II

Not an easy concept, starting from the album title: why should a band call "II" its third full length album? Effectively the title is more than a joke: II graphically represents a binary (binary and trains are the core of the concept), but II in binary numbers is "3". This could give the listener an idea of the kind of concentration that this album requires.

Not a challenging avant thing, absolutely. Just something intelligent enough to cause thinking, mainly to Italian speaking people as unfortunately the lyrics are in Italian.

Musically speaking the influence of King Crimson is evident, but it's elaborated in a very original way. Personally I hear a connection between this album and the last output from the Argetinian Alejandro Matos. The difference is in the vocal harmonizations and in some very intriguing passages. Probably the difference is caused by the fact that Matos is mainly a singer-songwriter and Akt is a band, so their tracks are more complete and various.

My personal favorite track is the shortest: "Frenetica Dialettica dell'Etica", together with the closing one, "Passeggero" which proceeds through various sections, from a nice acoustic intro through a fantastic interlude at avbout minute 6 which brings back to the main theme of the track.

The vocals can initially cause some perplexity, but they fit very well in the economy of the songs and sometimes reveal unexpected harmonies.

One thing that I strongly suggest to the listener is copying the lyrics from their website and google them. Knowing what the songs are about helps a lot......well, honestly it's not very clear to me what this album is about. This is what I mean by "causing thinking".

The train is waiting on a dead binary...Probably Akt and Matos would like each other, or probably they will hate...doesn't matter. The album is great and usually when the closing track is that good, it leaves the listener wishing to restart. The album can be downloaded from the AKT website. They only ask for the listener's comments in change of 50 minutes of excellent music.

The lyrics are challenging. I'm afraid of writing something completely wrong about them. It will take me more listens to understand them, if I'll ever do. Anyway I strongly suggest listening to this album, and if you haven't heard of AKT before, give an ear also to their previous releases. Blemmebeya was voted one of the best albums of 2012 by Progarchives.