FRAMMENTI DI IDEE PERDUTE

'Frammenti di Idee Perdute' is basically the work of Tiziano Rea who composed all the music and performed all the instruments, with help from drummer Andrea Scala on alternate tracks and vocalist Emiliano Germani who wrote the lyrics and sang on 'Storia Vana'. There are several moments of excitement and aggression but overall the album is the musical equivalent of the cover art, being an intimate setting of hazy soundscapes.

The album is mainly instrumental and is rendered in styles that range from symphonic to Kraut, from RPI to electronic. Despite these contrasts, things never come across as a series of musical jumbles because a complex pattern of recurring themes unifies the whole. Ideas are continually shifted and reshaped, although if there is a flaw it is one of repetitiveness. But it's a big *if*.

The keyboards-based opening track is typical of the brief hallucinatory excursions throughout the album and it tingles with dreamlike Kraut-inspired electronics before 'Visioni Trascendentali' bursts into life. The latter track informs the general approach to music-making here; Rea employs a template of favoured techniques that include the busy murmur of synthesizers, androgynous voice samples, muscular drumming and shed- loads of Mellotron. Nice!

It's easy to tell from the title-track that someone with a singular passion for King Crimson produced the album as this track's dark power bristles with the UK giant's influence. 'Frammenti' is bookended by the two-part 'Interludio' and this sequence exemplifies the fluent and fluid nature of the album, with individual tracks being like streams flowing into a great river. These little intrusions give shape to the album and provide contrast to the album's heavyweight tracks.

Mention is made in the booklet of Fabio Zuffanti as artistic supervisor, and in keeping with his mentor's work Tiziano Rea seeks to cross musical boundaries. One of the album's peculiarities is 'Storia Vana' which inhabits the world of traditional RPI. It stands out not only because of the instrumental nature of the remainder of the album, but also for its typical RPI-ness which paradoxically makes it seem both familiar and foreign.

If I may paraphrase my good friend Todd, Giardini D'Autunno is like a more melodic Nodo Gordiano and that's a fairly decent point of reference. 'Frammenti di Idee Perdute' certainly stands alongside the finest works of modern RPI and is highly recommended to fans of the subgenre.