ENSEMBLE HAVADIÀ

Attention fellow RPI fans. Here is another deep (and crazy) RPI album in the same wing of the villa as Stormy Six, Opus Avantra, Gruppo D'alternativa and some of the other wilder titles that I'm struggling to recall from my out-of-the-loop-for-too-long brain. It's a difficult spin that may drive you batsh-t crazy the first couple times you play it, but it will alter your synapse connections eventually and suck you in. Think of an avant-garde chamber collective blending neoclassical music with Italian folk music and literally all manner of highly creative and over-the-top vocal arrangements, strings, and horns. As cool and disorienting as the music is, it is the vocals and the vocal arrangements that make this a classic for me. How do the vocals present? Throw a dart. Operatic, folksy, theatrical spoken word, beautiful and calming, laughter, children singing, various types of choir harmonies, nonlyrical mouth noises, on and on.

As a great lover of the Traditional Latin Mass and the sacred music offered by some at the beautiful High Masses, it is the hymn-like vocals on "I benandanti" that grabbed my attention initially. The sound quality of the album is just fantastic. There are no rock guitars or loud rock drums involved, so all attention could be placed on micing and capturing and mixing the strings and intricate vocals in the best possible manner for the early '80s. I also appreciated that, while there is certainly weirdness here, they don't do the deep dive into cacophonous "noise" that makes some albums land like a migraine. There is a lot of melodic beauty here in between the strangeness, and the balance of the two makes for a great listen. These guys weren't around long, but when you birth a piece of work like this one, maybe it's for the better. It's happened a few times in rock history. Sometimes you make such a unique work that you're unlikely to top it. Just a hunch.

Highly recommended for fans of avant-garde, anti-rock Italian weirdness. As I don't believe they have a website, I've linked to their music on YouTube via the "Website" button on their artist page---this album is the first nine tracks of that compilation. It is followed by five tracks (10-14) from their later EP, which is not as compelling. There were also vinyl and CD releases.

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