PEPE MAINA

— First review of this album —

Non suitable for diabetics and similar cases.

TOO MUCH, tinkling bells, over sweetened M Olfield like melodies, and layers of "merengue" (or whipped cream as you know it). Enough seems not enough!

When you dig in your finger through the layers and layers of "fattening sweets", you maybe will notice some of this Pepe Maina's "Birds of Passage" remarkable attributes and thrills. I could mention the "acoustic Led Zep-like guitar melodies", the endless details in the arrangements (for good and bad), the potential use of his electric guitar skills in a "Tinker-Bells" environment, the wise use of very "primitive" electronic gadgets (remember the casio-mini/keyboard sounds), what else? Well there is track 6, same name as the album, which is one of the "highlights" as a whole song, due to its multi-oriented direction in composition. It is "electronics/crossed with a Jazzy "latin" flavor" percussions ang guitar work, and it is quiet progressive. So, I can dissect the album to pieces, and find very nice ideas here and there, but the problem is still the same. Even when I started to think it could go "deep", there is always this wall of over-sweetening solutions to almost all melodic lines (even the percussions), which makes the whole "hide and seek" game, quiet a bore.

Now as for the rating goes, a lot of Prog audiophiles enjoy this kind of "up-beat, new-age, multi-instrumental, electronics", for them maybe this could become "essential" or at least worth the try. But in my case, I know myself, I will listen to it tops one more time, in favor of more "neutral" taste findings.

Alternative recommendation: Skip this one and listen to his 2013 "Snow", that one is worth aquiring.

***3 "inches away from 2", PA stars.

Reputedly Maina's first album failed to sell well and the next logical step was to switch into independent productions.His next album ''Scerizza'' (named after a village near Como) was exclusively written at his Nonsense Studio, recorded in two different periods, first side was written in summer 78', while the flipside was captured at the dawn of 1979.Maina handles a variety of instruments like guitars, keyboards, percussion, piano, harp and flutes and he is helped by Sri Boomotooni on bassoon (which was intended to be a joke, supposedly this was just the name of his dog) and well-acclaimed bassist Massimo Spinosa, while vocals were also delivered by Carlo Maina and Maria Corsello.

This one is definitely among the unique albums of Ethnic Prog, combining Meditterenean tunes with the depth of Progressive Rock arrangements and the album is a sincere, emotional and atmospheric journey into the magical lands of Italy, drawing dreamy soundscapes out of the Italian folkore and surrounding them often with typical rock instrumentation.The music is beautiful, but pretty hard to be described accurately.It is some sort of Orchestral Folk with constant sections of wind instruments and heavy use of acoustic string instruments, conducted in such way to produce emphatic, intense textures of old times, sometimes doubled by dark-sounding choirs.Very delicate stuff, that sounds both elegant and sinister.Maina though supports, especially in the longer tracks, these folky images with strong keyboard plays, mainly synthesizers and some harsichord, to come closer to Progressive Rock and a mood akin to MIKE OLDFIELD's works.Pastoral arrangements full of amazing colors, a bit similar to PANGEA, but the biggest surprise comes at the end with the lovely ''Al contadino non far sapere quanto sei cretino'', an attempt by Maina to mix Folk with Fusion with an impressive result, where archaic flutes meet a jazzy rhythm section, some orchestral synth lines and the mellow electric guitars.

An album to be discovered.The original LP is very rare, Maina has offered some remastered CD's through his website, but even if you won't ever reach a physical copy he made sure to offer this album digitally and for free via his website.Original Prog Folk with a Mediterrenean flavor, strongly recommended to say the least...3.5 stars.

Everything flows

Having spent a good deal of the colder months in some kind of unwelcoming embryonic state, I have done the very thing I promised myself never ever to do again: become my own martyr - continuing to drive myself into the ground like a stubborn mole with all the wrong agendas. The failure of love and too much on my plate did have something to do with all of this, but I've always thought of life as something that happens when one is busy contemplating it. It's never about destiny, but rather what river you choose to swim down.

