DODECAHEDRON

I have finally made myself familiar with this CD I was sent to review months ago. DAAL is a project of Alfio Costa (keyboards) and Davide Guidoni (percussion), both with a long CV including earlier bands in Italy. This album has several guest musicians (reeds, guitars, bass, harp, strings) and it's all instrumental. The twelve parts are untitled, but actually they might as well be titled after the miniature stories they are inspired by. I was also given the poster with those stories, sadly most of them are in Italian which I can't speak. Three of them are in English; they are ghostly, impressioniostic horror stories and very economically told in just a couple of hundred words I suppose.

The closest in sound I have heard is probably ANEKDOTEN from Sweden. The atmosphere is dark and thick, and there are lots of mellotron. I don't think DAAL can be blamed of unoriginality at all. Of course one can name KING CRIMSON (albums such as Lark's Tongues in Aspic) as the starting point of all this kind of sinister and experimental [instrumental] prog. What I appreciate in DAAL is the way they carry on the long prog tradition and sound modern at the same time. The wide variability in instrumentation brings a lot of unpredictability in the listening of this album. There are some strong highlights, e.g. the electric guitar solo in the 8- minute title track (it faintly reminded me of the solo in CAMEL's instrumental 'Stationary Traveller').

The playing is really fine and with lots of nuances. The music is eclectic: you get some ambient, electronic music, jazz and art music. Sometimes it is rather heavy - not aggressive - but it's balanced by more fragile and delicate soundscapes. 'La Torre' is among them. Over 70 minutes of dark instrumental prog can be a demanding task, and I believe I won't put this CD very often into the player. But it could work excellently as a companion to some reading - horror fiction especially!