UOMO DI PEZZA

Uomo di Pezza is certainly one of the most important albums of the Italian Progressive genre. The opening track ("Una Dolcezza Nuova") is a feast to the ears as the rich sounds of the mellotron lay a beautiful foundation for which the rest of the song builds upon. Not many songs are more beautiful than this one. While the rest of the album is solid, no other track quite stands up to this initial one. Le Orme does a nice job of layering all sorts of nice keyboard sounds together which I would have thought would have been pretty stunning in its time. The acoustic guitar gets more noticeable playing time than the electric, as it provides a steady rhythm in many of the songs. I have two complaints with this album, both of them fairly minor. The first is that most of the songs plod along at the same tempo (with "La Porta Chiusa" being slightly faster and "Alienazione" being significantly faster than the others). The second is that there really isn't a whole lot of music here. The album clocks in at 31 minutes, which was somewhat standard for Italian albums. I highly recommend this beautiful album which I consider to be one of the very best from the Italian Prog scene.