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Rating: I must admit that I don't really enjoy reviewing 'best of' albums, but since I'm talking about Le Orme, a band I greatly admire, I'll try to do my best.
Le Orme are part of the famous Italian Prog trilogy, which includes PFM and Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso. Their beautiful compositions neither have the superb technique of Premiata nor do they benefit from a voice like Francesco Di Giacomo of Banco. But their strong point lies in renewing their sound with each album, and this refined anthology, thanks to the chronological arrangement of the tracks, is irrefutable proof of that.
Another strong point of the group is the alchemy between POP, Rock, and Symphony. Albums like "Florian" and "Piccola Rapsodia Dell'Ape" testify to how Le Orme managed to harmonize classical traditional instruments with local POP sounds (and by local POP sounds, I don't mean Cugini Di Campagna or Pooh...).
This collection also features an inner booklet, with unpublished photos and a year-by-year biography of the band from 1970 to 1980 (then summarized up to the present day), and is divided into two CDs. It starts with the first two of four unreleased tracks: "Il Profumo Delle Viole" and "I Ricordi Piu' Belli" from 1970. These two tracks precede the release of the second LP "Collage" (1971), from which the title track "Collage", "Era Inverno", "Cemento Armato", the celebrated "Sguardo Verso Il Cielo", and "Morte Di Un Fiore" were taken for this collection. The rest of the first CD gives us extracts from "Uomo Di Pezza", "Felona e Sorona", and "Contrappunti".
The second CD opens with the unreleased track "Sera" from 1975, and continues with "Amico Di Ieri", "Primi Passi", and "Immensa Distesa" from the album "Smogmagica". Next is "Canzone D'amore", the debut track for guitarist Germano Serafin (to whom this collection is dedicated and who stayed with Le Orme until 1980) and terribly (really!) reinterpreted by the awful Aeroplanitaliani. "È Finita Una Stagione", the fourth unreleased track and B-side (of the 45 RPM...) of "Canzone D'amore", talks about the generational change that took place between '75 and '76. "È finita una stagione, son cadute le lunghe chiome..." with this verse Aldo refers to the dying Hippies and a return "to the old ways" (Punk had yet to arrive to make a clean cut with the Flower Power generation).
We approach the end with extracts from "Verità Nascoste", "Storia O Leggenda", and the aforementioned "Florian" and "Piccola Rapsodia Dell'Ape". There are thousands of collections on Le Orme, and this is certainly the most complete and schematic. The only thing not good about this anthology is the digital remaster, which has rendered the sound of various instruments in the background, giving more prominence to the voice, thus eliminating the magical echo of vinyl and even the first CD reissues.
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