...E IL SUO RESPIRO ANCORA AGITA LE ONDE?

Their first album was already amazingly good for a debut. So this was their second effort with an almost unmemorable title for anyone not familiar with the Italian language. In English it means And His Breathing Is Still Moving The Waves. Like the first one it's containing a couple of rather long songs having a more complex structure with several quite different sounding parts. But on this one it seams the amount of heavier sections has somewhat increased and overall it appears a bit less coherent, even "shattered" in some way compared to the previous one.

It opens with the short Il Gia Sentito E Il Non Ancora which is very mellow with acoustic guitar, vocals and some atmospheric keyboards. E Maggio starts with flute and rather heavy electric guitar, but soon slows down to the vocal part, only with piano and drums. Then quite suddenly it shifts to a rather aggressive mood and these shifts in rhythm and mood will be repeated several times during the rest of the song. Quite an interesting song and the first highlight of the album. D'ombra, Vapori E Sabbia is an uptempo instrumental, starting rather jazzy with keyboards and flute, a bit >FOCUS-reminiscent, then there is a nice solo with flute and drums followed by a shift to piano and electric guitars with great sound effects. It finishes quite suddenly with some distortion. Another highlight! Eleonora is an instrumental track as well, just with acoustic guitar and some sound of falling rain. Very atmospheric and nice. Le Onde, Respiro Del Mare has soft electric guitar and keyboards in the beginning, then it's breaking out to heavy guitars and spoken vocals. It's another long track with many shifts featuring quiet parts with piano, some sound samples and quite heavy sections with guitar, keyboards and mellotron. There are some sections with flute reminding as well to the band FOCUS. The next great highlight! Dioniso Inquieto is a very mellow song with acoustic guitar, piano,keyboards and vocals. A very nice one! Malcreanza starts with electric guitar and keyboards in an uptempo rhythm, then there is a part with bass and guitar interplay followed by a vocal part with piano. After there is a jazzy section with guitar/bass/drums and some flute interludes. Later the song is shifting back to the basic rhythm and vocals are setting in again. D'io has samples of spoken words in English in the beginning and later on in Italian by the singer accompanied by acoustic guitar. Avant - Grado is another great track of the album. It's starting very mellow with piano and features as well several shifts between more uptempo sections with keyboards and electric guitar, and ones in a more atmospheric mood. After a very short track again with acoustic guitar and spoken vocal samples there is the VDGG-cover Meurglys III (The Songwriters Guild), which is very well done and the singer's voice even resembles a bit to Peter Hammill's one.

As a summary I can say second album of this Italian band is an excellent one, featuring several great songs and if being a bit more coherent it could be regarded as a masterpiece. I'd give 4,5 stars for this one!