LIVE ORME

If I take a look at the Italian section of my progrock collection, it's a battle between PFM and Le Orme to be honoured as my favorite band. I tend to choose (early) Le Orme because of their splendid compositorial qualities, their huge musical skills, their great dynamics and their perfect blend of technical and emotional elements. In the mid-Nineties I traced this 2-live-CD (at the level of a good bootleg) in the catalogue of Musea, the known French progrock label/mail-order service. Eventually it turned out to be both one of my most expensive orders (almost US $ 45,-) as one of my most precious Italian progrock documents because "Live Orme" contains great renditions of all the 'classics' like "Contrappunti", "Maggio", "Gioco di bimba", "Era inverno", "Truck of fire", "Cementi armato", "Collage" and the surprising (but unfortunaltely short) covers from Led Zeppelin ("Whole lotta love") and Jethro Tull ("Aqualung"). I'm delighted about the wonderful changing atmospheres, from warm and melancholic (featuring the great, very distinctive Italians vocals and pleasant acoustic guitar) to compelling and bombastic in the vein of The Nice and ELP, what a stunning keyboardplay delivering lots of exciting Hammond organ and a dynamic rhytm-section!! THIS IS LE ORME AT THEIR BEST!!