LA COMPAGNIA DIGITALE

LA COMPAGNIA DIGITALE were an Italian one-off Psychedelic Progressive / Space Rock quintet founded by Ciro PERRINO, the drummer of Celeste (but he was a keyboardist in this project, surprisingly). After Ciro's another short-lived project St. Tropez disbanded, they recorded and released some live material in 1979. Their soundscape is of course quite different from Celeste, and from almost all of projects under Rock Progressivo Italiano scene, but contrary to that, it's true that something of Italian nationalism, namely easygoing, playful, and delightful character can be heard here and there in this album.

The first eponymous track "La Compagnia Digitale" is an absolute masterpiece, in which all of their artistically splendid sound universe can be forced ahead. Lady's slight cheesy voices aside, hard and aggressive mass of Space Rock created by Ciro's directly sharp-edged keyboard, Alex's impressively glittering guitar, Roby's deep bass-quake, and Marco's massive drum attack (no problem that their rhythm section can often be a bit unstable). Just like their album sleeve (a balloon threatened by a flying dinosaur), their thrilling and tensive play is pretty awesome. Without any relaxing moment for listeners, they launch various passions ' aggression, strain, and tragedy (especially the last part, constructed by Ciro's keyboard solo maybe). Never long and boring for us, this thirteen minutes can be.

The second track "La Penetrazione Della Forza", the most longest suite in this album, can be divided in two phases and be heard as a kaleidoscopic sound-flower-garden. Although the whole suite has a low-fi-flavoured hard rock structure seasoned with eccentric electronic noises, the former part "La Forza Penetrante" is seasoned with a bit stoner heavy progressive spice and the latter one "La Fuoriusciata Del Pensiero" sounds more Kraut-ish, electronic for Italian rock. Less challenging than the previous song but we can realize what they should have meant to do in the jamming creation.

In the last track "La Fonte Del Ritmo" we can hear another playful appearance of them, with Reggae-ish laidback style. Simple but funky synthesizer knocks are somewhat comfortable too. The latter 'accerelated, activated' part impresses us with the keen footsteps, in that they might have tried to show their serious attitude for RPI, methinks. Sadly spacey electronic sounds, by that they might add more of an space effect upon their Space Rock I guess, is a bit jarring and meaningless, for the reason of their really spacey sounds only by their flexibility in playing instruments.

In conclusion, LA COMPAGNIA DIGITALE were, sad to say, short-lived, but has thrown such a brilliant gem tinged with Psych / Space / Krautrock to us ' a stuff that almost none in RPI scene has left in the world, in 1979 (wow). Enjoy please.