Now, how does all this correlate with Pepe Maina's most recent album Snow - you may well be thinking to yourselves by now? Well, for one, I've always been of the opinion that music can be everything under the sun. It can be terrorizing, huge, frail, beautiful, pelting, soothing, aggravating and just about any connotation one wishes to apply to it. In my warped mindset of late - Pepe's music became a shining beacon of light that helped me climb out of the blackness, I myself, had submersed into.

Through velvety synthesisers, wonderfully melodic and slightly naive guitar strummings, intimate percussive ornamentations - like small ant armies on the prowl, Snow washes over you like a soaring gown of subtle beauty. It's like watching Marilyn Monroe in that old movie, where her dress defies gravity and swoops up over her waist, only in slow motion and in an infinitely more surreal setting......... In many ways, the music found within Snow is very similar to the prog electronic tradition of the Berlin School, yet it's also heavily rooted in a wonderful almost ambient folk music with shoals of melody lines and other such trades you have to search long and hard to encounter in one of those Germanic flavoured records. Talk about contradictory terms, yet with Pepe everything flows.

Contrary to Pepe's first outing, this one comes across far more smooth and satin like. Like stroking a black labrador gently gently..... If you can imagine the floating elegant universe of Jade Warrior cobbled together with the melodic and intimate folk aspirations of Mike Oldfield - and then add to that a somewhat ethereally boosted ambient power that feels like a warm glacier - then you're not entirely off what Pepe is all about. This music is about a deep devotion to nature, watching trees change with the seasons, walking alone through wheat fields having large flocks of birds ascend from all around you like feathered volcanic eruptions.

I use this album for meditation - I use it to calm myself when the world seems like a cruel and heartless place. It's about musical transcendence and what you can achieve just by lending an ear to music. Never forget the power of sonorous patterns with heart and soul people! Never forget.

I was lucky enough to receive this album directly from the horse's mouth, after he'd read my earlier review of his debut album. He felt like I had 'understood' the music, and to me personally, that goes beyond anything I could ever dream of in terms of salary, praise or whatever. I was truly filled with joy - and even more so, when he decided to send me copies of his most recent musical endeavours.

Pepe Maina is all about the music. There's no safety net for him. Like he said in a mail to me - this is indeed the only thing he can do, and frankly speaking, that's something which touched me deeply. Here's a man who's been releasing albums (a lot of them actually!) since the tail end of the 70s, with little or no praise from the surrounding world - and still he proceeds to do what he knows and loves. Sure he's an independent musician, who ever since his second outing has released all of his output through his own label NonSense, but the single most important piece of information I got from his mail, was a clear cut fiery and no nonsense attitude towards music. He lives to make music and he does so from the inner most holy place of his being, and that is something I personally love about him and his work. It literally jumps through the speakers!

With the album entitled Snow, you do get a certain whiff of white frosty surfaces and images of wintery landscapes, but with the omnipresent warmth of the acoustic instruments, you get a counter-pointing effect that mimics the very essence of the Italian winter. Snow-capped mountains with floral bursts of colour in the valleys below - two outer extremes holding hands all through the centuries. It's like the incorporation of a person walking through the crackling snow during this album, and then eventually being bathed in shimmering synthesisers and joyful guitar segments, - with Pepe the music is never one sided. It's diverse and yet wholly cohesive in the way that you never get distracted from the picturesque music's intentions, which is to give to you a dreamy, colourful and transcendent voyage into the soul of one of the most overlooked musicians from the Italian scene.

Recommended to anybody with a penchant for RPI, folk, Jade Warrior, Mike Oldfield, or just wishes to be lead wonderfully astray through music that quite literally exudes spirituality and 'feel'. Some of this is indeed as shiny and bright as a quivering laser-beam shot through an exploding sapphire. It's all right there.

This is for you Pepe. Thank you for the music, it literally pulled me out of a self constructed prison of the mind, and for that I am truly grateful. 3.5 stars.

