This fine Italian band started in 1974, but it took eighteen years before Il Castello Di Atlante presented their first album Sono Io Il Signore Delle Terre A Nord. In 2004 the band released their fifth and previous studio-album Quintessenza. Il Castello Di Atlante also performed in Mexico on the annual Baja Prog Festival and recently in Japan. However, the most remarkable fact is that this new album was recorded with all members of the original seventies line-up including bass player Dino Fiore who returned recently! Since I started to write reviews about prog rock music in the early nineties for Background Magazine, Il Castello Di Atlante is one of those bands I frequently stumbled upon from the very first beginning. Listening to their new album, their sound is still a very melodic and harmonic blend of seventies symphonic and neo-symphonic rock with hints to early Marillion. Most of the alternating compositions clock between ten and twenty minutes, featuring shifting moods, often compelling interplay between sensitive electric guitar and varied keyboards and warm, melancholic Italian vocals. The band is at their best in the tasteful mixture of classical instruments like piano, guitar and violin with modern keyboards: bombastic church-organ, fat synthesizer flights, tender grand piano and delicate harpsichord. Although I miss specific highlights, this album sounds as pleasant prog rock that will please the more romantic oriented prog heads among us. ***+ Erik Neuteboom (edited by Peter Willemsen) Where to buy? |
