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Andreas Vollenweider - Caverna Magica CD (album) cover

CAVERNA MAGICA

Andreas Vollenweider

 

Crossover Prog

3.23 | 33 ratings

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octopus-4
Special Collaborator
RIO/Avant/Zeuhl,Neo & Post/Math Teams
3 stars Caverna Magica(Magical Cave) is an ideal follow-up to the previous "Behind The Gardens, Behind The Walls, Under The Tree...) as is made evident by the words between brackets on the album's cover. This is effectively the second part of an instrumental trilogy.

Apparently this album is made of short tracks, but they fade one into the other with continuity, so we may speak of two side-long instrumental suites, interrupted only by the fact that it was a vinyl recording.

It starts with some noises like a sort of "Alan's Psychedelic Picnic in a Cave" with a drop of water that after a couple of minutes is transformed into Vollenweider's harp. "Caverna Magica", the title track, fades into "Mandragora" that's almost the same track. It's with "Lunar Pond" and its oriental (Chinese) flavor that the suite starts to develop differently. This track, a little darker, fades into "Sharjah Saretosh" that is a typical Vollenweider's track even if it's based on just two chords. It fades into "Sena Stanjena" that's just the prosecution of the previous track with a modified main theme. Then the A side is gone.

The B-side is opened by "Belladonna". Together with "Mandragora"(Mandrake) it's the second reference to a plant with hallucinogen power (Belladonna is the source of Atropine). However the music is everything but lisergic. This track has vocals and a samba flavor even if the female vocalist reminds me a bit to Sally Oldfield. The samba fades out leaving just the guzhang, a mandoline and the vocalist which lead smoothly to "Angoh!" that's a quite unusual track. Proceeding, "Huiziopochtli" is a mixture of a lot of things: there's sitar and tablas but it's not indian or even oriental it's the only track which fades out breaking the continuity.

"Con Chiglia" is a strange title. Literally it means "With keel", but read as a single word with no space in the middle it means "Shell". It's one of the most melodic tracks, but we can't pretend that music based on harp is less than melodic. I can understand why Vollenweider is sometimes considered a newage artist, but again, even in tracks of this kind there's more than just "good feelings from the Aquarius". As I have written reviewing the previous Vollenweider's album, I think that his as newage as Pat Metheny. "Gaestrum Coronatum" that I think is a shell makes me think that "Con Chiglia" is just a mistyping as we seem to be in a biological environment. This track is the reprise of the initial theme (as usually happens in a concept album) and finishes into some natural sounds of which "La Paix Verde"(Green Peace) consists.

This is an excellent album if you look for relaxing instrumental music, prog enough to deserve to be listened with more attention than just background ambient.

octopus-4 | 3/5 |

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