NAVELS FALLING INTO A LIVING ORIGAMI

The musical duo known as DAAL from Bergamo, Italy has returned four long years after their last album "Dances Of The Drastic Navels" captured the prog rock world's attention and unleashed another dose of their unique blend of progressive space rock and electronica laced soundscapes with experimental touches. Davide Guidoni and Alfio Costa have outdid themselves this time around by not only releasing one new album in 2018 but by releasing TWO! Each with their own style and explorations into different arenas of sound which they have been creating for well over a decade now. Along with the more vintage sounding "Decadlogue Of Darkness" is this unique 50 minute one track suite NAVELS FALLING INTO A LIVING ORIGAMI which not only shows how very much DAAL love NAVELS and ORIGAMI judging from past album titles but how brilliantly these guys weave musical magic into an extended continuous listening experience.

Of the two new albums, NAVELS FALLING INTO A LIVING ORIGAMI is the more experimental of the two and contains not only new material but implements sounds from the past that have been edited, rearranged and retrained to perform completely new musical tricks. While Costa is in the house with his usual plethora of keyboard, piano and mellotron sounds and Guidoni handles drums, percussion, loops and soundscapes, there are an additional six musicians, three of which contribute guitar alone, along with a bass, violin and a Chinese instrument called the ehru, DAAL deliver another outstanding soundtrack to a fantasy world that takes a whole parade of sounds that twist and turn in myriad directions and extend into a huge epic sounding smorgasbord of space rock yumminess. While always finding a way to expand the space rock and progressive electronic realms, NAVELS FALLING INTO A LIVING ORIGAMI finds this band tackling their most ambitious album to date.

This one is really hard to describe. It's sort of a free flowing journey through a multitude of styles and moods. While it starts out as an ominous electronic maelstrom of sound it quickly shape shifts into Pink Floydian inspired space rock and pleasant classically inspired soundscapes that rely less on the rock universe and more on the progressive electronic styled motifs that wouldn't sound out of place on a Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze album. However, despite the obvious influences that DAAL always incorporates into their far reaching musical approach, this one meanderings idiosyncratically in a seemingly random fashion through different arenas which spend a while playing out and then moving on to something even more dynamic without missing a beat. Examples include times such as beautiful classical piano runs suddenly burst into heavy rock oriented grooves with bombastic percussion only to cede into an almost lullaby inspired lushness accompanied by a thunderstorm.

While it seems impossible that DAAL could be more experimental than they have offered in the past, that should not be a scary thing as all the proper DAAL-isms are completely in tact just merely augmented and extended into a greater manifestation of musical mojo. All the space rock and electronic wizardry is abundant and perfectly executed in this outstanding example of a near 50 minute musical equivalent to a dream sequence that mostly floats along in instrumental free form glory but does include a short segment with vocals sung by Guglielmo Mariotti at the 45 minute mark which ushers out in a gentle acoustic guitar strummed finale. This is my favorite DAAL album so far and that comes after the band really having a strong series of albums that came before. The band is obviously not content on complacency once again strives to expand their sounds into ever greater horizons. This is highly recommended for prog lovers who love those lengthy epic sprawlers that evoke not only the greats of the past but find ways to progress into the future. NAVELS FALLING INTO A LIVING ORIGAMI is a perfect album in every way.