HARMONY OF THE SPHERES

As Zuffanti steadily moved on to procuce new projects over and over, is was more than apparent that Finisterre was not his main priority anymore.In 2000 the live of the band at Progday 97' was released in two versions, as ''Storybook'' in Europe by Moonjune Records and simply entitled ''Live at Progday 1997'' by Proglodite for the US market.The decline of the band was confirmed in 2001, when Finisterre officially took a break so the band members could focus on their various emerging projects.However in 2002 an interesting double-CD compilation was released on Mellow Records.

This is more than a simple compilation, as ''Harmony of the spheres'' serves a variety of different roles, containing live Finisterre material, unreleased tracks of both Hostsonaten and Finisterre, demo versions of already known tracks, covers of songs by Camel, Genesis and Van Der Graaf Generator as well as personal arrangements by Finisterre's keyboardist Boris Valle and Fabio Zuffanti (under the project Quadraphonic), ending up in a sum of tracks clocking at over 2.5 hours!The live material of Finisterre consists of three tracks from the band's debut in more improvised versions but keeping all the grandeur and deep atmosphere of the compositions, great Italian Prog with plenty of symphonic and Jazz elements.The unreleased tracks of the band are interesting as well, nice and atmospheric Italian Prog with evident psychedelic influences and a tendency towards atmospheric passages.Hostsonaten's bonus material goes from hypnotic Post-Rock to full-blown Italian Symphonic Rock with organ and mellotron in evidence and again holds plenty of interest.

The demo versions of the Finisterre's tracks from the self-titled debut do not differ much from the studio versions.The sound of course is very raw and the production is rather rough, but all the intensity of the music and the great instrumental parts are present.Mr. Zuffanti has also chosen three Classic Prog tracks to be covered by his band, both Genesis' ''Harlequin'' and Camel's ''Nimrodel'' carry the same beautiful arrangements but the surprise comes with Van Der Graaf Generator's ''Refugees'', where Peter Hammill's voice has been now replaced by an operatic female singer and the track is driven exclusively by a string section, ending up to be a very positive whole new experience.

Boris Valle's solo material is much related to Hostsonaten's music.A hypnotic, ethereal and dreamy mix of Ambient music, Folk and Post-Rock with great flute and trombones throughout.Unfortunately I cannot type the same for Zuffanti's Quadraphonic effort.A 20-min. repetitive listening of Electronics and Ambient with mechanical programmed drums and nervous loops, which sounds a bit interesting, but fails to impress included in such a release, not to add that is way too overstretched.

To summarize, ''Harmony of the spheres'' is a good to great - and very different -compilation of tracks not only for Finisterre newbies but also for those deep into both Finisterre and Hostonaten releases.The unreleased material, the powerful energetic live cuts as well as the good cover tracks are likely to please all fans of diverse and flexible prog sounds.Strongly recommended, it is certain you will find plenty to like among these 150 minutes of artistic music...3.5 stars.