CONTRAPPUNTI

Usually "Contrappunti" is regarded as Le ORME's last truly great progressive album. To me, I think the album sounds a bit disjointed and doesn't live up to the greatness of "Felona e Sorona" or "Uomo di Pezza". The band was obviously being more experimental here, which itself doesn't quite bother me, but some of the pieces do get a bit cheesy to me. The title track is an instrumental, organ-driven piece not unlike ELP or TRIUMVIRAT. Pretty good piece. Then you get "Frutto Acerbo", which is an acoustic piece, that the band is often known to do. The band starts getting weired after this. You have "Aliante" which finds the band being funky, complete with clavinet. "India" is where the band tries to go for a more Eastern sound, complete with a synthesizer trying to imitate a sitar. Lots of bizarre electronic effects to be found too. "La Fabbricante D'Angeli" finds the band going back more to Le ORME territory, but I get rather bothered by some of the cheesy sounding synths that pop up here. "Notturno" is an experimental piece on piano that remind me of Brian ENO's ambient works. "Maggio" is the epic on this album, the first half of the piece is mainly a synth experiment, before the vocals kick in. Toni Pagliuca tended to use a lot of Eminent (string organ that sounds like a string synth) on this piece.

In my opinion, this album ends up sounding like a bit of a disjointed mess to me, and it took me a bunch of listens to appreciate. For me, it's better to start with "Felona e Sorona", then "Uomo di Pezza", in that order, before you come here.