Nicola Alesini, Pier Luigi Andreoni: Marco Polo (Materiali sonori, 1996)

A deeply fascinating ambient-world record, "Marco Polo" is both thick and suffused, lush and minimal, layered and discreet. Its red-heated saxophone and Fripp-like guitar velvets hover on bewitching percussion groves and space-filling synthetizer ponds, in a sultry air which sounds exotic and arcane. Gentle electronic vines crawl in with dazing gamelan-like weavings and plough a music landscape of self-intersecting arabesques. Mystery and unearthliness drip like dew from the leaves, in an oceanic expanse of reverbs and refractions.

"Marco Polo"'s a music project by saxophone player Nicola Alesini and electronic pioneer Pierluigi Andreoni. Important figures in the ambient music field collaborated to the album: Japan's David Sylvian (vocals), Pierrot Lunaire's Arturo Stalteri (bouzouki, harmonium), Roger Eno (keyboards, percussion, vocals), David Torn (guitar), Harold Budd (percussion).


Tracklist:

1. Come Morning
2. Quinsai, la città del cielo
3. Yangchow
4. The Golden Way
5. Sumatra
6. M. Polo
7. Il libro dell'incessante accordo con il cielo
8. Maya
9. Buchara
10. Kubilay Khan
    
11. Samarca
12. The Valley of Pamir

Download (192 kbps) [re-up]


Similar albums on Il golpe e l'uva:
Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici: GMM
Minox: Lazare

Pierrot Lunaire: omonimo (It, 1974)

Starting from today, I'm going to alternate my post following a rarity criterion: semi-forgotten gems will turn about with more renown and easy to find albums which are the key works of the fields this blog is more concerned.
Of course this does not mean I've run of gas and I'm trying to make up for the missing delicacies with fillers: the post rate is going to double. I've simply thought some of these more "introductive" posts might be useful for the ones which aren't really into the kind of music I usually deal with.

I'm starting now with an album I've already mentioned a couple of times: Pierrot Lunaire's first LP.
A juvenile effort of three classically-trained musicians from Rome, the album isn't generally regarded as one of the most accomplished Italian albums of the progressive era. Nonetheless, it's very original and far from the dominant spaghetti-prog style.
Acoustic atmospheres are fused with Arturo Stalteri's piano passages (which manage to sound dreamy and exuberant in the very same time) and some Hackett-like electric guitar lines in a very peculiar, fairytalesque atmosphere which surprisingly lacks any emphasis. The overall mood's in fact very simple: its placid, candid joyfulness might remind such diverse spirits as the utopian ingenuity of West Coast psychedelia, the light playfulness of the Canterbury scene or the luminosity of some christian folk-rock abums of those years.
The album has a very unique, magical feeling which ties both the more keyboard-lead episodes and the song-oriented ones. A special attention should be paid to the excellent and tuneful melodies sung by Stalteri's delicate voice, but also to the impressive blend of the timbers. A lot of different keyboards, guitar-like instruments and even some flute merge to create a soft, bright sound which is somehow immersed in a misty, moony aura.


Tracklist:

1. Ouverture XV
2. Raipure
3. Invasore
4. Lady Ligeia
5. Narciso
6. Ganzheit
7. Verso il lago
8. Il re di Raipure (stream it!)
   
9. Sotto i ponti
10. Arlecchinata
11. La saga della prima primavera
12. Mandragola

Download (~200 kbps)