74 GIORNI

This is a great album. The first thing you'll probably notice listening to it are the natural pleasant female vocals. We start out with 3 mostly vocal oriented tracks and one short nice instrumental. From these the first is best i feel. Thereafter the album really takes off and becomes more varied with excellent vocal parts alternating terrific instrumental interplay.Highlights for me are the 5th, 7th and especially the 10th track (great interplay between flute and guitar),i couldn't find any weak tracks on this record.

Since female singers tend to give music a specific style and the album is italian it might seem logical to compare it with Aries from 2005. And indeed there are some similarities.Apart from the female vocals both albums have a modern somewhat spacy guitar/synth based sound in common, we're definitely not on 70's italian hammond organ ground here.

There are also a number of differences though.Simona Angelieoni really defines Aries's sound with her haunted somewhat sad voice while the music generally just backs up her singing often concluding with excellent but relatively straight forward melancholic choir synth or howling guitar accompanied by organ.

Simona Rigano's vocals are obviously very important for Conqueror too but she isn't as dominant as the other Simona is on the Aries piece leaving more room for instrumental improvisation. And it shows.

There's more variation in the instrumental sections here, Conqueror generally being more subtle often gradually building up the tension using mostly flute,string synth,electic piano, moog and guitar. These sections sometimes have a purely symphonic but also sometimes a slightly jazzy/spacy quality.

Actually I'd sooner compare the instrumental playing here with Finisterre's Storybook and In Limine. Conqueror has a somewhat warmer sound than Finisterre though and the band is never as jazzy or experimental as Finisterre can be especially on In Limine.

Concluding the comparision, i prefer the impressive vocals on Aries to the more light hearted vocals (despite the sad story) on 74 Giorni. Actually despite the vocal sections being very good i find they resemble each other a bit at times. This might be the only small minus i can find with this album. On the other hand i find the instrumental playing on this piece to be more varied and interesting. As you can see Simona Rigano has a big part here too, being the keyboard player of the band.

Conqueror hasn't invented totally new music but they've picked up ideas from various genres and blended them in a very nice and accessible way.Together with Notabene's Sei lacrime d'ambra this is my favorite Italian album from 2007 sofar. 4.25 stars, highly recommended.

Dirk