ARIA

It's been a long while that a not yet known to me artist was able to really impress me, in fact Captain Beefheart and Amon Düül II were the last and that's been some time ago.

Yes, I have discovered good music meanwhile, able to indeed impress me, Andre Demay's Generic, Farm's Farm, Pell Mell's Marburg, Yezda Urfa's Boris, Gryphon's Red Queen to Gryphon Three and Harmonium's "cinquime saison" to name just a few. Still, no new Beefhearts or Düüls, until....

It did start with Enzo Capuano's "Storia Mia Scritta" I need to say. Discovered just a little earlier than Aria, a marvellous album that I seem to have played 55 times last three months. Capuano did really trigger my extended interest in RPI, music that I of course knew and appreciated through PFM and the like, but never really in a way that I could place it in my personal top 5 of musically interesting genres. But as so often appears, there's a near bottomless pit of yet to be discovered musical gems, and unlike Alice, who landed at a certain moment, I'm still falling and still discovering. Progressive music in a way is like science; at the moment you think you've discovered the last to be known secret of your quest it just only reveals the next uncountable number of roads to the solution you then know is further away than ever. Scientifically it's frustrating perhaps, musically it's a gift :).

So, and then you encounter Sorrenti and his "Aria". I learned to distinguish between "no","nice for the archive" and "store for later checking" by just listening to short fragments of music while trying to wade through large numbers of albums, because there's simply not enough time in any human life to listen to every single piece of progressive music. Aria made the "checking" list. Interesting at first glance, different, piano, violin, an unheard before style of chanting, layered harmonic dissonants (Beefheart taught me dissonants can be very harmonic, thanks so much captain for showing me this hidden beautiful world!), indeed, worth a further check.

And yes, I found one. One of the few pieces of musical artistry that really stand out. A debut album, even adding to the magic. Magnificent in my humble opinion. And can I explain why? Tell you why it's worth to give it a try? No, I can't. I don't know why particularly this music so impresses me, it's like soup, the whole can taste so well, while also the ingredients are known, but why specifically the combination tastes so well is difficult to say. Does it matter? No.

Well ok, one hint then; is it weird that - while the piano play on La Mia Mente is so intense - you seriously consider how to get INTO the left loudspeaker? And no, I don't use nothing (good music can open up your mind anyway).

NotAProghead's remark on wives, girlfriends etc. proved to be right; this is the only one album ever that made my wife in the 20 years that I'm with her came to me to ask (demand) me to switch it off. The music already baffled me in that it did so much to me, but that it also could invoke this kind of requests amazed me even more, no reward apparently unless you seriously give it a chance.

Masterpiece, five stars.