Organic

Some albums simply defy categorisation - they flip you the bird, whenever you try and squeeze them into a narrow corner - so you can better chat to your friends on the interwebs about that new post-zeuhl- grindcore-sludge-electronic-dub-step-metal-polka release that just blows you away.

Pepe Maina was suggested for Krautrock a little while back after having had a kind treatment at the pomodoro section here at PA. The truth is that he really doesn't fit in with any of our labels, and that in itself makes him all the more interesting to me. We use these monikers as navigation tools, or at least we should - just as we all use certain words for shoes and milkshakes - so as we all can better communicate with each other, - but sometimes things can get a little out of hand - especially if we start identifying music with genres and suddenly chalk up invisible lines between artists and imaginable barriers of what we think is the right way to sound - at least if you're a prog folk outfit...

This album is a beautiful mix of folk, Krautrock, electronic, psychedelia and small doses of tiny invigorating Spanish peppercorns from the highest peaks of Andorra and that little tree- you know down the road: Aaaahh Pine! Who cares? I hear a lot of acoustic guitar work on this album, that mostly sounds like a highly talented musician strumming away in his room - leaning up against a wall with his old faithful instrument - picking the strings as if he was trying to get it in tune - wandering restlessly around the sonic perimeter with nothing on his mind except for that fleeting ever so gentle groove. It's what I'd call intoxicating meanderings on an acoustic guitar. Whatever it is - it sure is dazzling. Then you get wafting breezes of synths - that are so lenient and light-hearted that at first I completely mistook them for a flute. They back up the guitars in an atmospheric kind of way - even if they sound like air hitting air - or like shaking hands with a mute dove.

WORLD MUSIC!!!!!! Yes that's perhaps the word for this album! Man, if only I had the time and patience to rearrange my brain, making it more structured and pliable, but that's not going to happen any time soon. But yes world music is perhaps what most people would call this magic venture, although I must confess that Keishiro said it best, when he simply called Pepe's music freak folk, but I digress...

Imagine Mike Oldfield sitting around in a park with some hippie folk musicians - suddenly realising that the bonfire is talking Polish to him and the trees have shifted colours - now presenting themselves in orangy and purple silhouettes - all of them wearing huge hats with small foxes in them who keep singing old Madonna hits from the 80s. "Boy, somebody must've spiked my drink!" And so good ol' Mike finds himself in quite the pickle, but decides to use this newly found strangeness to something constructive and heads on down to the studio with a couple of blue elephants(or so they called themselves at least. These were in fact some of the folk musicians, but let's not spoil the experience for Mike here eh?)- all walking around with clay drums and great big pipes under their trunks. Consumed by all the colours of the rainbow and wild zooming ideas that multiply themselves like a physics reaction gone horribly wrong - the music keeps revealing itself to him, whilst at the same time evaporating into thin air. Instant composition and then not really, it is as if the music flows on by like a rendez-vous - a sudden glimpse of the future, and then it gets channelled through the strings of the guitar like deep caressing strokes of love.

Of course I am still in the midst of conveying the true Pepe Maina, but the picture of Mike Oldfield on mescalin seems forever tattooed in my mind. Those wandering folky textures with intimate percussive features - truly feel like a deranged version of Ommadawn.

Some of the tracks here are more concise and 'structured' than others, and especially the aptly named Spring Song with its playful usage of the electric guitar - seems like something that may have had a history - an idea behind - something scribbled down on a toilet at some point, when the notes or chords suddenly felt like presenting themselves. The track is like an irrefutable sonic ode to springtime. It feels like having been locked up with the flu in a dark damp room for a couple of decades, and then kicking open the balcony doors - getting bathed in warm and healing sunlight - sniffing in the air like a bloodhound on coke. It's beautiful and pretty without those plastic and ill favoured connotations one often finds in said adjectives.

I guess most of this album is pretty. It's got a forest feel to it, and I've more than once brought it with me whilst strolling through narrow pathways - little green worlds in the outskirts of my backyard. It feels organic like no other record in my collection - like miking up a shrubbery with the intent of publishing it as your own musical escapade.