepoli") and "Everybody's Gonna See You Die" (from "L'uomo") follow and lead to another new track "Colpi di tosse", a song "of rage and nostalgia" featuring the narrative and rap vocals of the guest Enzo Avitabile interacting with Lino Vairetti's melodic lines and including quotes of "Fog In My Mind", from "Landscape Of Life". A short acoustic version of "L'uomo" ends the album.

On the whole, a good work that takes Osanna into the new millennium but not an essential one.

The original lineup featured a chemistry that could not be replicated but that didn't stop Vairetti from trying. After all the great prog revival of the 1990s ensured that 70s music was making a comeback and many a band were attempting to finally cash in on their past efforts. For some bands it was quite a successful endeavor but for OSANNA, it just seemed like one stumble after another. The gawdawful "Taka Boom" in 2001 signified a desperate return without any of the finesse that made the original recordings so inspiring. This continued with the 2009 "Prog Family" and then the lackluster attempt to reinterpret the classic "Palepoli" with the 2015 "Palepolitiana."

That should've been the end of the road but here we are in 2021 and Vairetti has reunited with his old bandmates that made the early years of OSANNA so memorable in order to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of "L'Uomo," the debut album which appeared in 1971. The new album is titled IL DIEDRO DEL MEDITERRANEO (The Dihedral of the Mediterranean, a dihedral angle is the angle between two mathematical planes) and features eleven new tracks with the classic lineup of Lino Vairetti (vocals, acoustic guitar, keyboards), r Elio D'Anna (flute, saxophone), Danilo Rustici (guitar, organ, vocals), Lelo Brandi (bass) and Massimo Guarino (drums, percussion). This is the first batch of new tracks these guys have mustered up in decades but how good is it really?

Well first of all i'm always suspicious of a classic band making a so-called comeback many decades after its prime. I mean if they couldn't even sustain their magic in their prime, how are we to believe they are capable of doing so in their advanced years? The short answer is that they haven't however IL DIEDRO DEL MEDITERRANEO is hardly a throwaway album either. While this mellowed out affair is most a tribute to the past there first four tracks "Spirit," the title track, "Ti Ritroverò" and "L'Uomo del Prog" are all pretty good with classic OSANNA feistiness that juggle intricate melodic developments with alternating softer and heavier guitar passages. While not quite up to the standards of the early years, the tracks are certainly better than anything in recent attempts to reinvent the classics.

Unfortunately beginning with "Tu," the album starts to go into easy listening territory with syrupy ballads and too mellow for its own good chill pills. Despite some moments of keyboard bliss and a guitar solo or two IL DIEDRO feels like a ship that's run ashore. There are also too many spoken word narrations on here. The opening "Spirit" and "Zuoccole, Tammorre e Femmene" require some Italian language comprehension skills to understand but luckily they're short and to the point. The most rocking "Zuoccole e Tammorre" brings back some much needed rock heft but unfortunately becomes a dueling sort of gypsy standoff between Lino and a female vocalist however the track does bring back some of the local folk flavors of southern Italy. Likewise the final two tracks stick to rock mode but unfortunately they sound fairly generic.

While not a total waste of time i can't say i find IL DIEDRO DEL MEDITERRANEO to be a compelling listening experience. While certainly more competent than some band's latest efforts (do you hear me Yes?), for an OSANNA album this one soars in the mid-range of interest. It's great to hear these veterans together again cranking out some original music however the entire time i'm hearing this it just makes me ponder the old what if contemplation of what their music would've sounded like had they not had such internal conflicts around the time of "Palepoli." Unfortunately that was not meant to be. I can't say i'm over thrilled with this latest OSANNA release but it certainly isn't horrible either. Unfortunately there is WAAAAY too much excellent music to explore in 2021 so this will surely be forgotten rather rather quickly and tolerated only by diehard fans of the band's classic era. Definitely not the comeback that reignited the flames of yore.

For this event the band did not to try to play the old material in a philological way but worked on the old stuff weaving new orchestral arrangements, where necessary changed the original sequence of the pieces and with some cuts and additions reshaped them giving form to a cohesive and coherent suite. If the original set list might sound a bit fragmented, here all the separate sections follow one to each other without breaks and in perfect harmony...

