'Felona e Sorona'
by
Le Orme
(1973)
Originally a rather feeble psychedelic pop outfit with a couple of albums to their name, Italy's Le Orme made the smart move and chucked in the guitars, kaftans and beads and replaced them with an organ-led attack and a serious musical outlook when the early 1970's progressive rock movement was starting to reach full flow, leading the group to create a series of excellent albums under their new sonic guise that began with 1971's 'Collage'. The best, and most revered, of the these releases, however, was 1973's 'Felona e Sorona', an imperious, sci-fi-themed concept-album deemed by many as both the group's very own masterpiece and one of the finest examples of Italian progressive rock ever produced.
Le Orme first came together in city of Venice during the summer of 1966, starting life as a Beatles-inspired, four-piece pop combo made up of Aldo Tagliapietra(guitar, vocals), Nino Smeraldi(guitar), Claudio Galieti(bass) and Marino Rebeschini(drums). The group produced a couple of fairly successful singles, including 'Senti L'estate Che Torna'('Come & Feel The Summer'), which featured on a national television show, and in 1967 the group started to gig regularly, often supporting minor visiting acts from other European countries, particularly England. By 1968 they had gathered enough momentum to warrant an album deal from their label, Milan's Car Jukebox imprint, and sessions late in the year with producer Tony Tasinato delivered the patchy 'Ad Gloriam'('To Gloriam'), which was released in 1969.
By now Rebeschini had been replaced by incoming sticksman Michi Dei Rossi, and the Le Orme ranks had swelled to five, with Tony Pagliuca(organ, piano) joining in order to fill out the group's rather thin sound. This line-up would only stay together for the duration of recording 'Ad Gloriam', and the summer of 1969 saw yet more line-up shuffles as Galieti left to join the army and was followed out the door several months later by a departing Smeraldi. The remaining trio of Tagliapietra, Pagliuca and Dei Rossi quickly started moving away from their psych-pop origins, leaving the Car Jukebox label, signing for the Italian arm of Phillips, and producing 'Collage', an album that featured a more mature style and a complex instrumental element. The trend would continue on their next album, 1972's 'Uomo Di Pezzo'('Man Of Cloth'), the first to feature producer Gian Piero Reverberi. A lush, almost orchestral album, 'Uomo Di Pezza' was the trio's first truly excellent album, and a sizeable commercial success throughout Italy. The move to Phillips had granted the group greater access to better facilities, and as a result their music was becoming more expansive, with longer individual pieces and a greater emphasis on instrumentation.
After re-convening in the spring of 1973, and with Reverberi once again acting as producer, Le Orme started work on what would become 'Felona e Sorona'. Based upon an obscure sci-fi story happened upon by the group, a cosmic tale of two disparate planets spinning in opposite orbit and their effect on one another, 'Felona e Sorona' would feature a much darker hue than it's predecessor, with Tagliapietra's rumbling basses and Dei Rossi's emphatic, almost militaristic drumming driving along a powerful, ominously-toned opus, with an aggressive style seemingly at odds with the fantasy tone of the story.
The album's peaks include Dei Rossi's drumming alongside Pagliuca's hissing synthesizers, with their instrumental interplay highlighting 'Felona e Sorona's best moments, such as when the thunderous opening track 'Sospesi Nell'incredible'('In Between') kicks into spooky gear, all the while accompanied by Tagliapietra's thrilling bass rumbles and sinister vocals. An incredible start indeed, 'Sospesi Nell'Incredible' is a moody, beautifully controlled piece of music and the group's premier composition.
Elsewhere, lighter shades brighten up the glossy orchestral grandeur of L'iquilibrio'('The Balance'), Tagliapietra's metronomical bass-lines make a measured re-appearance on the staccato-undercut 'Ritratto Di Un Mattino'('Portrait Of A Morning') and the album finishes with a roar, the trio combining to wall-of-sound effect on the grandiose closer 'Ritorno Al Nulla'('Return You To Nothing').
With a grand, almost operatic sound drenching a selection of carefully-crafted symphonic pieces, Le Orme's 'Felona e Sorona' is yet another example of the richness and the diversity of Italian progressive rock. Alongside the likes of PFM, Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso and Maxophone, the former psych-pop merchants have helped to take the sounds of the Italian set outside of the country, into markets such as Britain, Japan and the USA where they have each sold substantial amounts. During 1974, and after the huge domestic success of 'Felona e Sorona', the British, Tony Stratton-Smith-led label Charisma Records, home to the likes of Genesis and Van Der Graaf Generator, signed a deal with the group to release an English-language version of the album adapted by Van Der Graaf Generator's front-man Peter Hammill, both in England and throughout the USA. This 1974 version sought to lend the group an international profile, and the move would prove fruitful, both for a brief while in the USA and Central Europe during the mid-seventies and for a great deal longer in Japan, who's lucky fans would get the extraordinary, double-live album 'Live Orme' released in Japan only a decade later. Strangely, most of the group's foreign fans seemed to prefer the Italian language versions.
For Le Orme, 'Felona e Sorona' remains the group's defining statement, both at home and across the world. The power trio format, the lack of lead guitars and the orchestrally-tinged sound provides a dramatic new twist on the symphonic progressive rock sub-genre, with Tagliapietra's basses creating an ominous undercurrent above which all else twinkles and the dark, deliberately confrontational nature of the compositions creating a powerful, lushly-realized atmosphere so typical of Italian progressive rock.
Alongside 'Per Un Amico' by PFM, Maxophone's self-titled debut and Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso's 'Io Sono Nato Libero', 'Felona e Sorona' by Le Orme ranks as one of Italy's finest albums from the genre's golden days. The group's original, late-sixties decision to discard the guitar, slim down to a trio, and tackle original and much more complex material has paid off impressively.
Key songs: Sospelli Nell'incredible, Ritorno Al Nulla
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