SULLE CORDE DI ARIES

Maybe this third album would qualify as my fave Battiato album, clearly by now the group has really learned what minimalism is all about. taking much lessons from Terry Riley's albums ranging from In C to Rainbow In A Curved Air. Gone are the usual rock instrumentations and Aries does truly delve into an indescribable molten lava of sound melting folk, classical, avant-garde, modern,

Only four track on this monster of album (all too short if you ask me), but everyone of these are pure a gems that glitters on its own. Starting on the sidelong (but just 16-mins) Sequenze, long dronal synth sounds mixed with a duo of unusual wind instruments for rock (clarinet and oboe) and reminiscent of the Third Ear Band, are slowly guiding us towards a heavenly or celestial almost liturgical singing. The rest of the track hovers between TEB, Tangerine Dream, Terry Riley, Moondog andc some Umma-Saucerful era Floyd. The track ends slowly by fading out the industrial chopper sounds and gets an extension of African instruments.

The flipside starts out even colder with the synths freezing Schulze or Froese's fingers on the keys, but the track soon evolves through a series of prog passages, including more celestial sc at vocals, to end in a superb sax outro (it sounds like Wyatt's incredible scat vocals on Rock Bottom). A delicious treat. Rivoluzione is probably the weaker track on this album, with Battiato's vocals going one over the top, but a superb cello catches the pieces and glue them back together. Again the tracks seems to veer towards early post-Syd Floyd. The closing Oriente has an even folkier and more medieval feel than Third Ear Band and sending this writer flying around his planet.

Definitely in my top 10 from Italy (but soooo unlike from what the usual production is of that land), this album is by far Battiato's best and his only masterpiece. Although I speal highly of this album, I find it hard to recommend it to someone wishing to discover Italy's progressive scene, but it is bloody outstanding.