INSPIRED BY... M.S.M. PLAYS THE SNOW GOOSE

I recently got this CD, having never heard of the Italian group before. But the music is naturally very familiar: they have adapted CAMEL's most succesful album and added an Italian language narrative (translated from Paul Gallico's novella from 1941) into it. Fabio Fantin who seems to be relatively young man acts as both the narrator and Rhayader, and occasionally there are dialogues. Fantin is quite a sugary and empathetic narrator, giving it a bit childish feel.

One should have some basic understanding of Italian, so that one could take it as a language course simultaneously, otherwise it gets quite frustrating to have these long narrative sequences on almost each track, boosting the total length to over 61 minutes. But frankly I don't think I'd enjoy English- language narration much better. Maybe even less, since Italian is such a beautiful language actually. But it can't be helped: that goddamn narration always spoils the musical enjoyment to some degree; I have never really enjoyed e.g. Rick Wakeman's or Jeff Wayne's works with narration either.

Musically speaking, this version is very fresh, airy and clean, giving a big role to the guesting player Anna Angelone's flute. I can't tell if I would enjoy it (imagining of course that the narration wasn't there!) more than the original Camel album - by the way, I haven't yet heard their remake version -, instead it makes me think how excellent the work itself is, how fine melodies and atmospheres. Also it makes me think that if I was a musician the Snow Goose album would be a pleasure to perform.

Music is absolutely great, and whatever differences there are to the original (others than the inevitable extensions to back up the narration) they mostly just increase the freshness. But I can't rate this more than three stars... A pity. But if the very idea of having The Snow Goose with Italian narration sounds good to you, this is surely worth having.

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