UTOPIA 239

The opener "Ouverture" is a short, ethereal instrumental track with the keyboards in the forefront that sets the atmosphere and leads to "Una borgata" (A township), a piece originally written in 1972 that tells about the formative years spent by a man in an old village between flowers and thorns with a mill, a church, an old inn and where memories are carried away by the wind... The pace is slow and the mood melancholic as the music and the poetical lyrics describe a little town and its hypocritical mentality, then the strong desire of looking for new horizons, leaving behind faded masks, broken dreams and false appearances. The following "Un povero cristo" (A poor man) is a short ballad that was clearly inspired by the style of Fabrizio De Andrè and Francesco Guccini and depicts the lonesome death, in a hospital bed, of an old poor villager. Then, the images of his funeral follow: few people, no flowers, no tears... Life goes on as usual as the memory of the solitary fades away.

"Ho udito le megattere cantare" (I've heard the humpback whales singing) is a long instrumental track that could recall One Of These Days by Pink Floyd and leads to "9 febbraio, un giorno" (February the 9th, a day), a sad elegy that evokes broken illusions and the blood splattered on the asphalt as a consequence of an accident at work on a normal day in an impersonal, ungrateful metropolis that seems unaware of this kind of tragedies... Then it's the turn of the long, complex "Il narratore delle storie degli inferi" (The teller of the hell's stories) a dramatic piece dealing the issue of drug addiction where the lyrics unfold in the form of a dialogue between a "right-thinking" narrator and a damned junky drawn away across the dark infinite space by the white dust he holds in his hands...

The short instrumental "La danza delle lucciole" (The dance of the fireflies) is a dreamy track that leads to the dramatic "Amore fragile" (Fragile love), a melancholic ballad about the first love and the loss of innocence. Then it's the turn of the introspective, hermetic "Il bivio" (The crossroads) that tells about the torn choices a teenager girl has to make, uncertain about which way to follow between dreams and stability, dangerous paths or beaten tracks...

According to the band, "Gloria in excelsis machina (Il confine)" is a piece conceived as a hymn to the human decadence. It tries to depict in music and words a dystopic future where, without the ability to experience or express feelings, humankind is pushed to the edges of the galaxies. Man is now the prisoner of a cage that he has built with his own hands, a cage that he will no longer be able to break down as his life plunges towards extinction on board of ghost spaceships lost into the mists of Andromeda... The following "Ritorno alle origini" (Back to the roots) is another track that tries to conjure up apocalyptic images and deals with the tendency to self-destruction of the human race. You can hear Mother's nature lament in the day after of a nuclear war. There's nothing but ruin all around the gloomy landscape. And yet, there's still hope for a new start as a pale light breaks the veil of darkness...

"Risveglio" is a short instrumental linked to the final track, "La morte e la fanciulla" (The Death and the maiden), that tells in a poetical way of the tragic death of a young girl. The girl is raped and murdered by a maniac killer, her body is found the day after in a suburban lawn. Here reality and dream melt and what is just another tragic crime news becomes a fairy tale...

On the whole, an interesting album although it could be difficult to fully appreciate it without an adequate comprehension of the lyrics.