Alex Carpani
The Sanctuary

"Deaf, I hear

mute, I speak".

I come out of my reviewing hibernation to highlight this second album by our valiant local keyboardist, Alex Carpani, released at the end of 2010 and worthy of the attention of every lover of progressive music who wants to define themselves as such.  

The words quoted above (not coincidentally the only ones in Italian spoken in an album that is half-instrumental and half-sung in English) well represent the idea behind the record and are excellently rendered on the cover by a certain Paul Withehead (for those unaware, the designer of the historic covers of Genesis' Gabriel-era, Van Der Graaf Generator, and Le Orme, among others): each of us has an imaginary personal "sanctuary" within whose walls we isolate ourselves from the outside world, find peace, dream, and seek in a mystical atmosphere that grace and serenity that daily reality and the ugliness it forces us to witness seem always eager to undermine or taint.

And so, deaf to the misery surrounding me, I hear and seek within myself what truly matters; mute towards a desolate reality that has less and less to communicate to me, I speak to the inner life that stubbornly still pulses within me.

If you will, the sanctuary is the same place invoked by Paul Rodgers, Roger Taylor, and Brian May (calling them Queen without Freddie is tough...) in the song "Small", one of the few with a "memorable" melody on their latest album, when in the refrain they sang "everyone needs a place they can hide, everyone needs to find peace sublime".

Coming to the musical contents, we are faced with 10 refined compositions, all between 4 and 6 minutes long (no inaccessible suites, therefore), as mentioned, 5 sung and 5 instrumental, all composed by the keyboardist who also handles the sparse vocal parts admirably, with a vocal style that sometimes seemed inspired by the nocturnal Greg Lake of I Talk To The Wind by Crimson, sometimes by Peter Hammil, other times by Gabriel.

Alternating between sweetest piano melodies, Hammond parts, Moog and synth, Alex shows a certain versatility and an uncommon compositional taste that makes his songs accessible even to those not usually versed in symphonic Rock Progressivo, a genre that our hero uses as a territory to explore compositions that are never static and always varied, moving from more relaxed and airy atmospheres to more sacred, tense, and restless ones, aided in this by a role guitarist (such as Ettore Salati, skillful in emphasizing the more rock parts with electric riffs and the more harmonious ones with acoustic embellishments), a bassist (Fabiano Spiga), and especially a drummer like Luigi Cavalli Cocchi (Ligabue, Mangala Vallis, and now also the project with Bernardo Lanzetti and Cristiano Roversi).  

The most evident merit of this album is precisely the enjoyability of all the songs contained, assimilable without boredom ever making an appearance during listening, thanks to what I consider to be the greatest quality that Carpani has demonstrated in this work, namely having been able to temper the eclecticism and skill on the ivory keys of a Keith Emerson with a more theatrical and dark style, if you will, but also accessible and "catchy" in a Simonetti (Goblin) manner of speaking, up to a taste for soundtracks and melody all Italian that cannot but find in Morricone the highest reference.

Nothing new under the sun, of course, but for those who love these sounds, an album of this kind is manna from heaven, and when the compositional inspiration is, as in this case, excellent, the originality of the offering is a requirement that one can easily do without demanding...