IL PAESE DEL TRAMONTO

This album has disappointed me. I raved about the fresh new voice coming from Unreal City's debut album two years ago but still felt that the young men had some growing to do. The 'growth' on display here is not the direction I hoped for. Here I see far less presence of vocals--which mystifies me when such an outstanding voice as Emanuele Tarasconi is available. Plus, there is often a poor mix of vocals into the music (recording, engineering sound mix is not yet a strength of theirs). I find myself reacting irritably to an unusually long list of "old" or "cheap" keyboard sounds (as if trying to step into the shoes of 1970s BANCO DELLA MUTUO SUCCORSO using keyboards from the 80s or 90s like Casio and Ensoniq). Also, sometimes there seems to have been the choice made to go the easier route rather than the more impressive and complex way. Too bad! Then there are other times where rather odd and unusual, even discordant choices were made to fit passages into songs in ways that just feel . . . odd and discordant. Still, this is not a bad album by any means. There is a high standard of ideas and performances on display here. There are even a few five star songs, like "Caligari" (10:05) (9/10), "Lo schermo di pieta (Kenosis)" (7:54) (9/10), and the album's ultimate epic, "Ex tenebrae lux" (20:35) (9/10). I would just like to see/hear less jumping around, more cohesive coherence, less reliance on the sound and sounds of their RPI predecessors.