IL LIBRO DEI TROPI

Tropos in Greek is a rethoric deviation from the original meaning of a word, extending this meaning to a larger pool of objects. Looks complicated? In music it's even more complicated: it's a compositional technique used by musicians like Hauer and Schoenberg.

Said so, it's possible that this album is full of tropos, but my ears aren't educated enough to decide wheter it's true. Anyway, "Il Libro dei Tropi" is an Italian sentence and it means exactly "The book of the Tropos".

Whatever the meaning is, this album is great. There are no fillers, no uselessly dissonant passages, and everything sounds perfectly planned.

The first thing that impressed me, is how it has switched my Canterbury sensors on. Throughout the album there are songs, or parts of songs, that remind me to Soft Machine, Gentle Giant and GonG, with the exeption of the long last track which has a simil-reggae tempo of the kind that's usual in Quantum Fantay albums. On the final part of "Night Crossing" the keys sound like Rick Wright on "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", too.

The album is extremely consistent. You can listen to the whole without gaps and it flows perfectly. Of course, it's not an easy album, but it's not too challenging: the less harmonic parts are well balanced and most of all, you can perceive the structure behind each track. This makes it very enjoyable.

"Passed The Storm", "Brunette" and in particular "Undertow" are excellent. I would love to see this album analyzed by Doug Helvering or any true expert able torecognize the tropos which I suspect are in every track.

I've never heard Tom Aldrich and Zolder Ellipsis before, now I know that I was missing something. For lovers of Avant and Canterbury, but also accessible to any other listener.