CIRCUS 2000

One of Italy's early prog favourite of mine C2K's self-titled debut album is an outstanding piece of dream psych prog. The quartet (guitar trio plus the superb- sounding Aliotta singing) developed a great form of psychedelic prog, that can serve as the perfect example between psychedelic rock and pure prog rock, without sounding too much like most of the 60's groups (bar the Indian-laced Magic Bean) and the basic cheap psych artwork doesn't do justice to the music on the album. Careful with the track list as the chronology is not respected on the backsleeve (I hate that!!).

Some of those tracks (10 short ones) are pure joy and could've been easily written by Jefferson Airplane at their top form (a tad proggier though, but this came out two years after JA's creative peak) and, outside the closing Try All Day, there are no weak tracks. Among my faves are the superb opening I Can't Believe (Sonia leads her dog to Pavlov ;-) and its successor I Just Can't Stay, the Jeffersonian Must Walk Forever, the irresistible Try To Live (with its wild rhythms and moods), the enthralling The Lord, He Has No Hands (what a groovy tune) and the exciting I Am A Witch (and its weird incantations). The worst thing is that most of these songs appear way too short (longest just below 4 min) and you'd be curious as to how the group could've expanded on them.

Aliotta's voice is cross of Grace Slick and David Surkamp (of Pavlov's Dog), creating a bit a timbre and delivery between Madeleine Bell (Stones The Crow), Janita Haan (Babe Ruth) and Sonja Christina (Curved Air), but unlike the latter two, Sylvana can not only sing very well, but charm the hell out of us, singing in a fair English some proggy occult lyrics. But she's hardly alone in the group and Quartarone is an excellent guitarist, not afraid to use his fuzz box at good use, while drummer Lo Previte is shinning throughout the whole album (he will play in jazz-rock group Duello Madre) and Bianco's bass filling much of the gap when the other two compadres are running up and down all over the fretboards and toms. Some additional but un-credited flute (on I Just Can't Stay) and the odd sitar complete an album that does perfectly well without the slightest trace of keyboards.

A short album (just under the 30 min-mark), but indeed a real classic, all to sadly overlooked by progheads because of the lack of extended musical interplay, but I urge them to reconsider this album. Barely missing the flawless, this album is easily an essential piece of progdom, even comparing to their better-esteemed follow-up.