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A journey through the Italianprog scene |
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Finnforest 
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Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: The Heartland Status: Offline Points: 16913 |
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 Posted: March 09 2010 at 14:31 |
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Indeed. Keep it up Andrea.
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Nightfly
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Honorary Collaborator Joined: August 01 2007 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 3659 |
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Posted: March 09 2010 at 13:36 |
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Thanks Andrea, I've forgotten to look in this thread for a while being off the beaten track so to speak but there's always something fascinating to discover.
I'll try to check in here more often.
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andrea
Prog Reviewer 
Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: March 09 2010 at 12:08 |
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A MUSICAL WITH A STRONG MEDITERRANEAN FLAVOUR
BIZANTINA come from Firenze and have been active since 1996. Their repertoire features original tracks and traditional songs from the Mediterranean area re-arranged by the band...
More info:
Official website: http://www.bizantina.it/index.php
Edited by andrea - December 28 2010 at 08:32 |
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andrea
Prog Reviewer
Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: March 07 2010 at 03:01 |
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THE TRAINS AT DAWN: VIDEO DESTROYERS
I TRENI ALL'ALBA are prog band from the north western Italy that was formed between Aosta and Turin in 2002. The line up features Paolo Carlotto (acoustic and electric guitar), Daniele Pierini (acoustic and electric guitar), Sabino Pace (piano and keyboards) and Felice Sciscioli (drums and percussion). All the members are experienced musicians with different influences that managed to shape an amazing blend of folk and progressive rock.
In 2008 they released their first full length album Folk Destroyers for the independent label Smartz Records. The album was recorded with the help of some guest musicians that contributed to enrich the sparkling sound of the band, with counter bass, flutes, sax, congas, trumpet, violin, accordion and many other musical colours. Some sources of inspiration could be find in the album “Anime salve” by Fabrizio De André, then you can find reminders of samba, tarantella, Ravel, Piazzolla, Le Orme and PFM... The single tracks have no titles but each track is described in the beautiful booklet by a drawing by Domenico Sorrenti (Official website). The music flows away like in a long suite where quiet acoustic and folkloric passages melt in fiery percussion rides and vice versa. Well, now you can listen to the music watching some videos shot by eight different “video-makers”...
“Watch TV, buy, obey the authorities, do not think, do believe in the collective truth, no ideas, no imagination...” . The only vocal parts on this album are some ominous warnings freely taken from They Live, a 1988 film directed by John Carpenter where aliens rule on society and control humans through the TV broadcasts and mass media.
Some words taken from a book by the Italian writer Stefano Benni that you can find on the booklet try to describe the right approach to this work: “We should always feel like we are leaving the next day, or like we have just got back. Everything becomes more precious: what we leave and what we find. To hear the tiny voice of hope , beyond the screams of pain. It could be interesting to come to a train station to find it... hope.”. The name of the band, I Treni All’Alba, means the trains at dawn...
More info about the band:
Official website: http://www.itreniallalba.com/
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/itreniallalba
Smartz Records:
Official website: http://www.smartzrecords.org/dblog/storico.asp
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/smartzrecords Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Smartz-Records/151114943187 Edited by andrea - December 28 2010 at 08:37 |
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andrea
Prog Reviewer
Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: March 06 2010 at 11:08 |
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PSYCHEDELIA PADANA
BABA JAGA are a psychedelic prog band from Suzzara, near Mantova
After a demo (that you can legally download for free just clicking HERE), they have released a debut album, It's wonderful to stay sit.
More info about the band:
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/baba-jaga
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andrea
Prog Reviewer
Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: March 04 2010 at 14:55 |
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MURPLE LIVE
On March the 21st 2010 MURPLE will play live in Rome (Free entrance!)
More info:
The band will perform pieces from their debut album, Io Sono Murple and from their last one, Quadri di un'esposizione.
Murple was one of the many “one-shot bands” of Italian prog scene of the early seventies. After the release of their very good debut album in 1974, they disappeared...
