Siena Root
Different Realities

The attack is decidedly fascinating: an acoustic start, a melodic loop accompanied by an electric piano, perfectly fitting. The voice enters filtered and suffering, yet epic at the same time. It all serves as a prelude to the explosive riff, deadly: 2 shattering notes, only to bring back the calm.

When an album begins with such a dose of class and demonstration of absolute knowledge of the seventies subject matter, well: if you love the genre, you know you've invested your money well.

It continues with a solo, warm, bluesy. The voice still proclaiming, suffering, but not whining or depressing, rather liberating, there: cathartic, as every good mantra of psychedelic hard rock from the great bands of the '60s - '70s used to be. Then an instrumental escape, anarchic, between guitar solos and organ. All very beautiful.

Then the calm. A classical guitar with counterpoints of flute and mandolin that seems like being in a Sergio Leone western. Then another instrumental journey, always undertaken with skill, never exaggerating or losing the thread, between a hard passage resting on an electric guitar riff, with background choirs and sharp rolls, or a more seductive vocal melody accompanied by the organ and strange effects or searing guitars, for the final crescendo. 

The first suite ends, "We", and the second begins, "The road to Agartha": the album, by the way, consists of only these two suites, both over 25 minutes long, but it's not a problem: lie down and relax, don't think, just listen. It's not difficult, the music is varied and always captivating at just the right point if you love the sounds from the golden age of rock. If you have something (...) to accompany the listening, feel free to use it, because the second suite is a true journey to the East, with all the instruments (gong, sitar, bells, tzouras, duf, qaraqab, tambourines and so on) necessary for a philological exotic evocation.

We are now immersed in an endless vortex of bongos and sitar. Time has stopped, we are lost in the Indian evocations of the Beatles in Sgt. Pepper, and we wouldn't want to exit. Boredom doesn't manage to take over our attention as the electric guitar, rough and dirty, inserts itself among the sitar's embroidery and dialogues with it, between a wah-wah and a warm solo. Clearly, everything is always supported by harmonic and melodic loops that still allow you to follow these mad and visionary Swedes without ever getting bored.

5 minutes from the end, it speeds up again, with the sitar that never stops weaving the piece, even at a now sustained pace. More guitar solos, now conversing with the flute and some other strange instrument from who knows which desert, for a final ascent, dragging and liberating, before a gong declares the time escape concluded.

Now you can get up and reimmerse yourself in the hectic traffic on the ring road, and to the driver who shows you the middle finger to criticize your relaxed pace, you'll undoubtedly respond with a V (which stands for love & peace, brother)!!!

The graphics, the very fonts used for the notes, the digipack, the division into side A and B, the mention of total analog recording... everything takes us back in time, when making music was a free form of art and creativity, light-years away from mere market logics.  

I know, they are retro, not innovative at all, but here the problem is that they do not mimic old sounds with modern ones (as, for example, the Flower Kings do in a good enough retro-neo-prog, trying to innovate but not succeeding that much). No, sirs. Siena Root recorded this album in 1970 and they had never told us, releasing it today thinking we wouldn't notice... naive!!!