COLD NOSE

Franco Falsini is an Italian multi-instrumentalist and mastermind behind the unique band 'Sensations Fix'. He composed this solo album between SF's 'Portable Madness' and Finest Finger' albums, and the result is, well, almost another SF album, just performed solo !! The LP is set out simply with, Side 1 - 'Parte 1' - 10.23 and 'Parte 2' - 6.55, and side 2 - 'Parte 3' - 20.57 (there must be slight timimg discrepencies between vinyl and CD formats). Each part seems to be a medley made up of various snippets of musical ideas, presenting a truly experimental extravaganza. The first mood is typically SF, mysterious, dark and floaty, with processed guitar and those semi-tone riffs he loved to use. Falsini also handles synths, and bass - he seems so immersed in his own musical universe it really sounds like a full band but without any drums. Some of the fragments work, although at some points, his ideas can meander a little, and not every section is consistently mind-blowing, but 'Cold Nose', which is a soundtrack to a film of the same name (or 'Naso Freddo', in Italian - don't know what it's about), is definately a must for Sensations Fix fans, spacey guitar freaks, and Italian prog in general. Overall, an excellent album.

Better known for his works with Sensation Fix, in 1980 Franco Falsini released in a relative discretion the album Cold Nose. This album features reasonable spaced out epics dominated by synthesized guitars, electronic effects and eerie cosmic moves. The result is sometimes pleasant, evocative and relaxing. A nice travelling day into a magnified-abstract universe. However the materials and technologies used for this effort can disconcert a few ones because it sounds really dated. Fragment of light is a epically spacious piece based on attractice guitar riffs covered by very light-coulorful guitar leads with a nice technical touch. Some compositions sound almost cheesy and kitschy today (Strange about the Hands...) notably due to the use of cheap synth effects. Gold Nose Story features some delicate-tripped out minimal melodies. The album closes with a couple of boring electronic rock songs using pop-ish grooves and utterly mediocre radio-friendly melodies. Not very challenging or even surprising. Easy listening stuff that should be recommended only to appreciate Falsini's particular guitar playing. Recommended to fans of Steve Hillage, Tim Blake and others 70's light cosmic soundscapers.

Entering the sunset on feathered legs

Ever since Siddhartha reached the upper shelf of his inner commode, Buddhists all around the world have been trying to duplicate his feat through numerous of different approaches. Some say that through walking for long periods of time unmarked by the everpresent weakness of your tiring and aching body, you slowly shed yourself of the bad things you´ve done. Boiled seriously down to a sticky substance, life is an eternal struggle with but a few moments of clear skies - where you are able to understand or commit to life, and a brief shattering light of insight makes you feel happy and fulfilled as a human being. Well to each its own, but during one of my daily walks in the northern parts of Jutland, where everything at the moment is encrusted in transparent ice and filled with relentless breezes that will tear the skin off your face, I think I got what the old chubby meditating guy was talking about.

Putting this album on is like slipping into a cold, but somehow cosy and gentle bath. Franco Falsini is a true master of creating atmosphere and a musical environment that simultaneously evokes relaxation and eeriness in the listener. The guy is a master behind both the guitar as well as the synths, which he uses like musical landscapes that lurk in the background like silhouette mountains engulfed in early morning mist. His guitar work makes me think of Manuel Göttsching, when he went solo and submersed himself in chill pill land. This album should definitely please fans of Ashra, Sensations Fix (Franco Falsini´s original psychedelic band), slow and soft Krautrock and maybe fans of Vangelis and Tangerine Dream.

Playing everything on here including the bass, Falsini adds an uncanny symbiosis between the instruments, which is really difficult to do in a band, unless you know your band mates´ every move and upon several occasions have spent the night together jamming until your fingers erase themselves and you ARE your instrument. The danger however of being a one-man band is the lack of emotion and feel you get from other people´s creativity and ideas, but Falsini does a very good job of playing with himself (?), without ever sounding dull or uninspired. This is also one of the only albums I own where I truly enjoy the synthesized guitars. They work so well with the slow and mumbling bass work, that it seems as if they secretly were sleeping together at the time.

Being a drummer myself, I usually miss them on records like these, but I find myself forgetting everything when listening to this, even beats and my overpowering need for fills and rhythmic explosions - forgetting the road I´m walking on - the frosty fields around me - the nervous bird twittering - and all of a sudden, upon looking at a sky painted in purple and fiery red, I reach some sort of peace and quiet - now able to breath normally and look at things in a manner, that is robbed of any kind of self-inflicted camouflage. Well shiver me timbers!! Where is the nearest lotus tree?

Franco Falsini is the main man behind psychedelic proggers SENSATIONS' FIX. After a couple of highly rated albums by the band Franco was approached about doing a movie soundtrack. Much in the way PINK FLOYD used to get asked. The subject matter was cocaine (cold nose) and they felt that the spacey, psychedelic music he did with his band would suit the subject matter. Well the soundtrack got done but the movie...not so much. I wonder why ? Too many frozen noses ? Who knows ? The music here is really good. Drifting, dreamy, very far out. Falsini it should be noted plays all the instruments and there are no drums.