A sparkling version of "Preludio" opens the suite followed by the dreamy "Tema". Then the calm "Variazione V - Dianalogo" (2:24) and the fiery "Variazione VI - Spunti dallo spartito n. 14728 del Prof. Imolo Meninge" precede "Variazione I - To Plinius" and "Variazione II - My Mind Flies". A new, heartfelt, vocal part sung in Italian entitled "Tempo" (Time) appears before "Variazione IV ? Cortile", then "Variazione VII - Posizione Raggiunta (1:30)", "There Will Be Time" and "Preludio Reprise" close the suite along with the greetings to the Japanese public. In the suite there's no room for the Jethro Tull hints of "Variazione III ? Shuum..." of the original version or the iconic "Bouchet Funk" (a piece included in the soundtrack but not on the 1972 album) but, in my opinion, the result is excellent anyway.

The other tracks on the album were recorded at ISL Studio in Naples with the help of the Gianluca Falasca String Ensemble and some guest musicians such as Roberto Petrella (acoustic guitar), Stefano Longobardi (keyboards, vocals) and Gianni Biondi (vocals). "Fiume" (River) is a rearranged, convincing version of the piece from 1974 album Landscape Of Life while the following "O culore 'e Napule" is a brand new track sung in the dialect of Naples that celebrates the bounds between the musicians and their home town with its sun, sky, sea, music, traditions and endemic problems. The closer "Rosso Rock" quote Peter Hammill's "The Light Continent" and tries to paint the air with the red colour of blood, rock and fire. For this last track the band shot a beautiful video...

On the whole, a great work full of emotions and excellent music.

It probably should have been the end of the band for good but after a reconciliation, the majority of members decided to give it another shot and recorded the band's fifth album SUDDANCE only with long time keyboardist Elio D'Anna having been replaced by Fabrizio D'Angelo and bassist Enzo Petrone taking the place of Lello Brandi. SUDDANCE was a commercial flop although the music critics did seem to show some love for it. The album is very much like its predecessor in that it basically meanders all over the place only more so without any particularly memorable tracks. The opening "Ce Vulesse" immediately sets the album apart from any previous works as a pure jazz-fusion piece more in the vein of bands like Brand X than anything from the Italian scene.

While OSANNA had always incorporated jazz into its works, the saxophone squawks and fusion chord progression became even more pronounced on SUDDANCE although the folky Mediterranean flavors still seeped into the works. The album is noticeable less rooted in hard rock with less guitar heft thus making it the mellowest overall album in the band's 70s run. Despite the excellent instrumental performances of the band rounded off with Lino Vairetti's instantly recognizable vocal style, SUDDANCE does sound a bit more on the commercial side with less progressive meanderings and more focused tight-knit jazz-rock composiitons. The album is laced with funk grooves, clean guitar riffs and jazzy drum rolls with only the slower folky pastoral tracks deviating from the pattern. Some rock still emerges from time to time but only for fleeting moments.

Add to that the album's longest track "O Napulitano" which is just shy of 10 minutes doesn't quite have the music mojo to really justify its length which is pretty much the problem with the album as a whole. In comparison to the band's first three albums this one is quite dull indeed but if evaluated on its own terms it's not all that bad however there is no doubt indeed that OSANNA had fallen from grace and had become mediocre rather than top world quality of the Italian prog scene. For true fans such as myself, you will inevitably get to this album as it does represent the last leg of the band's original journey before all those rather lackluster reunion albums that would follow in the 21st century but as an OSANNA fanboy i do have to say that this is indeed the weakest of their original 70s run and i'm quite thankful that they realized that the magic was gone and time to move on.

Since the band's formation in 1970, guitarist / keyboardist / vocalist Lino Vairetti and his buddies found that perfect middle ground between the world of early heavy rock, progressive folk and the more pastoral Genesis inspired symphonic prog but always had a knack for inserting bizarre avant-garde outbursts which made these guys one of the most unpredictable bands that was a crowd pleaser for the intensity in the live shows and was a favorite at events such as the Avant-garde Music Festival and New Trends in Viareggio.

