Customer Reviews

Aria

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Usualmente, me tomo el tiempo de reseñar un CD cuando entiendo que resulta una buena obra de arte. Utilizar estrellas para calificar este trabajo de Sorrenti puede ser incluso aventurado. Este CD no es uno de tipo comercial y estamos conscientes de que quizàs no se amolde a todos los gustos. Las cuatro canciones que lo componen, en especial, la primera, que da tìtulo al disco y cuya duraciòn es de casi 20 minutos es magistral. El juego nostàlgico entre el violìn de Ponty, la guitarra de Nazzaro y la voz de Sorrenti es pura magia...en definitiva un CD para ser detenidamente escuchado y disfrutado en momentos muy especiales..

Usually, when I decided to write a review I beliave that the music included in the particular work is a high profile work of art. It has been hard for me to consider Sorrenti's ARIA. I understand that this is a non-commercial album and maybe it will not fit all people wishes. There only four songs. The first one, almost twenty minutes, is simply a masterpiece. The magical game between Ponty's violin, Nazzero classic guitar and Sorrenti's voice is mythical...This a very special album for a quite few magical moments......

Alan Sorrenti is a song writer well known for some aggressive commercial and disco hits but in his youth he was a sperimental and intellectual folk -singer.
His masterpiece Aria is inspired by Tim buckley starsailor and Peter hammill's vocal voice. The work is rather experimental and psychedelic and not easy to listen but was a best seller in 1972. His work was such rated that he was called by pink floyd for a tournee in Italy together and peter hammill decided to partecipate directly to the successive sorrenti's work (coem un vecchio incensiere).

I've never heard this album, I knew it was deleted several years ago, but now Emi Music edited the digital remaster and WOW...it's a marvellous and impressive recording!!! Like a italian version of Tim Buckley's "Starsailor" and " Happy Sad" together...a voice with a high operatic expression that revolves the entire world...at least a masterpiece, no doubt!!
The eponymous title, a side-lenght epic with almost 20 minutes is a kind of disturbing symphony, opening with bird chants and ending in a rhythmically dramatic manner. It's structure seems a patchwork, beautifully adorned with Jean-Luc Ponty's violin as a guest...a superb progressive theme in the genre!!
The other three songs are in the similar quality, especially "La Mia Mente", with Sorrenti stretching some words (of course in italian with much more dramatic accent!!) in a neurotic (spooky!!!) manner...it is poetry at the most intense in music, certainly a classic (a masterpiece I've said already)!!!

Progressive rock was big in the early '70s--and one can name many bands, such as Jethro Tull, Genesis, King Crimson, lots of them British, indeed. Where does Sorrenti fit? In the very Italian and distinct flavor of progressive music. By this I mean that the listener gets the brain workout associated with progressive music and some more, Bel Canto, that is. Aphrodite's Child comes close--there you have Vangelis and Demis Russos.

Sorrenti's voice and relatively sparse instrumental accompaniment are remarkable in how much they accomplish, which is nothing short of mind travel.

If you've only now come to (like) this music, I suggest you look up the Italian progressive bands active in the 1st half of the 1970s (in the 2nd half, they lost it). In addition to what you can find on Wikipedia, I'd also recommend: Panna Fredda, Delirium, and Sorrenti's own: Come Un Vecchio Incensiere.

P.S. No, I don't understand most Italian words either. From the experience with the British progressive music, the lyrics are probably something to enjoy just as much as the music.

I bought this because I am a Jean-Luc Ponty fan. All right I admit it- I am a completist nut. Hmmmm, over-the-top, early 70's pretentious Italian prog- with some pseudo-operatic silliness to boot. Nuff said. If that description appeals to you or you suffer from the same obsessive collector's disease as I do--than this is for you.