SEDUTO SULL'ALBA A GUARDARE

As mentioned already in their biography this album was still more a pop / prog one by Antonio Salis and his band. Nice melodic songs but definitely not anything to be looked for by a prog collector. Only their last one which had been recorded with a completely changed outfit was an interesting one with a significantly higher portion of progressive elements. At least occasionally there are quite nice flute tunes although those are not sufficient to balance for the mostly too much lightweighted song compositions. Nevertheless a pleasant listen for the general lover of 60s/70s Italian pop music and certainly better than most of the stuff that had been released in pop during this era.

On this site here not to be rated higher than "for collectors only"!

One of those quite brilliant albums that might fly under the radar at a place like this as it is reviewed in the context of its value as a "prog" album.

Its value as a "prog" album was never its point in 1974, to be sure. Hence, to judge it within that context is surely insufficient.

This is an album full of gorgeous songwriting that will please just about any fan of acoustic guitar based rock songs. Backed by a fairly typical '70s arsenal of sonic goodness like organ, elec. piano, string synth, flute and restrained, melodic electric guitar, the thing here is the *songs*.

And the songs are damn good.

Very much rooted in the Italian song traditions that often seem to make the Italian scene so much deeper than what might be filed under "prog" decades after the fact, this is an album that shifts through a variety of moods with a logical flow that makes it album listening. However, I will say that the opening track, "Salis Adios," is positively addictive and might yield more repeated spins than the album as a whole. In fact, this album would probably be right on the 3.5 stars line for me and a debate might ensue as to whether 3 stars is a sufficient rating, but that opening track just crushes down any barrier and pushes it well toward a more appropriate 4 star rating.

Available from BTF and packaged in one of their mini lp sleeves, tapes are presumably lost as this is nicely mastered from vinyl. And it really sounds quite nice. Great, laid back listening.