review by daniel

The Italians did apparently not fear the pretentious-tag since they practically revelled in concept albums based on literature, philosophy and science back in the 70s. The title implies that this is yet another one, but it is not. Il Giro Strano never released an album during their lifetime and this is a compilation of studio material recorded in 1972-73. The sound quality is poor on some tracks and extremely poor on others. That is really a shame because the music is excellent, if somewhat uneven.

Il Giro Strano plays diverse and rough progressive rock with strong influences from jazz. You could describe them as a jazzier (and better!) Osanna. Like Osanna they do not hesitate to use some disharmonious elements in their music. The main instruments are the organ and the saxophone, but there are also plenty of nice guitar and flute on the album (in addition to the bass, drums and vocals).

The first track features great sax riffing and organ, while the second track includes some “tullish” flute playing. Unfortunately the second track also features a drum solo and a theme that sounds like something that would accompany a circus act (the keyboardist apparently thought the circus theme good enough to include it on Corte dei Miracoli's first album as well). I wouldn't have complained if they had skipped the second half of the song. The third track starts out calmly but an energetic flute driven theme soon boosts the track, and after some disharmonious guitar and flute playing in the middle part, the initial theme is reprised. A good track.

Then comes the fantastic title track; an unbelievably intense and rompish jazz-rock jam. If they ever performed the piece live the roadies must have carried them off stage afterwards. And did I mention the sax solo? It is so good and weird; it almost sounds like the sax player misses a stop and continues playing for ten seconds and accidentally performs a great solo. After ten minutes of energetic jazz-rock jamming the track suddenly takes off in another direction. A direction that actually reminds me of Led Zeppelin (“Since I've been Loving You” in particular) with its bluesy hard rock feel. After that the album closer inevitably feels like a filler.

There are several ways of telling that this is not a “real” album: The poor sound quality, the lack of proper editing of the material, the length (56 minutes is twice the length of some Italian prog albums) and the fact that the title song is sung in English and the rest in Italian. Still, it is a great album that would have been a classic with better sound quality (and perhaps some editing). Definitely in the top three on my wish-they-were-remastered list.