AZETIUM A OTTO PISTE

I seem to remember hearing about this retro Italian prog band around 2010 or '11 and forgotten about them because it was difficult to get a hold of this album. They had no Bandcamp account which is hardly surprising as Bandcamp was in its infancy in 2009. I am under a feeling Architrave Indipendente was more a project than keeping a band for years as a career as Azentium à Otto Piste was their only release but it took a few years to finish it and get it released and then they broke up. Their idea was to make a fully analog recording, release it only on vinyl. No instruments are modern, no post '70s keyboards here. They used several synths including the Davolisint (just like Semiramis) as well as piano and Hammond organ. They would sound great with a Mellotron but they would have insisted on a real tape driven machine instead of an M-Tron but they likely couldn't afford or source one so no Tron here. Let me tell use they succeeded in capturing the spirit of '70s Italian prog. To think they were teenagers making this is unbelievable. I really love how they can go from rocking guitar-dominated passages to gentle acoustic passages using the Ovation guitar, to classically influenced parts to jazzy parts. They are literally all over the place. Museo Rosenbach and De De Lind are what I'm reminded of at times. The lyrics apparently are critical of modern-day agriculture where the guys prefer a more organic approach. Not to often you'll find environmentally conscious prog but this one is it. But since I don't know Italian I can only go what I've discovered what the album is about from digging up info. Sadly this is all they came up with, in but I can safely say this would have been at home on AMS or Black Widow, where some great retro Italian prog found its way in recent times. If you got to hear it or lucky to own a copy you know it's worth having. Maybe not the greatest Italian prog but for modern day Italian prog, it's still great and if you can't get enough of that retro sound this is it.