Riccardo Zappa
Celestion

THE REVIEW

Celestion is the first solo album by Riccardo Zappa, a master of the six strings endowed with enormous talent who, in 1977, three years after an album produced with guitarist Klaus Aulehla, conceived and recorded this record at home. It can be categorized as progressive, although the author's repertoire ranges from classical music to jazz. Throughout its duration, there is not the slightest use of electric guitar; in fact, the work relies completely on the classical guitar (along with the addition of keyboards, bass, and drums) and the use of special effects achieved through echo and loops, and by using pickups to capture the notes (unlike the common practice of the time, which involved capturing sound via microphone).

The work is therefore completely instrumental in its duration, just over half an hour, with excellent passages, sometimes epic and other times carefree and delicate, where Zappa's skills exalt the instrument as if it were a voice, weaving arpeggios or fingerings, with skillful overdubbing that fills the sound, downplaying the fact that often no other instruments are played except for a guitar.

The first track is "Frammenti," a piece that has no hurry to open up to the listener, and thus does so gradually over its ten-minute duration with skillful arpeggios in constant evolution capable of creating unique and very gentle atmospheres upon which the author draws with graceful lines an excellent melody, interrupted by a brief intermezzo of guitar overdubs followed by one of the rare moments where we can also find drums and bass.

As the saying goes, "Well begun is half done," and so we continue with "Tre e Quattro Quarti," whose title helps to understand the time signatures on which the song is based, different from the previous one and with markedly classical influences in the first part, followed by a more progressive style section where drums and bass accompany the continuous overdubbing games.

The title track follows, where this time Zappa has fun and entertains us with echoes superimposed on a synth, which with a continuous phaser creates a particular effect, as if the notes were cascading down a waterfall. Very pleasant is the variation vaguely inspired by the Area, followed by an excellent guitar incursion.

We decisively change the atmosphere with "Sonata Mediterranea," whose title describes the musical content of the song, always very calm and with rather jazzy theme variations, all creating a sort of ballad, broken only by the advent of the last song "Mirage," which bursts in with a constantly crescendoing atmosphere upon which a pleasant phrasing of notes serves as a backdrop to the author's continuous embellishments. Probably the highlight of the entire work, highly recommended for guitar lovers, who will thus have the opportunity to get to know a master of the instrument.