“Io sono Murple” is a concept album featuring two long suites, about the feelings of a penguin compelled “to bow and act as a juggler”, “like a reed bowed by the wind”, “among the threads” of “a world of dwarfs and clowns” that “penetrates into your bones promising to be faithful without knowing any faith”… Well, I quoted part of the lyrics trying to explain the subject with words while the wonderful album cover try to explain it with images… Now all that you have to do is close your eyes and listen to, because if the subject is rather strange the music is excellent…
In 2007 three of the original members, Per Carlo Zanco (vocal, piano, keyboards), Duilio Sorrenti (drums, percussion) and Mario Garbarino (bass) reformed the band and, with the help of some guest musician like Sabina Gagliardi (vocals) and Edoardo Massimi (guitar), recorded a brand new album that was released by the independent label Btf in 2008. The album came out with a good packaging and an interesting booklet where you can find the explanation of the “conceptual work“...
In 1874 took place in St. Petersburg an exhibition dedicated to the work of the Russian painter Victor Alexandrovich Hartmann. Modest Mussorgsky, who was a friend of the painter, composed his piano suite “Pictures at an Exhibition” on the emotional wave that was provoked by the paintings...
Well, Murple’s work is not a rock interpretation of Mussorgsky music (like EL&P’s one), but an original work inspired by the same paintings. On the booklet you can find the images of the paintings with a short commentary, so you can match music and images and have a “promenade” through the tracks of the album. “Quadri di un’esposizione” is a good work, although not outstanding. Sometimes vintage and modern sounds are mixed together a little bit clumsily, but the music flows away smoothly enough, track after track, during its less than 34 minutes length...
The first painting, “Promenade & Gnomus”, represents a wicked dwarf wondering in a forest and a sound of spacey keyboards introduces a beautiful short symphonic track... “In the deepest dark of your wood / The meeting with that hidden being / Twisted limps spread fear...”. The second scene “Promenade & il vecchio castello” is settled in Italy where a troubadour sing his song before the walls of an old medieval castle in a sad landscape... The dreamy and baroque atmosphere is enriched by female vocals and by a good instrumental break in “Seventies style”... The third scene “Tuileries” is settled in Paris where some happy children play in a garden while the music is a short and joyful instrumental led by classical guitar and piano... The fourth painting, “Bydlo”, represents an heavy Polish chariot towed by oxen and here the music curiously swings from vintage sounds to definitely more “synthetic atmospheres”...
The fifth painting, “Il ballo dei pulcini”, represents some dancers disguised as chicks coming out from the eggs, while the music reminds me slightly of some works of Rondò Veneziano and Lucio Battisti. Next paintings “Samuel Goldenberg & Schmuyle” represent the meeting of two antithetic men and the music is built upon a “dialog” between piano and synthesizers.
“Promenade & Limoges” represents a noisy scene in the market square of Limoges and here pop sounds are intertwined with a short drum solo and a “vintage organ flavour”... The eight scene, “Catacombae”, depicts a visit to the catacombs of Paris and the music features a church choir and a good gothic atmosphere... The ninth painting represents “Baba Yaga”, a bizarre witch, and the music inspired by this image in my opinion is by far the weakest track on the album, definitively too “poppish” (some melodic lines reminds me of a song of Zucchero, “Solo seduto sun panchina del porto...”).
The last painting, “La grande porta di Kiev & Promenade”, represents a project for a gate in city of Kiev while the music reminds me of Le Orme’s “Verità nascoste” and features strings on a marching beat and a delicate piano outro...
However, if you are in Rome in this period, don’t miss the concert!
More info about the band:
Official Website: http://www.murple.it/www.murple.it/index.html
Edited by andrea - March 04 2010 at 15:05 |
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andrea
Prog Reviewer
Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: March 04 2010 at 08:29 |
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A NEW PROG-PROJECT FROM PADOVA
LAATIA is a psychedelic/space project from PADOVA featuring drummer Enrico Pintonello and multi instrumentalist Marco Martin. In 2009 they released their first demo that you can check just clicking HERE.
More info:
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/laatia
Well, Enrico Pintonello (MySpace - Facebook) plays also with APHELION, a “prog/fusion” band based in the near city of Treviso that in 2008 released a debut album for Lizard Records called Franticode, mixed by DEREK SHERINIAN...
More info:
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/aphelionspace
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andrea
Prog Reviewer
Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: March 02 2010 at 15:23 |
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A PRESENT FOR CLASSICAL GUITAR LOVERS...
Do you like classical guitar? Well, then you have to listen to this guitarist from Genova...
