DOLCE ACQUA

First album of a group fronted by future pop solo singer Ivan Fossatti (no link that I know of with Garybaldi's Bambi Fossatti), but one of the lighter/poppier one, even after Fossatti left to pursue his solo career. Dolce Acqua is overloaded with Fossatti's presence and the rest of the group appears more like an accompanying band rather than a real prog group. Musically the album hestates between pop, jazz, jazz-rock and the odd bit of folk(mostly heard in the acoustic guitar strumming often sounding Latin American) and all tracks are penned by Fossatti and Magenta (whom does not appear as a musician in the group's line- up) and has pop feeling. Lyrically the album has a concept about feelings (the subtitles in brackets), but it appears non-convincing to the album's lack of musical focus. Due to the group's strategic appearances to a few festivals and a few successful chart-topping singles (Canto Di Osanna and Jezahel), this album gained a lot of attention and healthy sales early on in the country's golden prog era. And a very naïve artwork is gracing the cover as well.

In the 8 tracks of the album (Jezahel is a bonus track not properly mentioned on this reissue), there seems to lack unity, some being outright standard jazz (To Satchmo), some other are overloaded by cheesy strings (the title track), other dips in jazz rock (Sequenza), some are insufferably pop, but on the whole the album remains a pleasant listen, partly due to Fossatti's able presence behind the flute.

Indeed, it appears that a good deal of the "prog" groups that managed good success/public attention in Italy's golden prog age, might have not been the most gifted (I think of Osanna's Debut album as well) and that the most deserving groups did not get the needed recognition. Delirium appears to belong in the first category and this writer is not really impressed by this album, no matter how important (historically or commercially) the album was.