Alan Sorrenti
Aria

LA RECENSIONE

When in 1972 the Italo-English Alan Sorrenti debuted on the Italian music scene, progressive rock was in full swing and had already delivered several epochal masterpieces, both across the Channel and in Italy, so he cannot be considered a forerunner of the times, nor can he be labeled as an innovator of the genre.

So nothing new under the sun, except, however, for the incredible use of voice that Our Friend gives us in the long eponymous opening suite and the remaining three tracks that make up this debut work.
Perhaps in Italy no one had ever dared so much until that moment, (in the future there would be the immense Demetrio Stratos) while outside the national borders, Tim Buckley (still alive at the time) is the first name that comes to mind, but even more, the imaginative world of the so-called ‘Chameleon In The Shadow Of The Night’, otherwise known as Peter Hammil, is evoked. Indeed, in some passages, the same haunting vocal timbre echoes, made of howls, shrieks, highs, lows, and falsettos, the trademark of the never too much praised Van Der Graaf Generator leader.

For those who, like myself, consider the voice on par with an instrument, giving marginal importance to the lyrics, also very surreal and dreamlike, it is an interplanetary journey aimed at projecting the listener into other dimensions through magical sound balances that if used otherwise would risk venturing into the presumptuous and, why not, the ridiculous.
The marginality of the lyrics becomes central when in the lyrical spasms of the title track, addressing the princess of his dream, he sings "Aria, my body on your body moves slowly, Aria my body on your body sinks gently, ...I have entered your body... in your river I am gliding... Aria I am going mad", an explicit excerpt that few would have dared to venture in 1972.

A complex, multifaceted work and at some points even difficult that requires the listener to make repeated visits to catch its most exquisite essence and immerse in the psychedelic visions that must have crowded Alan Sorrenti's mind during the drafting of the album, without making it heavy and oppressive. The most accessible track is the one that was also released as a single, the very sweet "Vorrei incontrarti" where the song form tout court assumes natural connotations. Tony Esposito's percussion and Jean Luc Ponty's violin, when called into action, imprint a baroque accent on the work always guided by the incredible vocals of the Italo-English. For the few who knew Alan Sorrenti at the time, I imagine they could not believe their ears when after a few years they felt artistically betrayed as he, reinventing himself as a composer of silly songs, rapidly climbed the sales charts, as incredulous as those who, hearing him warble those melodies from figli delle stelle, dared to travel backward procuring his debut work.

Artistically, it can be said that Sorrenti is born and dies with this album. Commercial and economic fortune would smile upon him in the following years, but that is a story that concerns housewives, deli clerks, and hairdressers.