DENTRO

In 1976 La Bottega Dell'Arte presented their new single ''Amore nei ricordi'' and the following year ''Che dolce lei'' was just a small taste of their upcoming second studio album.This was to be entitled ''Dentro'', recorded in January/February 1977 at the Quattro 1 Studio in Roma and marked the second full-length product of the band for EMI.

No surprise, the band moves even further from their early progressive roots, as there was hardly any room for serious Prog releases around the time, and basically it could be described as a Symphonic Pop album, combining the early Classical-drenched color of La Bottega Dell'Arte's style with the accesible vein of Italian Pop music.The songwriting however remains top notch with some incredible Italian-flavored melodies, amazing vocals by Fernando Ciucci and deep orchestrations with atmospheric keyboards.Guitars and bass are still among the basic instruments, but the band has chosen to use them as supporting instruments, gving full space to the soft piano lines and the orchestral keyboards of Romano Musumarra and Piero Calabrese.The rare organ echoes still burst something from the romantic Italian Prog of the first half of the 70's, but be warned that the majority of the contained pieces follow a very ballad-like style with low tempos, melodious textures and sweet polyphonic choruses.The Classical-influenced Moog synth performance in the short ''Incontro'' and the symphonic-oriented and definitely rockier tracks of ''Musicante'' and ''L'ultima storia'' still hold similarities with the music of BANCO DEL MUTUO SOCCORSO and are nice examples of soft Italian Prog.

''Dentro'' was possibly the best commercial success of La Bottega Dell'Arte.The contract of the band with EMI expired with the 79' album ''L'avventura'', which showed the quintet entering the lines of melodic Italian Pop for good.Singer Fernando Ciucci left the band in 1981 and the rest of the line-up released another Pop-oriented album, ''Forza 4'' in 1984 on Nuovo Sound Records, before disbanding the next year.Musumarra and Massimo Calabrese worked later as producers, while Piero Calabrese opened his own recording studio.

The last effort by La Bottega Dell'Arte with minor progressive interest.The second side contains some beautiful tracks of soft Italian Sympho Rock, the first is full of delicate, poppy material, which is nevertheless well-crafted.Recommended in general, unless you totally dislike any accesible content in your listening experiences.