coolermaster

I must preface this by saying that I hate compilations (except for very rare cases), and that’s the reason for my vote.
Guys, if your adolescence was a disaster, there are therapists for that!
Or try to make up for it, get out of the house, go to the park to smoke a joint, or hang out in front of high schools... Oh yes, because inside they'd reject you... I lived my (beautiful, but with its fears and idiosyncrasies) adolescence in the '80s and some of Antonello's songs have stuck with me... And when I went to see him in concert in Assago years ago with my "schoolmate" (who later became a friend), at the beginning of the same song we found ourselves hugging with tears in our eyes... worse than two queens birthed from Platinette’s backside! You can call them, if you want, emotions...

a milestone of Italian music, whether you love it or hate it... twenty years later, a film (by the way, excellent) about adolescence takes its title from the most beautiful song of the album: "notte prima degli esami". After this, I agree... there was the deluge, even though some strokes like "amici mai" (and well, maybe I'm stupid) still move me today (perhaps because I "lived" the lyrics of many of his songs). Here is a beautiful reminiscence of '68 and a defeated generation, busy recycling themselves in party lines and the radical chic Parties of the '80s... Piero and Cinzia, a great story like only the antonello can sing and Stella delicate and melancholic... We would need a friend, an anthem, in an era when there were many acquaintances, lackeys, sycophants, stuffed shirts, turncoats, but true friends were very few... Great album...

I say just one thing: Beautiful, beautiful, and again beautiful... A bolt from the blue, a ray of light in the darkness (musical and otherwise) of this first glimpse of the millennium... An album like those that were made in "days gone by"... Masterful.

This album is far superior to most of the pop trash that invades the charts these days... The aesthetic research of Archive, their sound made of delicate watercolors and excursions into "noise," industrial, or Trip Hop—whatever you want to call it—is more unique than rare. I still remember when I first listened to "Again" on a clumsy compilation of "Rock Ballads"... and I thought: who the hell are these guys? Where do they come from? Tell me about them!! Well... that's how I ended up buying the trilogy Noise, Lights, You All Look the Same... There are moments of stunning beauty, genuinely beautiful... beautiful in a way I hadn't listened to in years... I think of Moby, Odawas, Porcupine Tree... Different genres, but unique emotions... What I love about Archive, and also about this "noise," is the absolute nonchalance with which they mix electronics, trip-hop loops, and rock... in a genre completely detached from any (embarrassing) comparison... Pink Floyd?? Hahaha, what does that have to do with it? Maybe a couple of vaguely psychedelic songs like the "title track," but the compositional and instrumental dryness, the distortion of the guitar, the "clean" voice, English... but no, not yet... I actually see more Floyd in Porcupine Tree, another band that I love... More attention and more space should be given to this incredibly brave Anglo-Saxon band that has proposed a Progressive or Neo-progressive sound in an absolutely original way, light-years away from aberrations like Muse, Radiohead, or Coldplay, who have nothing to do with Prog in my book, like a cock in a convent of cloistered nuns! Great, no, truly great. Regards.

One of the greatest drummers in history was Jeff Porcaro, who, as my friend says, did things of outrageous simplicity, but the way he did them, no one else has done... Mr. Time, as he was called, the metronome... And as another friend said, doing a show-off solo after 2 years of practice, any fool can achieve it... and everyone saying: "Ohhh, how good, what a God, what a Genius..." However, playing certain pieces of Steely Dan is immensely more difficult! Collins? A great underrated talent... Nick Mason? Mediocre, but few held the 4/4 like he did... In Italy, Di Cioccio is undoubtedly perhaps the worst (with all the love and respect I have for PFM): Tullio De Piscopo, Walter Calloni, Giulio Capiozzo (R.I.P) are the best...
Are we talking about expressiveness and not technique? Regardless of personal musical tastes, listen to "Pensiero Stupendo" by Patty Pravo: the rhythm is of a rare elegance and emotionality, a song "played" divinely... Dave Weckl is considered one, if not the best drummer in the world: he plays jazz fusion and I’ve even seen him live... He’s a monster, light-years better than Portnoy, but after an hour of concert, I was exhausted!! I’d prefer to get off with Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, Bill Bruford, Steve Gadd, Ian Paice, Lars Ulrich, and many others (in random order from jazz to metal). Bonham never impressed me much... Moon was essential to the sound of the band... Carmine Appice and Ginger Baker are among the greatest innovators of the instrument in rock, absolute geniuses...
To conclude: Images and Words. One of the masterpieces of Progressive Metal, an album that still enjoys a brilliant beauty today, where technique serves the composition and emotions... Metropolis is a classic on par with the Floydian, Crimsonian, and Genesisian suites (man, what an awful term, but please let me use it)... Cheers!