MAURIZIO ODDONE is an experienced guitarist that arranged for solo classical guitar some rock-prog favourites like “Stairway to Heaven” and “From The Beginning” ...
You can legally download for free his album White Lilium just clicking HERE
More info about the artist:
Edited by andrea - December 28 2010 at 08:31 |
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Finnforest
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: The Heartland Status: Offline Points: 16913 |
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Posted: March 01 2010 at 18:04 |
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Bravo! Arpia's album was one of my top 5 picks for the Collab poll. Amazing album.
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andrea
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Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: March 01 2010 at 14:19 |
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A WINTER TALE
Arpia are an Italian prog band from Rome that have been active since 1984. The present line up features multi instrumentalist and composer Leonardo Bonetti (vocals, acoustic guitar, bass and keyboards), Paola Feraiorni (vocals), Fabio Brait (acoustic guitar) and Aldo Orazi (drums). Racconto d'inverno (A Winter Story) is their third album and it seems to mark a change in the musical direction of the band. It is conceived as a long acoustic suite where melancholic musical landscapes are drawn by male and female vocals...
The rhythm section is never invasive, acoustic guitars are omnipresent, there are not spectacular solos but the music perfectly fits the mood of the lyrics and flows away describing with notes what Leonardo Bonetti described with words. In fact “Racconto d’inverno” is not only a musical work but also a novel. They’re like two faces of the same coin. It’s very difficult to appreciate the mood and the atmosphere of this album without knowing what it’s about. The main sources of inspiration for this opera were Stalker, a 1979 science fiction film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and “Racconto d’autunno” (An Autumn Story), a novel by the Italian writer Tommaso Landolfi (1908-1979)...
Well, cine-concerto plus readings!
According to Leonardo Bonetti it was impossible for him just to put in music and words the work of Landolfi and he decided to write his own novel to shape his feelings in a better way. The result in my opinion is very good and I enjoyed both book and music. The plot is settled somewhere in the mountains of Northern Italy, not far from a border, during the period 1943-1945. After the Italian army disbanded, Northern Italy was poisoned by the conflicts between Nazi-fascists and bands of partisans... “Crime and Pride / Our lady the Black Death / Is marching without pain...”. Desperation, death and hunger are the background for this work that tells the story of a desperate man, running away from this gloomy country looking for an escape. The fugitive arrives in a tumbling down villa built upon the ruins of an ancient abbey, a kind of labyrinth haunted by a strange presence... A man tries to help him to cross the border but they are trapped in winter weather and have to come back to the villa. Here dreams and reality melt while hope and love come out under the shadows of an impending death. The titles of the tracks are just like the titles of the chapters of a book. The tracks are not separate entities but movements of a long suite while lyrics recall the story narrated by the book evoking images and feelings. The contrast between male and female vocals is the strength of a bold and complex album with a peculiar “unplugged” rock sound. Then, on stage they alternate music and readings...
Well, quite different atmosphere if compared with Arpia’s previous album Terramare from where is taken this other video, inspired by Monsieur Verdoux, a film directed by Charlie Chaplin in 1947 about the story of an unemployed banker who becomes a serial killer... “If a single crime never pays / With nine killed wives you are a hero / Monsieur Verdoux!”
More info about the band:
Official Website: http://www.arpia.info/ARPIA/ENTER.html
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/arpia1
Last.fm: http://www.lastfm.it/music/Arpia
For more info about the book click HERE
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Finnforest
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: The Heartland Status: Offline Points: 16913 |
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Posted: March 01 2010 at 08:50 |
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Nice stuff. I like the Colmena project too. The keys add so much to their sound as opposed to just going with the basic rock package.
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andrea
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Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: March 01 2010 at 08:18 |
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BLADE RUNNER: ANOTHER PROG CINE-CONCERTO
Did you enjoy the post about RanestRane? Well, if you did I’m sure you’ll love this one too...
MEMORIA are a prog rock band from Roma that was formed in 1991 on the initiative of guitarist Marco Spatuzzi (MySpace). In 2004 they tried to comment with notes and words Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner, from the science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ...
More info about MEMORIA:
Official website: http://bladerunnerrock.com/
By the way, Memoria’s bass player Gianfranco Vigneri is also involved in an another melodic prog rock project called COLMENA...