The band catapulted to the top of the Italian scene with its first two albums "L'uomo" and the unfinished soundtrack music of "Milano Calibro 9" but with the third album "Palepoli" which showed the band firing on all prog firepower, OSANNA crafted one of the most stunning masterpieces of the entire progressive rock scene of the 70s much less that of Italy. The album has well stood the test of time and remains highly influential for its audacious approach of fusing the local folk flavors of its native Napoli into the incessant prog workouts with hard rock heft however it seems the band wasn't destined to carry on such greatness and began to falter with its fourth album LANDSCAPE OF LIFE which followed two years later in 1974.

This was a tumultuous time for the band as the various members started to squabble over the direction of where the music should go and therefore instead of crafting a proper followup to the perfection prog known as "Palepoli," OSANNA retrograded back to the less progressive hard rock band that incorporated jazz, blues and folk flavors on LANDSCAPE OF LIFE. Luckily the band hadn't quite lost all its creative mojo yet and was still able to craft satisfying prog rockers that implemented all the tricks and trinkets of heavy guitar riffs alternating with more pastoral symphonic prog sounds along with jazzy saxophone squawks, folky flute runs and plenty of organ, piano and mellotron.

While clearly a major step down from "Palepoli," LANDSCAPE OF LIFE isn't a terrible album in its own right and more comparable to the band's debut "L'uomo" only a little looser and less cohesive in quality. Unlike its predecessor that featured two side-swallowing single tracks and only a short intermission to separate them, OSANNA's fourth album is a collection of seven shorter tracks that rely on hard rock compositional dynamics as the blueprint to build upon. There seems to be two versions with the same tracks but different track order depending on if you have the original vinyl LP or the CD reissues and i have to say that it was wise to change the order because opening with the mopey pastoral title track belied OSANNA's rock and roll energetic drive.

For the most part LANDSCAPE OF LIFE is pretty good with only a few clunkers like the short but pointless "Promised Land." There is definitely a feeling of devolution on this album though as it's a weak followup to "Palepoli" and it certainly took a while for this one to sink in but after more careful attentive listens, LANDSCAPE OF LIFE is a decent album albeit in a more straight forward hard rock style with a few proggy moments as opposed to the unabashed prog jugular of the predecessor however it was clear that OSANNA had lost its momentum and it would only get worse from here.

3.5 but i'll round up cuz damn this is OSANNA!

Album opener Introduzione is a show stopper for a beginning-a song that transitions through several sections. It starts out as something that would have fit very easily on Hawkwind's contemporaneous second album In Search of Space-acoustic guitar driven proto space rock. Powerful sax riffs, great vocals, unexplained explosions to transition, and an underpinning of acid madness make this album fairly unique in Italian prog. Drums and guitars can wander but things never get too far from control. Some might point to pre Benefit Jethro Tull as a touch point, and that isn't that far off in some places, but overall Osanna have developed a sound that is all their own. These guys are a more harder edged and harder rocking version of Tull or any Italian bands extant at the time. A powerful evolution of pop into something distinctly Italian, albeit in this instance with a heavy dollop of acid in the mix. Yet they don't really fit in with the proto prog organ and guitar driven bands of 1971 very well, as they can dip into jazz and space rock adeptly. Already Danilo Rustici and Ellio D'anna on guitar and sax are already a force to be reckoned with on the scene. Side one is four songs, but really functions as a suite. The band also switches back and forth from Italian to English, but with the heavy reverb on the vocals one might not even notice this is happening.

Side two starts with a straightforward rocker Vado verso una meta. Second song In Un Vecchio Cieco features some of the most amazing complex vocal interplay heard in Italian rock, but disappears quickly much like many of their ideas seem to-there are so many to get into a song, some ideas are just not allowed to linger. Sometimes they dissolve into laughter in the recording booth at the absurdity of it all, only to confidently drop into third gear and deliver some very convincing British hard blues rock (Everybody's Gonna See You Die) at the drop of a hat. Finishes with the same acoustic guitar and In Search of Space electronics we came in on side one with. Wild and wooly stuff-early Hawkwind and early Tull filtered through early Plastic People of the Universe isn't too far off.

One of the more underrated linchpin albums of the early Italian prog scene, this album has it all-virtuoso sax and flute, a guitarist that can deliver riffs that explode out into the universe and acoustic guitar work that can bring you deep into yourself. It's highly recommended to all RPI fans, Hawkwind fans and fans of heavier prog. Great stuff.

So many sunsets......tonight....

4 stars