IL TEMPO DELLA GIOIA

Quella Vecchia Locanda was a two-and-through RPI group, and this album, Il Tempio Della Gioia, shows a remarkable classical influence. I'm a huge fan of classical music, and this album really is quite beautiful, but I definitely didn't enjoy it quite as much as I had hoped for.

Heavy classical influence, yes, but it feels kind of dry. Upon first listen, the only track that stood out to me as being very well done was "A Forma Di" which sounds like an epic with both baroque and post-romantic elements, and it kind of sounds like one of those "diamonds are forever" commercial, or one for perfume with images of lots of kissing. Very beautiful indeed. The track "E Accaduto Una Notte" includes a section near the end that sounds like an obvious influence by Holst's "Mars", but the rest of the track I found to be kind of bland. I hoped for more development and it never came. There are a few jazzy moments strewn throughout the album, which got my hopes up even more, but those moments are few and far between and never develop more than just being "moments". There is a minute of obvious rip-off of Arvo Part's "Fratres" on "Un Giorno", which is the wildest track on the album and seems fairly annoying with it's incongruent compositional structure, but it also is the jazziest track here.

I know there are others on this site that absolutely adore this album, but I'm definitely not in that group. I'm not sure what I was hoping for upon deciding to listen to this album but it definitely wasn't what the result ultimately came out as.