CELESTE II

Their debut album was recorded in 74 and released in 76, a soundtrack recorded in 1974 was released in 1992 and this "Second" album was recorded in 1977 and only released in 1991.

This work consists of demo tracks and unfinished songs. Needless to say that you can hear this while paying attention to it.

Talking about symphonic music is a bit exaggerated as far as this album is concerned. Even if the opening track "Il Giardino Armonico" displays some great mellotron and is truly emotional, very little of these moments are featured on this album.

An intriguing, dark and "Bolero"-like "Bassa Marea" is also a nice musical experience but most of this effort should only be considered as a recorded jam actually. The long and jazzy kind of directionless "Un Mazzo Di Ortiche" is the best example. Over thirteen minutes of "n'importe quoi".

"Setteottavi" holds some good sax, and can be considered as a finished song. Not super but at least it it is still music (on the contrary of "Un Mazzo.").

The recording quality of "All'Ombra Di Un Fungo" is quite similar as a bootleg. Pityful. This long and almost instrumental being most of the time closer to cacophony. Pastoral flute and good sax again comes to rescue for half of it.

Same poor recording quality for "La Danza Del Mare" which is again a useless quarter of an hour jamming (this is rather long when you need to suffer such noises) . I just hope that the band had fun while playing this. At least five people were having fun.But I won't be the sixth one.

I just should feel ashamed if I were a member of the band or their label. To release this CD as an official album is a gigantic swindle. One of the many in the record history to fool the fans.

And I do not agree that this "bottom of the drawer release is much better than a lot of Italian official historical releases". Only one great and fantastic (but short) track : "Lontano Profondo". Almost four minutes of the most sublime harmony : keyboards and flute are truely wonderful. I only have wished that "Celeste" would have played more of this type of music here. But four minutes out of over seventy is not a big deal.

This ultra long album and indeed bottom of the drawer isn't worth a ? cent. Nothing to do with Italian prog of which I am found of. Jazz/fusion. That's it.

Two stars. Both for this marketing behaviour as well as for the "musical" performance.

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