THE TRIP

Based in Savona and born in 1969 from the ashes of an English band coming to Italy looking for fortune (Riki Maiocchi & The Trips), The Trip released their first eponymous album (sometimes referred to as Musica Impressionistica) in 1970 on the RCA label with a line up featuring along with founder members Arvid "Wegg" Andersen (bass, vocals) and Billy Gray (guitar, vocals) the Italians Joe Vescovi (organ, vocals) and Pino Sinnone (drums) who stepped in after vocalist Riki Maiocchi, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and drummer Ian Broad left the original nucleus. As you can guess from the art cover by Up & Down Studio, this is a psychedelic work with influences ranging from Vanilla Fudge to blues-rock...

The opener "Prologo" (Prologue) is an interesting instrumental track that starts by a dark organ solo passage and then goes through the doors of perception turning into something different when the rhythm rises going from bolero to blues. After more than eight minutes this piece gives way to the following "Incubi" (Nightmares), another long psychedelic track with many sparse echoes of classical music and jazzy organ passages that tells of a nightmarish, restless night haunted by crawling visions in a mad flight through the unconscious, waiting for the morning sun...

The long, apocalyptic "Visioni dell'aldilà" (Visions from the afterlife) opens the second side of the LP and, like the previous track, despite the Italian title is sung in English. According to an interview with Pino Sinnone, this piece was inspired by some Hieronymus Bosch's tableaux and combines dark organ passages, soaring harmony vocals and the fiery instrumental flights of a wild and free soul with coloured, impressionistic lyrics...

"Riflessioni" (Reflections) is another piece sung in English mixing rock, blues and gospel and dealing with religion, time passing by and the mystery of life. The surreal, lively closer "Una pietra colorata" (A coloured stone) is the only track sung in Italian. Here the music and lyrics conjure up the image of a lonely, talking coloured stone at the bottom of the sea that eventually falls in love with another stone put nearby...

On the whole, a good album that marks the transition from beat and psychedelia to progressive rock in Italy.