review by thomas

Orme added a guitarist – Tolo Marton – and flew to Los Angeles to record the ”Smogmagica” LP, surely part of a plan to conquer America. The result was the lowest point yet in Orme’s carrier. If this was due to the new member, the location or something else I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that this record is a crappy one, a mixture of rock, pop, blues, boogie all dressed up in a very commercial outfit. All songs are either downright bad or mediocre, the only exception being a little gem by the name of “Amanti di Citta” (and yes, they still sing in Italian regardless of the recording location). This song is recorded with – in some way – modulated voices that sounds like Davide Spitaleri on helium and the opposite of that! How well this gem on “Smogmagica” would stand on one of Orme’s better albums is however, very ambiguous. Pagliuca’s usually mighty keyboards are on this record replaced by mostly uninteresting synth work. The instrumental “Laserium Floyd” sounds like, as the title suggest, a Pink Floyd song drawn from “Dark Side of the Moon”, only ten times worse. “Primi Passi” sounds like the commercial Kansas, if they would ever sing in Italian! Well I could go on forever with this song criticism but there’s really no use in that since this is a low point in Orme’s catalogue and one to avoid.