THE DRIFTING SAILER

Grimalkin were a one-shot Italian band from Napoli, found in 1988 by keyboardist Giulio Cataldo and drummer Salvatore Parrella with an aim to create Symphonic Rock music.To complete the picture they recruited bassist Gabriela "Ela" Rotoli and guitarist Giancarto "Gnic" Apice in summer 89'.By early-90's they participated in several live shows,later focusing on composing material for an original release.This would come in 1996,entitled ''The drifting sailer'', and released on Pick Up Records.In this album Grimalkin are helped by sax player Marco Bifani and singer Luca Sepe.

The music on this work is typical laid-back Symphonic Rock, mostly instrumental, in the vein of SITHONIA or EZRA WINSTON with some spacey anxiety here and there, actually very carefully played with no particular risks.It starts off really strong and ''Ambush'' along with ''The Flute and the Knight'' are trully great pieces of music with pleasant guitar work and lush orchestral arrangements of high calibre.Then suddenly the band will move into monotonous space exploration with the 11-min. title-track being a huge dissapointment of Space Rock music with boring isolated instrumentation and really uninspired passages.Fortunately the next couple of cuts will see the band back on track with decent Symphonic Rock music, flashy synths,good organ and excellent guitar work without being exceptional.''Twin towers'' additionally contains the good sax work of Bifani.The next notable piece is the 10-min. long ''Covoyager'', which contains all the high and low marks of this album: Safe playing, some fantastic guitar hooks, bombastic spacey synths but also some one-dimensional passages with no interest at all.

While the band never officially called it off,it is rather questionable if they will come back for a second album,as Giancarto Apice followed a career as a doctor, Gabriela Rotoli moved on with her life as an employee in a telephone company and Giulio Cataldo continued his career in the music industry but now only as a graphic designer for Frontier Records.

''The drifting sailer'' remains a good Symphonic/Space Rock album despite its evident flaws and incoherence,as the guitar and keyboard work really shine at moments and will certainly offer the listener some beautiful music in a generally soft atmosphere.Recommended.

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