All Prog From Italy Appreciation Thread

If is an Italian prog band from Molise and “Morpho Nestira” is their fourth album, their best so far. It’s an excellent self production with a good sound quality and an amazing art cover. “Morpho Nestira” is a concept album about consumerism and the music perfectly fits the lyrics with an interesting mix of influences ranging from Pink Floyd to more conventional rock forms coming from the eighties, the “Age of Plastic”.

“Relax boy, don’t worry please, we’ll tell you what you will need / The deal is fair, we do thing right / We’ll just take all of your time / You need, we think so, to make more money and waste it all...”. The opener “You Need” is sparking and straightforward, and, despite it’s probably closer to a piece of Bachman and Turner Overdrive or Ironhorse than to something that you would classify as prog, I think that it’s a beautiful start for this work where consumerism is described like a vampire sucking out your time and your freedom...

“Morpho Nesira Part 1” is a good instrumental where happy samba rhythms melts in a tainted electric guitar riff leading to the following “10 Years Old”, a track that “runs like hell” trying to describe the need to grow up in hurry to keep up with life in an ill society and in a broken family... “I’m 10 year old / I walk alone / I feel so bad / I walk alone / But I’m not scared...”. Growing up alone you risk to feel just like a background noise on this world and on the next track “Background Noise” there’s an angry “plastic” sound... “I feel like I’m background noise, just background noise / We’re an average band with this song to play / We stand among a million sounds that build up this space / Will we catch you attention?”...

“Thirsty” is beautiful ballad that seems to come out from “The Wall” and is about a broken dream that leaves you weak and thirsty of love and power... Rag piano notes introduce the next track “Learning To Communicate” where modern and retro sounds get along... “Now I feel lonely so I look for someone dot net / You are so pretty, no need to go out to go bed / Ooh don’t you think it’s funny? Ooh it’s so funny! / We can have sex for weeks all safe behind the screen / / But we will never meet”... The “moony” and acoustic “Unknown Eyes” is another track about loneliness while next one “Poison” is introduced by a marching beat and is more straightforward and aggressive... “They filled my empty spaces and I bought everything they said / Slowly moving in my head their poison melted my brain / How can I get out?”

“I want back my dreams, my doubts, my fire / I want back my soul, my time, my life / Now I’m in front of you, I’ve got no masks / I’m naked”... “Naked” is another good track that reminds of Pink Floyd and that leads to the long instrumental “Morpho Nestira Part 2”, “le plat de resistance” on this album where the band showcase an excellent musicianship and a definitively more progressive sound...

The long and spacey “Empty”, where life is described as an empty hole to fill and to explore, and the light “Oceans Of Time” are a good conclusion for an album that is definitively worth to check out. “Now we must all grab our lives, spread our wings, taste our time / We’ll have oceans of time”...

The Italian Oldfield?

It sounds astonishingly like the case at times. Listening to Celestion sounds like some lost ‘70s Oldfield album with waves of cascading acoustic guitar in these tight, repetitive structures built around quickly picked notes that change and move with subtlety as the track unwinds. Riccardo Zappa is a hugely acclaimed Italian instrumentalist who has released many albums over the years, the earlier ones in a progressive vein while later ones (which I have not heard) apparently moving more towards a new age musical style. Labels passed on the Milan based Zappa at the time of this first album and it was eventually picked up by a small label called Divergo who were very well rewarded for their gamble over time. Celestion turned out to be quite a hit for a time when music was turning more mainsteam. This album boasts a very unique sound which is the result of Zappa’s use of an amplified Ovation guitar subject to all manner of electronic manipulations. The sounds that Zappa obtained with his unconventional approaches are easily obtained today with the use of recording software but in 1977 all of this was very hard work in the studio. The album moves from more fully realized pieces like “Frammenti” at ten minutes long, with drums and interesting arrangements, to the more solo guitar pieces like “Tre e Quattro Quarti” which has a “horse in hilly countryside” outdoor feel to it, like Oldfield’s “On Horseback.” The title track bursts into some funky light-fusion rhythms and is the other standout track here after “Frammenti.” The finale “Mirage” layers different acoustics over hand percussions before bringing in bass and full kit in the second half. While I must admit this is a “good” album at the least it fails to stoke much enthusiasm for me. Zappa is very talented and I find this album interesting but not satisfying in the way that “Ommadawn” or “Incantations” are. Oldfield seems to have a more expansive overall vision to his sound whereas “Celestion” seems to be somewhat less exciting to my prog ear. An album for acoustic guitar lovers to be sure and likely a pleaser for Oldfield fans as well, but I don’t know how important it is for the wider audience of progressive rock fans. The BTF/VM reissue is a gatefold mini-lp sleeve with brief Bio and not much else, so the Mellow issue would be fine here if you wanted to save a few bucks. 3 stars, barely.