Melodic Revolution 2016
Rovigo prog-rocker’s gravity-defying journey to a glorious graveyard of light.
Scaling down from his 2014 rock opera “Mother From The Sun” has logically brought Marco Ragni to the dark side for a more romantic adventures. To get there and reflect on the elemental nature of this nocturnal endeavor, the Italian multi-instrumentalist went into the deep and touched on the essentials of his chosen genre. An escape from prog of sorts, it’s riveting throughout – from the vibrantly mellifluous early music of “Canto d’Amore” to a sharp attack on “Between Moon And Earth” where a sci-fi context is married to a retrofuturistic guitar rumble, or the title serenade’s electric flamenco.
Once a thick, if transparent, synthesizer surface of “Horizons” has outlined a typical prog event, funky licks and vocal idiosyncrasy – the muscular gist of “Money Doesn’t Think” – cut through such a ruffled serenity and bring baroque to the ivory-laden fore breaking it to bits with jazzy wildness. Yet nothing comes close in the elements-focused stakes to “Nucleus” whose 23 minutes find Marco’s delving into a “The Great Gig In The Sky” territory and anchoring Durga McBroom’s mesmeric wail to an ever-changing aural landscape that holds a lot of echoes but remains unique in its downplayed, dimmed magnificence.
Resolved cinematically in the splashes of “Queen Of Blue Fires” which offer a visual transformation to those splinters of sounds, this album is a genuine gem.
*****