I would like to see some reviews every now and then about an unknown London-based group that I find immense: I'm talking about Archive!! If we’re talking about attempting a new path in the now asphyxiated NEO-PROG, Neo Art Rock or whatever the hell you want to call it, Archive are undoubtedly geniuses: Lights, Noise, and You All Look The Same To Me are masterpieces!!
Best regards

The album that "moves" me the least by Genesis... I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true...
When I think of Trespass or Nursery Cryme, I get teary-eyed... oh yes, guys, because music is made of emotions, not just drum rolls, sheet music, and guitar solos... and above all, it is absolutely subjective, even if there is some objectivity in a work of art...
I consider "Trick of the Tail" and "Wind and Wuthering" perhaps the true masterpieces of Genesis (without Gabriel... oh yes, and here too we could spark debates on the importance of the founding leader in a band's dynamics... I also think of the Floyd), when Collins and the others left behind that somewhat manneristic and sycophantic Prog and turned to a music more akin to American Fusion... In this sense, I believe that the live album "Seconds Out" is one of the most important in the history of rock, with Collins, Bruford, and Thompson battling it out with 3 drums... my goodness...

The early Battiato was bringing to Italy not so much the Anglo-Saxon psychedelia but rather the cosmic rock of the German messengers, like Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, Klaus Schulze... It is with these, and only with these, that comparisons ought to be made... The Pink Floyd don't belong (for once) in this melting pot... The results, considering the times and the atmosphere in which they were created, are excellent! Music liberated from any cloning, yet inspired by Europe, indeed by Mitteleuropa... very different from Britannia in terms of history, culture, and customs...
And from Bach through Mozart and Beethoven and Wagner came Florian Fricke, Klaus Schulze, Edgar Froese, to whom Battiato paid a heartfelt tribute in due time, yet never a carbon copy...
Folk watercolors and apocalyptic cosmic deliriums, and among the sounds traces of Mediterranean culture here and there... This was the Great Battiato, then came the great Battiato.

Gentlemen, as usual, those who did not live through that period cannot understand, cannot judge... The Joshua Tree and Rattle & Hum were a cold shower (actually warm, very warm) in an era when the charts were still dominated by Duran Duran, Wham, Madonna, and the like... A time when we boys (I’m talking about us sixteen/seventeen-year-olds) were rediscovering ROCK after the detour into electropop!!! An era when suddenly music began (on a commercial level) to get Serious... I think back to Alarm, R.E.M., Midnight Oil, etc.... Even Metal changed... and after the circus acts of Classic/Power Metal, it was Guns N' Roses and Metallica who put things right, anchoring their roots, like all American bands, in that gritty Blues and R’n’B of (their) origins... In this scenario, U2 arrived with these 2 albums, bringing a breath of guitars, drums, and basses in an age dominated by glossy synths, the first drum machines, and the digital electronics that were just starting to take their first steps... it may not be a perfect album, but like all rock works, it must be evaluated in the context in which it was born... I still remember a party back in high school (I was in the third year) at the house of a classmate... Some of us, half-stoned, half-drunk, went into a room far from the living room where they were dancing to "La Isla Bonita," and where the atmosphere was still thick with "Careless Whisper," when the hostess put The Joshua Tree on the turntable: thus, from silence, With or Without You began.... and we stayed there, cradled, listening to that music, that music so different, magnificent, and that kind of catharsis was abruptly interrupted by a classmate who came from the other room: "Here they are, the usual intellectuals listening to those fucking U2".... We were 17 years old... A period was waning, and another was beginning... Yes, because things like Dark, Punk, Wave, and whoever you want were not the music of the masses, the music of us adolescents... we never listened to it... But with TJT and R&H, the "serious" music, the return to roots gripped everyone, and rock became the "popular" music again.... Regards

For me, the masterpiece of the Camels :-)) Latimer and Bardens were greats of Prog... A very sophisticated Prog even if it seems simple... and often bordering on Fusion... A band that never made rubbish, which is rare... Even in the midst of the Prog crisis and music in general, they released Raindances, which is nonetheless another gem...