Premiata Forneria Marconi
Stati di immaginazione

The first fully instrumental album in the history of the number one band in Italian Progressive.

This new CD-DVD brings the legendary P.F.M. back to its former glory. As they say: “Eight musical stories, eight films, to enter the free state of imagination.”

The two media can easily bring different "emotions" to those who listen, or to those who listen and watch the images. Let me explain better. You watch the DVD and have before your eyes the images of Venice, a medical studio, a pygmy people conquering a bank across a river, "The Dream of Leonardo," that of the cyber Alpha 3.1, the enchanting waterfalls of a South American river course in "Aqua Azul," a silent film of Dutch people "Nederland 1903," and finally the great "Visions of Archimedes" where you are nonetheless led to imagine "a guided path." You listen to the CD, and there, everything that imagination allows you to "feel" and see inside you really comes out.

The tracks are the same on both the CD and DVD.

All the tracks, except the first two in which Flavio Premoli also appears as a composer, were written by Mussida, Di Cioccio Djivas with the variation, in the various pieces, of alternating compositions (Mussida, Di Cioccio, Djivas - Di Cioccio Djivas Mussida - Djivas, Di Cioccio Mussida).

"The performance sees the historic band playing and improvising on some videos in constructing a very personal and imaginative path, where music becomes the absolute means to accompany viewers inside the footage. In this way, music surpasses the role of a soundtrack to rise to a poetic moment and instant creativity. Accompanied by PFM’s extraordinary technique, the music becomes pure energy, capable of involving the five senses with a universal language capable of speaking to all generations.”

It starts with "La terra dell'acqua", the splendor and anguish of Venice. The piece begins with Mussida's guitar arpeggiating notes on the image of a scholar searching among geographic maps for the position of Venice and continues with images of the lagoon, then entering the city; beautiful, enchanting, wonderful: Venice. The sound of the moog leads you between its palaces, its navigable roads, Piazza San Marco, and among these various images Fabbri’s violin and Djivas’ bass paint image palettes like a painter does with his paintings and lead you to roam with imagination. Suddenly this sense of wonder and ecstasy changes abruptly. The sound of the bass becomes frantic with the drums following suit. The subsequent images take us back to '66 when Venice was "invaded" by water and people, frantic, try to avoid worse troubles. The music drags you violently into this atmosphere with Mussida taking the lead. As images of fear and confusion roll by, tranquility seems to return for a moment, but it’s just a moment. Gianluca Tagliavini’s piano, and yes, in this work, the great Flavio Premoli has again bid farewell to the band leaving it to its fate and preferring quieter paths, begins playing giving that rhythm that makes you understand that things continue to get worse for "poor" Venice and likewise make you understand that "the substitute" gives a great display of class. Mussida, who dictates terms in all the pieces, continues to extract piercing notes and sounds from his guitar and takes you into the complete flooding of the City with only the domes of the bell tower and the basilica remaining to testify to what Venice once was.

The second piece, "Il Mondo in testa", absurd and fascinating chaos that dwells in the head, starts with the music of "Promenade the puzzle", but it’s only a matter of 35 seconds, to give again the "word" to Francone’s classical guitar. The phobias and the bugs that each of us has in our heads, in this piece are simply described with period images. Lucio’s violin in the various phases of the piece, plays Mediterranean, Neapolitan flavors, while the whole group goes down hard.

The third piece is titled "La conquista". It is one of the most beautiful pieces of the entire work. It’s always Mussida who starts the dance with a jingle that resembles very much the opening of the videotapes of the project created before the band reformed, together with Red Ronnie, "impariamo a suonare la chitarra."

The whole band, after the first two 4/4, follows the master and shows that the group has truly found itself in the sound mix reaching the levels of the first albums. A beautiful piece with a final moog that takes you back to "È Festa." The fourth piece is dedicated to Leonardo and is written by Mussida alone. Here the rhythms become calmer and Mussida’s classical guitar weaves dreamy and descriptive notes along with Lucio’s violin and the "surprising" Tagliavini.

"Alfa 3.1" is another wonderful piece. The unsettling future is never what it seems. The human madness of wanting to create "superior" beings by implanting a microchip in the brain sees this project fortunately wrecked. Here again, it is Mussida's electric that leads the listener to visionary and "mad" places and guides you on "phantom" paths. For the entire duration of the piece, the great Franco plays with chills.

The sixth piece opens with Djivas’ bass operating as a soloist on images of a South American river with emerald green waters with waterfalls, and it is a journey along its course, with a canoe in constant search of adventure and conquest inherent in man… In this piece, too, the sound of the moog emerges which brings to mind more famous pieces of the group. The seventh musical composition is a sweet sound poetry dedicated to the Dutch people of the early twentieth century. The fundamental touch of the piece is the sound of the moog that gives the effect of the fender piano and that manages to give a naïve flavor to the composition rendering very well everything that is projected.

The last piece is again a palette of musical colors: the intuitions and inventions of a Mediterranean genius. Inside there is everything. From rock to melody to classic. The whole group stands out in an amazing way with the usual Mussida dictating the dance followed closely by Tagliavini and all the others.

In short, a great trial that gives us back the Premiata Forneria Marconi of "lustra l'abito da re."

The whole CD-DVD is played superbly. Sound interweavings between bass and drums, guitars and keyboards, violin and acoustic and classical guitars.
It really seems like listening again to the "old Forneria" where the smell of freshly baked bread fills the air with fragrance.

Listen to it carefully, it deserves it.