"Parte 1" is beautiful as we get bass, guitar and synths that create a melancholic but gorgeous soundscape. A change 7 minutes in as we get guitar only but then it re-builds. "Parte 2" kicks in right away with a more "in your face" type of sound. The guitar solos over top 5 minutes in. A change before 6 1/2 minutes to the end.

"Parte 3" is the side long closing suite. We get pulsating sounds as the guitar solos early on. A change after 3 1/2 minutes as synths come to the fore and they're quite loud. Electronics join in too. It changes back to the earlier sound after 7 minutes. Another change 11 minutes in as it becomes spacey and atmospheric. It kicks in after 14 minutes with guitar and more. Vocals after 16 minutes as it settles. This is a beautiful section that is quite spacey to end it.

This fits in nicely with the other SENSATIONS' FIX albums I own. Beautiful stuff.

Italy's Sensations' Fix member Franco Falsino's `Cold Nose', his one solo effort, is a truly sublime instrumental electronic album, despite coming in 1980, therefore after many of the defining works of the genre from the decade before, but certainly no less essential Just as important as his first few Sensations' Fix albums from the early 70's, this one ditches the intimidating spacerock for a more thoughtful, placid and slowly evolving ambient work. A soundtrack to an abandoned movie about cocaine (hence the title), totally devoid of percussive elements, it features just three drawn-out electronic explorations to wrap the listener up in comforting tranquillity. It frequently takes on a softer, joyful sound that lifts to the clouds, with some of the same blissful and low-key drifting electric guitar soloing as found on the Manuel Gottsching/Ashra albums `New Age of Earth' and `Blackouts', and anyone who enjoys those will want to place this one alongside them.

What particularly makes the album so special is that it seamlessly blends a number of styles together to make for a varied and fascinating work. It incorporates more guitars that usual for the electronic/ambient genre, so this helps provide a crossover appeal for listeners who usually wouldn't give the style much time. It's not slow moving or borderline uneventful in the way some people find drone music to be, and every section the compositions move through have a definite purpose. Add in some hypnotic and immersive New Age tastefulness, and everything comes together with restraint, subtlety and endless beauty.

It makes more sense to play the album as a whole, rather than comparing the three self-titled parts individually. But you'll experience drifting tiptoes of mysterious electric piano, rippling shimmering cool synths and delayed distorting gentle electric guitar soloing as you float through the galaxy, with just the barest hint of danger and unease. Time holds no meaning, seconds stretch and blur to minutes, as middle-eastern meditative qualities spill over murmuring bass, chiming guitars and bubbling rippling effects. Buzzing walls of electronic humming and pulsing synths sooth and comfort, almost triumphant tendrils of electronic wisps wrap around sighing wordless harmonies to carry you away to heavens of spiritual escape. This 37 minute trip works even better just from looping it, playing it over and over into infinity.

`Cold Nose' is just as impressive as the defining German electronic masters vintage work, the dreamier flights of early Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream and Steve Hillage's `Rainbow Dome Music'. It also compliments the proper Sensations' Fix albums nicely, providing a pleasing come-down to their more intense space journeys.

A wonderful timeless chillout to drift away to, where being lost has never been so wondrous.

Four stars.

When the secret history of rock 'n' roll is finally written, the music of Franco Falsini will need its own special appendix. The Italian guitarist and founder of the band SENSATIONS' FIX was never a celebrity (even in his own country), but he continues to maintain the lonely vigil of a true musical ascetic, with an artist's disregard for wider acclaim or passing trends.

Falsini's only solo album, the soundtrack to a never-released film about cocaine abuse, is spiritually linked to his larger body of work within the Fix, but stands apart in its home-grown electronic minimalism: a cult album from a cult figure already outside the glare of the Progressive Rock spotlight. It certainly doesn't sound cocaine-induced, consisting almost entirely of dreamlike arpeggiated guitars and synthesizers, gently rhythmic despite the lack of percussion. The mood is introspective, private, and often mesmerizing, beautifully so in the closing minutes of "Part III", when Falsini's wistful voice begins drifting into and out of the only genuine song on the album.

The music isn't easily located on the dominant synth-rock / space-rock axis of its time, in much the same way that Sensations' Fix never really fit into any convenient Prog Rock mold, least of all the pigeonhole of classic RPI. The only reliable point of reference is Falsini's unique guitar style, clearly modeled after ROBERT FRIPP but possessing a voice and texture all its own, instantly recognizable once heard.

I wouldn't exactly call it a timeless album: you can accurately carbon-date the effort by the half-life of its old-school analog equipment and production. But the music itself is ageless, sounding not unlike a whispered secret half-heard in passing, almost insubstantial and yet oddly indelible forty years later.