AL VOLO

Even a RIO artist sometimes must go to the supermarket to buy food, soaps and this kind of things. If you are already in the 80s when having a vibraphone instead of a fairlight is considered excessively experimental you can have an idea of why Stormy Six made an album like this.

The style is still Avant, IMO, the lyrics have completely lost the political connotations and even if still clearly left-winged they are more concentrated on "society" and "individuals". A sort of Italian Roger Waters, but there's an evident change in the musical direction: no more violin or clarinet. It's like in the 80s only keyboards are allowed.

There's a lot of melody even inside unusual passages. The choir in "alpine" style on "Ragionamenti" is very original, but this album seems to be a turn back to the more classical RPI and this is maybe one of the reasons of their disbanding. You can't produce pure art and eat steaks at the same time. Even one sixth of the Stormies may have a family at home...

So being them true innovative artists they have probably taken the right decision in disbanding after this release that I think they may have disliked.

I don't dislike it anyway. The fact that it's less avant or more approachable than the two previous releases doesn't mean that it's bad. There are unusual passages and sounds as well as melodic moments of RPI flavor. Don't forget that they're Italians.

Of course if you expect to be eating chocolate and find marmite you will be disappointed, but you can realize that marmite is not too bad in its own.

The bad with this album is that remains in the middle, not completely RIO and not completely RPI but the musicians are the same high skilled guys of Macchina Maccheronica.

Don't treat them too badly.

3 stars.