Le Orme — Felona e Sorona

Italy has given birth to a wide array of artists whose personalities are frankly peculiar. Though Le Orme has been compared to bands like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, due mainly to the fact that Le Orme itself is a trio, their music is so passionately and carefully played that listeners can’t help but abide.

 

True enough, Italy has produced bands musically more challenging than Le Orme: structurally, its music does not push the boundaries of standard progressive rock anywhere further than Area, for example. On the other hand, very few could write verses that resonate more powerfully than the ones heard in Felona e Sorona’s superb opening track, Sospesi nell’Incredibile (Suspended in the Incredible, in Peter Hammill’s accurate translation), one my favorite compositions in the entire genre. It is unusual in Rock as a whole to find lyrics that stand alone and are meaningful and musically rich in and of themselves, let alone all the beatnik rubbish and the idiotic nihilism of so many Metal acts. It is curious to notice that counterculture praised Allen Ginsberg, who claimed to masturbate while reading William Blake, and despised “pretentious” artists like our very own Le Orme. The butchery age owes us a lot. Back to the previous subject, in Felona e Sorona the lyrics are pure music in themselves, unpretentiously poetical, as if the band had found the inner music of speech imagined by Harry Partch and heard in master poets such as Paul Verlaine and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

 

Italian progressive rock is almost a genre unto itself, as I have learned from prog fanatics. Why that is I cannot tell, but my guess is that Italy’s virtually infinite cultural tradition, that has given the world Dante, poet unlimited, and literally dozens of great minds, is inescapable. Seldom have I met, seen or heard of Italians who are not somewhat theatrical, and Pirandello depicted in his dreamy plays the tragedy of those who cannot live but in infinitely complex metaphors. Italy, this beautiful dramatic poem, is infeasible without words. Italian progressive rock, then, could not be anything other than excessive in its expressiveness, just like Italian Opera.

 

I admire the Italian language greatly, and recommend to everyone to listen to Felona e Sorona while reading the lyrics, to follow the development of the album’s concept. Felona and Sorona are two complementary cosmic entities whose transcendence is metaphorically embodied in human figures, man and woman – yin and yang, someone suggested elsewhere - the sustenance of the world, masterfully described in rich allegorical language. The concept shelters words and music exuberant in their deceitful simplicity. The three musicians, Aldo Tagliapietra (vocals, bass and guitar), Toni Pagliucca (keyboards) and Michi dei Rossi (drums) do what musicians should do: they hear what the compositions call for and serve them earnestly. Moog, Hammond, String Synthesizers and Mellotron abound in the arrangements and Pagliucca’s sound is exceptional. Though the playing overall is flawless, it is far from being self-indulgent.  Except for the previously cited first track, a standout achievement, the album is uniform in its colorful tones and flows really well, another rare quality. The result is one of the finest and most zealously crafted Rock albums I know, 33 minutes of Beauty in the Ether Gown.