UOMO DI PEZZA

Another classic of Italian prog. "Uomo di Pezza" is Le ORME's second prog rock album, their previous prog album, "Collage" seems to have only mixed reactions. "Prior" to "Collage", their music was psychedelic pop, as demonstrated on "Ad Gloriam". Anyway, "Uomo di Pezza" is the album prog rock fans started warming up to. It's basically a mellow prog album. The ELP hype is a bit exaggerrated, although there are some ELP-like organ from Toni Pagliuca from time to time (as well as some great use of Moog, and a little Mellotron). Aldo Tagliapietra's voice is unmistakable as always, and Michi dei Rossi provides the drums. The instrumental piece at the end sounds oddly like Canterbury in one passage, complete with fuzz organ that's obviously in the Mike Ratledge/Dave Stewart vein, although the rest of the piece has more of that heavy prog sound that's actually pretty uncharacteristic of this album. There are a couple of nice acoustic ballads, as what Le ORME seemed to be doing a couple of times on their best albums. This is some truly great music, and it comes to show how Le ORME became one of the Italian prog greats.