ARIA

Alan Sorrenti is an Italian artist from Naples that in 1972 released an interesting debut "prog-style" album, "Aria", for the label Harvest. This work is an excellent effort to blend acoustic and dreamy atmospheres with experimental sounds and vocal acrobatics. The most evident source of inspiration here is Tim Buckley but the Neapolitan artist on this work managed to shape a peculiar and original sound that is really worth listen to.

The opener is the long, complex and claustrophobic title track... "Air, I'm looking for you in every corner of my room / Air, I'm running after you into the labyrinths of my mind... Air, I feel I'm loosing you". Surrealistic poetry, the use of the voice like an instrument, calm and reflexive moments counter pointed to almost hysteric, frenzy passages... Along almost twenty minutes the music flows away between sudden changes of rhythm and colourful melodic liens running out one after each other. The track is enriched by the violin of the special guest Jean Luc Ponty

The second track "Vorrei incontrarti" (I would like to meet you) is my favourite one. It's a dreamy acoustic ballad, almost mystical. It express the desire to follow something so beautiful to seem unreal, an illusion, a spell or the singing of a siren... "I would like to meet you / Outside the gates of a factory / I would like to meet you / along the streets leading to India / I would like to meet you / But I don't know what I would do / Perhaps I would cry of joy... Sing your song, sing it for me / Maybe one day I will sing for you".

"La mia mente" (My mind) is a melancholic ballad where vocals experiments and dissonant piano chords soar from an acoustic strummed guitar background... "My mind is a balloon / Wondering in a soft dream / And it doesn't come back on earth / My people show it / My people shoot at it / The first hit make it shake / The second one shoots it down...". In some moments Alan Sorrenti here reminds me of Area's singer Demetrio Stratos.

The final track "Un fiume tranquillo" (A quiet river) is another long and peculiar ballad. Lyrics deal with the fear of self-destruction while the music flows like "a quiet river that erase the memories", a "quiet river that can save you from a violent fall"...

On the whole an excellent album.