SPRINGTIDES

I only knew this Italian band by name but they surprised me very positively with this compilation CD with songs recorded between 1992 and 2002. The musical brainchild is multi- instrumentalist Fabio Zuffanti, he mentions in the booklet: "These songs are taken by different kind of supports (tapes, CD, DAT, etc.) and the sound quality is not ever very good but I hope you can like them becasue in these songs you can find the roots of the Hostsonaten works in this 10 years, thanks to you all!".

Indeed, especially on the first track the recording quality is at the level of a bootleg but in general the sound is decent, absolute not disturbing (to me). The first three songs "Ace of sunlight", "Starfields" and "Seascape" sound mellow featuring fine guitar and some saxophone and Mellotron. The English vocals are mediocre, if you are Italian, please sing your wonderful native language! Then the next lush progrock tracks "Season of Eve" (a bit bombastic mid-tempo piece with irritating computer drums but it only was meant to explain the musicians how to play the parts), "Aries" (very alternating featuring church-organ and a fiery, R&R inspired guitar solo), "Rainbow" (an exciting composition with a sitar intro and then dynamic and sumptuous progrock with duo-keyboards), "Morning" (a splendid track with wonderful flute samples, sensitive electric guitar, sparkling piano, impressive Mellotron waves and many shifting moods, this is Hostsonaten at their best!) and "Living stone and 1st reprise" (first a swinging rhythm with a strong bass sound and then a compelling climate delivering howling electric guitar and majestic choir-Mellotron and beautiful piano, GREAT!). The final two, new songs "The night the moon fell down" and "Crossing the bar" contain acoustic guitar and vocals and will appear one day on an entire acoustic album Fabio hopes.

After listening to this compilation CD, I will for sure try to listen to more albums from Hostsonaten!

Three years of silence and Fabio Zuffanti's Hostsonaten return with a so called ''Collection of Rare & Unreleased Tracks'' between 1992-2002,like if they knew it would be a long hiatus between ''Springsong'' and the next official studio release.Now this album contains mostly unreleased material during the 10 year existence of the band but also a few of known tracks in their demo version.Again the album was released through Mellow Records.

This work/material is actually good.The music is mainly laid-back Prog Rock with mostly Folk and Symphonic/Classical influences with touches of Jazz,but there are also a couple of dynamic compositions with dominant organ,fiery guitars and enough complexity.Regarding the demo versions of ''Seascape'',''Season of Eve'', ''Living stone and 1st Reprise'' and ''Morning'',the tracks are great but they lack in the production section compared to the album versions and IMO production is a strong point in Zuffanti's works.The rest of the (unreleased) tracks are good,nothing exceptional,close to Hostsonaten's style,mainly slow tempo acoustic numbers with folk leanings,sensitive vocals and a symphonic touch.It is actually a decent album for playing it in the background.

Rating ''Springtides'' is hard.For anyone who hasn't listened to Hostsonaten,this is a good introduction,although most of their studio releases are far better,and a 3 star rating is pretty fair.For the rest,who are already in a listening touch with the band (as I am),this album is rather useless despite the unreleased material,as it sounds pretty similar to what the band has presented in the past,unless you are a freak out collector of anything related to Italian past,present and future prog...2.5 stars.