DESTINAZIONI OBLIQUE

Warning to the progressive population: hide under your armchairs or under your beds! Why ? Simply because the transalpine formation ALIANTE offers us their third album, seventy-six minutes long... instrumental; no need to be a great clerk to understand from the outset that listening will be complex, especially since the founding keyboardist Enzo FILIPPI left his comrades, replaced by a guitarist Davide CAPITANIO and a multi-instrumentalist Michele LENZI who besides keyboards also plays oboe, flute and acoustic guitar! The rhythm pair of the EGO BAND is always present (Alfonso CAPASSO on bass guitar and Jacopo GIUSTI on drums and percussion).

What could pass for an Emersonian power trio has become a much more symphonic quartet, in a way a new group is born, well represented from the inaugural piece "Il Mondo di Fronte" where the six strings considerably change the situation of what we knew of ALIANTE, a piece full of contrasts with melodic ups and downs in shambles (10/10), I don't know the musical past of Michele LENZI but he is impressive in the scheduling of his keyboards, a real festival , a simply phenomenal introduction. Almost obligatory to go down a notch for "Frammenti di un Giorno" introduced on the flute, an elegant and dark mid-tempo at the same time, where the guitar wants to be Gilmourian and the rhythmic base a bit tortuous, a set not easy to follow (8/10).

"Home Trip" which I did not appreciate, too jazzy for my taste, too slow too, not ugly for all that, simply not my cup of tea, the whole thing embeds in its middle a majestic church organ but which I I found incongruous?is not Rick WAKEMAN who wants (7/10). The sweet and short eponymous song offers a female voice narration in Italian (Serena ANDREINI), a joyful acoustic breathing, a kind of oboe matinee interlude (7/10). "Cartimandua" follows, still with a discreet acoustic guitar, a classy mellotron whose intervention is a little short (too bad), before the other guitar, electric this time, takes the piece to its pinnacle, well helped by brilliant volutes multiform synthesizers (9/10).

The return to the highest level is confirmed with "Coda Marea 04" a piece, the only one unfortunately which uses a violin (Marianna VUOCOLO) and mixes brilliantly with synthesizers and the electric piano, a truly original piece which would not have mismatched a album of the crimson king (9/10), Jacopo GIUSTI also offers us a small solo of his favorite instrument halfway through. "L'ultimo Riflesso" begins like a New Age piece, just piano and bass guitar cha cha until the fourth minute when the guitarist and drummer wake up a tad, the six-string solo is by the way. lyricism to die for (8/10). "La Salita", the first title to have been broadcast on social media, begins like a good Uncle Sam's Midwestern blues rock, it's exotic but here too, to say the least, incongruous, before going off in all directions, even after a lot of listening, I couldn't get used to it (6/10).

We have two titles left to complete our pilgrimage, first of all "Tra Cielo e Terra" longer than nine minutes, very ambient even more than title seven in its introduction, but the mellotron from 2:30 changes the situation above all that it leads to an inventive mini moog a bit MANFRED MANN (specialists will understand), Davide CAPITANIO's guitar only appearing in the last third at the same time as a magnificent oboe solo by Michele LENZI, equal to my preferences with the inaugural piece (10/10). The concluding "I Pomeriggi di Armida" more jazzy, reminds me of film music shot in the plain of PO or LATIUM, totally bucolic, with a slender solo piano (the jazz side is there) which precedes the six strings in fusion of the already mentioned Davide CAPITANIO, a piece that flows serenely completed by a brilliant synthesizer solo, a nice way to end this third opus of ALIANTE (8/10).