TRASPARENZE

And it´s impossible not to say that because Riccardo Zappa offers an exquisite and beautiful guitar playing, whatever it is, i mean electric, acoustic or 12 string guitar, it´s absolutely brilliant because besides knowing and dominate the guitar sound, he gives his own style so honestly right now i could put a RZ´s song and i will recognize immediately that is him, that is great because it means that i have learned to identify his music and his style, not everyone can do this to me, i can recognize so much tones and people, but this time i think it took me less time to open my soul to the celestial sound of Riccardo Zappa.

This time i am reviewing his 3rd effort which was released in 1980, two years after "Chatka "and 3 years after his magnus opus "Celestion", and the name of this 3rd album is "Trasparenze", seems that he was kind of simple with the names of his albums, again only on word but within that word we can discover a journey to excellent music.

If you are not familiar with this guy, let me tell you that he has nothing to do with Frank, he is Italian and his music is full of beauty classic inspired guitars, with soft touches of symphonic prog, not being the classic rock progressivo italiano band, actually it´s quite different but anyway you can relation each other in some ways.

Trasparenze is again a short album, 35 minutes aprox with 7 songs with some highs and lows, but not so noticeable actually.

"Overture" is the first track which seems to be a bit obscure due to the introduction (few seconds before vocals) and then Antonio Venditti share his voice for less than a minute, there are no words, only the voice and then is when the guitar starts! So talking about prog rock this beginning was to progressive, so does the song itself, but in a catchy way, seems to be not complicated to play and undesrtand but actually all the arrangements are quite difficult and only a virtuoso like Zappa could have created them, besides that, we can hear a soft sound of percussion and the moog somewhere giving to it a "transparent" atmosphere with a clean sound.

"Synthesis" is a faster song which starts suddenly with the 12 string guitar and the song continues like this all the way around, it´s a good song, but not the best though, i have heard several better songs than this, there are also some claps through it.

"Datsun Blues" as Andrea mentioned in his review this is not a true blues, but nonetheless it has the sound of a bluesy song, not typical in Zappa´s playing maybe he wanted something a bit different i dont know, but anyway the song is not bad at all, after half of the song it stops being bluesy and becomes more personal i mean in the style of Zappa and also rockish! when drums appears, but at the end it returns to the blues aspect.

"Trasparenze" is a beautiful track!, besides being the longest it reminds me absolutely to some Celestion moments when there´s nothing but pure beauty in the music, and i could be listening to this and never get tired of, the sound of the guitars simply makes me feel perplexed and so calm when i listening to it, during the song we will notice some sudden changes and a kind of spacial sound done only by the guitars!, then the songs becomes faster and seems to have a happy feeling through it, great!

"56 Misure Inedite" is another beautiful song but this time based in the classic sound, i mean reminding me a bit of Joaquin Rodrigo and other earlier compositors, this not means at all that the song is weak, no way, but i have to point that is not prog at all it s only full of classic guitars so you may get bored with it.

"Archipielagos Aegeon" i think was composed as a mix of the proggier and non classical songs, it´s something between both but with more classical tendencies i think, the sound could be prertty similar to the past song, it sounds a bit like a movie theme of the 60´s i imagine some one walking happy in a white and black screen and with this song as a background.

Cosi Diversa... epure is the last and shortest song of the album, so it´s not a big deal, just a nice song to close a nice album, sometime i commented to Andrea that my feelings about Trasparenze are the same as Chatka, and this has not changed, so after this music plenty of beauty, i will grade it with 4 stars, and of course recommend it to all of you fans of guitar, classic and soft guitar because you wont find any Petrucci or Fripp over here.

Excellent addition to any prog lover, and many thanks to Andrea Cortese for the introduction!

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