Italian band RANDONE’s best album so far
by Peter Patti
"You can’t teach the old Maestro a new tune": that’s what happens when Beppe Crovella (Arti & Mestieri) decides to draw up his moog\/wurlitzer\/mellotron army in sustain of one of the bands of his ElectRomantic label.<\/p>\n
I always hear nothing but great tunes playing a Randone CD, but HYBLA – Atto 1 ("A barock opera") is surely the best thing ever made by this group. Nicola Randone’s "romanticism" (Nicola has a surprisingly fine sense of melody; he could have been born in the Mozart-era… actually he’s born in that of Orme’s, PFM’s, and classic-time Banco’s) mixes here up with ancient Sicilian atmospheres, and we see how prog rock gives the hand to celtic-mediterranean music: an unusual (if you don’t already know PFM!) but pleasing combination. Track 9 is an example of it.<\/p>\n
The whole story behind HYBLA – that is, the necessity to tell the tale of old town Ragusa – is too complicated to be explained here. You better read the CD booklet notes.<\/p>\n
The mixing on this long, long CD is pretty faultless. It starts off deep and mellow, grows up into the rages of History and wars and features a few "stronger" gems such as the stunning "Guardia alle mura" and Genesis "Magog"-style "Il terremoto" (a theme which you can hear also on track 14, anyhow). I get the shivers down my spine everytime the violin or bariton’s voice let place to the "modern" instruments and the orchestrals build up into a gorgeous progressive anthem – as in track 18 "La fine dei Chiaramonte", which contains the whole substance of this unique and enganging album.<\/p>\n
"Giovinastro & Lucsia" is another sublime track with a passionate, saddening chorus. And in the successive pieces I hear variations from Selling England By the Pound – and maybe from Trespass? -. Beautiful.<\/p>\n
But it’s not all moog and mellotron on HYBLA. Graziano Raniolo’s sax playing is crisp and cleaning, and there are a few of nice guitar bits as well. Marco Crispi lead axe still reminds me both of metal prog and of some Pink Floyd arias (listen to track 12!)…<\/p>\n
My definitive word on this album: >>Sumptuos! Summery feel!<<
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ITALIAN VERSION<\/b>
C’\u00e8 un termine giovanilista tedesco che indica tutto quello che \u00e8 eccezionalmente bello, "figo", "toco": questo termine \u00e8 "geil" (pronuncia: "gheil"). E geil \u00e8 il nuovo CD dei Randone; non riesco a definirlo altrimenti.
Stavolta Nico & Co. hanno preso nel mirino la millenaria storia di Ragusa antica ("Hybla") e, tanto per cambiare, non possiamo che sorprenderci per la complessit\u00e0 dei temi trattati, oltre che per la bellezza della musica.
La Sicilia \u00e8 patria di diversi interessanti esponenti della new wave progressiva (un solo nome per tutti: la band catanese Malibran); dunque i Randone sono in ottima compagnia. Ma a contraddistinguere il gruppo di Ragusa \u00e8 senza dubbio il loro che di eclettico e genialoide, oltre al loro vasto "campo d’azione" che li vede impegnati in sinergie e collaborazioni anche nel resto d’Europa.<\/p>\n
Hybla Atto 1\u00b0 – A barock opera
Come raccontare una gran variet\u00e0 di sequenze di sangue, sudore e fatica (l’essenza stessa della Storia) che ha dato origine a una civilt\u00e0 che poi altro non \u00e8 che un mix di culture tra le pi\u00f9 svariate? I Randone ci riescono in oltre cinquanta minuti ricchi e intensi, spaziando su tutti i registri del prog con l’uso di sonorit\u00e0 – e in parte persino del dialetto – di Sicilia, senza per\u00f2 trasbordare nel facile folklore da world music.
Pietre, sangue, onore e tradimento sono il leit motif dell’album, e – come sempre quando il paroliere si chiama Nico Randone – vale la pena prestare una particolare attenzione ai testi.
Come al solito, il CD \u00e8 in una splendida veste grafica e provvisto di tracce multimediali.<\/p>\n
I Randone hanno in programma la continuazione dell\u2019opera musicale e la realizzazione di un video dedicato alla Ragusa barocca…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
…] I always hear nothing but great tunes playing a Randone CD, but HYBLA – Atto 1 (“A barock opera”) is surely the best thing ever made by this group. Nicola Randone’s “romanticism” (Nicola has a surprisingly fine sense of melody; he could have been born in the Mozart-era… actually he’s born in that of Orme’s, PFM’s, and classic-time Banco’s) mixes here up with ancient Sicilian atmospheres, and we see how prog rock gives the hand to celtic-mediterranean music: an unusual (if you don’t already know PFM!) but pleasing combination …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[167],"tags":[166,146,101],"class_list":["post-1420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hybla-act-1","tag-hybla","tag-peter-patti","tag-randone","entry-post-skin-dark","entry","clearfix","entry-grid","entry-columns-default","entry-post-module-layout-fullwidth","no-post-thumbnail","entry-post","entry-masonry","entry-post-masonry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbksdC-mU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/randone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randone.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}