review by thomas

Orme followed up last year’s promising album ”Uomo di Pezza” with this one, perhaps their finest moment. Not unusual in Italian prog – or all prog for that matter – this is a concept album. The special style of Orme created music that surprisingly often sounds very melancholic, yet rich and warm. The melancholic feelings I tend to get is in large owing to the voice of Tagliapietra who sings in this depressing style all the time, so that even the more musically “happy” songs sounds kind of sad, an interesting phenomena indeed. “Felona e Sorona” contains wonderful music with drums, bass, vocals, keys and occasional guitar. All members are part of the music and plays perfectly unified; this is not music scored for the sake of the keyboardist to shine on a one-man mission with the others as background musicians, no this is truly a band that have grown very tight and it shows on the record which is less keyboard dominated than the previous one, although there is no way around the fact that the keyboards are the most noticeable instrument, but that’s not very strange. The music is Italian progressive at its best with many changes in time and tempo, with melodic gentleness and harder assaults; with top-notch playing and perfectly staged themes that never lets you down, the whole piece match perfectly and makes it feel like an album of fantastic music thoroughly. Even so two tracks are standing out a bit from the rest and it’s the intro “Sopesi Nell ‘Incredible” and the outro “Ritorno al Nulla”. A fantastic concept album of rather dark and depressing progressive but nevertheless giving you a warm feeling inside. Arguably Orme’s best album. An English version is said to exist with English lyrics by Peter Hammill but it’s probably only available on LP – if anything.