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/colmenaitaly/
Official website: http://www.colmena.it/ Edited by andrea - March 01 2010 at 08:30 |
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andrea
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Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: February 28 2010 at 08:00 |
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Todd
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RPI / Heavy Prog Team Joined: December 19 2007 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 3472 |
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Posted: February 27 2010 at 21:00 |
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Andrea's and Jim's blogs are perfect examples of how to do it! Bravo! |
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Finnforest
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: The Heartland Status: Offline Points: 16913 |
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Posted: February 27 2010 at 09:18 |
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Boring????? Never i say!!!
 Nice work on these video montages man. My only complaint about all these great Italian books that keep coming out is that there are no English versions. There have been several lately. I know it is expensive to do an English edition but I'm sure there is a hungry RPI fan base out there who would buy them. I'm gonna have to write my own I guess....  |
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andrea
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Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: February 27 2010 at 09:13 |
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IL BALLETTO DI BRONZO AND THE ORGANIZED DELIRIUM
A book + CD about Il Balletto di Bronzo and its masterpiece Ys was published in 2009, Il Balletto di Bronzo e l'idea del delirio organizzato, by Gianmaria Consiglio
For more info about the book click here and send an e-mail to the author.
Facebook: link
Gianmaria Consiglio’s MySpace: link
The included CD features live tracks by Il Balletto di Bronzo and Gianni Leone recorded between 2001 and 2008 and some unreleased track recorded by Gianni Leone between 1985 and 1987, for more than 68 min. total length... Well, Gianni Leone reformed the band some years ago with a new line up and is still active on stage...
Actually, on the first listening you could find “Ys” a little bit boring… Foggy lyrics that draw dreadful images, gloomy vocals, anguish and fear dropping out every now and again… “A man is there with his face down / The ivy already covers his body / Black is the blood / On the wounds of his torn ears”… Definitely a hunting and dark mood hanging over the whole album. If you’re looking for something relaxing probably it’s better avoid it… But if you’re more patient I’m sure that you’ll find that the music is rather good… Gianni Leone is a very skilled musician with a solid classical background… Lyrics are not the strength of this album, but here vocals are more like an instrument interacting with the band to stir emotions… There are many changes of rhythm, wonderful keyboards and guitar solos, powerful bass lines and drumming, you can find here many influences blended together in a very interesting and personal way, from classical to jazz, from avant-garde to hard rock… All in all no wonder if many people love this work! And no wonder if Gianni Leone do not love this album anymore: he seems like a prisoner of “Ys” and after this album his inspiration almost run over… “And the darkness around him / Then was inside him…”…
Il Balletto di Bronzo MySpaces:
Un-official website: http://web.tiscali.it/ysland/
Edited by andrea - December 27 2010 at 15:51 |
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memowakeman
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: May 19 2005 Location: Mexico City Status: Offline Points: 13032 |
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Posted: February 26 2010 at 17:36 |
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You are awesome Andrea, love several of the videos you have posted!!
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Follow me on twitter @memowakeman |
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andrea
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Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: February 26 2010 at 16:05 |
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BREAKTHROUGH FROM HELL...
The track performed above is called “Evasione dagl’inferi” that means "Breakthrough from Hell", by Ethn’n’roll, a young band from Potenza that was formed in 2009. They blend Mediterranean influences with committed lyrics and a strange Oriental taste led by ukulele, bass and percussion...
More info: http://www.myspace.com/ethnnroll3
Edited by andrea - February 26 2010 at 16:06 |
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Finnforest
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Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: The Heartland Status: Offline Points: 16913 |
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Posted: February 25 2010 at 11:54 |
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Cool, Grazie for the new "friend" Andrea!
People may not realize that along with the vibrant RPI scene, Italy boasts a very deep well of folk and electronica/trance/psych groups, I run into them all the time.
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andrea
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Joined: May 20 2005 Location: Italy Status: Offline Points: 2064 |
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Posted: February 25 2010 at 11:49 |
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THE (DARK) LIGHT OF A NEW DAWN...
TEARS OF OTHILA are a dark “neo-folk” project from Genova that should be of some interest for folk-prog lovers... In 2008 they released Renaissance!, their debut album for ARK Records
More info:
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/tearsofothila
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