Diaspro's debut doesn't behave like a debut. It behaves like a place a dimly lit corridor between memory and instinct, lined with half opened doors and the faint hum of machinery that may or may not belong to you. It's an album that doesn't simply tell a story but enacts one, moving with the deliberateness of a ritual and the vulnerability of a confession. Eleven pieces, all interconnected, all part of a single psychological migration: descent, disorientation, recalibration, and the uneasy return to daylight. Not nostalgic, not revisionist, but deeply conversant with the Italian progressive lineage it descends from, and confident enough to treat that lineage as a living vocabulary rather than a museum language. From the opening moments, Diaspro signals that it understands atmosphere as architecture. The harpsichord‑organ‑violin weave of the introduction isn't ornamental; it's spatial. You feel the room being built around you, each instrument carving out its own chamber. It's classic RPI grandeur rendered with contemporary restraint a threshold rather than a throwback. As the narrative begins to move, the band's sense of emotional pacing becomes one of its defining strengths. Dante Campora's vocals maintain a measured distance, the kind that suggests a protagonist observing his own unravelling from just outside his body. When the guitars and Hammond organ collide with acoustic passages, the tension isn't theatrical it's existential. The rhythm section of Bruce Muirhead on bass and Luca Grosso on drums, are taut but never rigid, giving the music a pulse that feels like someone trying to steady their breathing. Diaspro's heavier moments are never about weight for its own sake. When the triplet‑driven lurch toward the "big city" darkens into denser terrain, the guitars of Marcello Chiaraluce and Giovanni Giordano sharpen the album's edge without tipping into mere prog-metal bombast. The heaviness feels like narrowing corridors, not genre signaling. Elsewhere, the band lets in flashes of kinetic energy and sly theatricality. A funk‑tinged rhythmic lift evokes Banco's grandeur without imitation, propelled by Andrea Manuelli's brass‑colored keys that seem to physically push the music upward. Later, a wry 3/4 detour reveals the group's sense of irony a reminder that self‑interrogation can be both painful and faintly absurd. The instrumental Verso La Tana di Gelso is structurally impressive: a patient fugue in which motifs chase one another before dissolving into a reflective piano coda that quietly threads earlier themes back into the tapestry. The move feels operatic in ambition yet intimate in execution. Even the album's miniature triptych Totem, Gelso, Inferno feels purposeful rather than ornamental. These brief symbolic flashes compress the larger narrative into distilled gestures, culminating in an acoustic moment of stark psychological clarity. The closing track, Senza Di Me refuses the easy catharsis that prog albums often reach for. Instead, it lingers in ambiguity, ending with a lyrical guitar solo that gestures toward resolution without granting it. There's a touch of Mark Knopfler in the phrasing not in tone or imitation, but in the sense of emotional economy. A final exhale rather than a final statement. Sonically, the album is warm, tactile, and unhurried. Claudio Cattero's mix privileges depth and air, allowing details to surface gradually rather than announcing themselves. It's a recording that feels lived‑in neither glossy nor lo‑fi, but human, with a narrative flow treated as seriously as the tonal balance. What ultimately distinguishes Diaspro is how fully the band inhabits its concept. This isn't a story being executed; it's a world being embodied. Chiaraluce's compositional vision is cohesive without rigidity, and Giordano's co‑production ensures the music breathes rather than calcifies. The touchstones are there Banco's poetic darkness, PFM's structural elegance, Talk Talk's introspective drift and the shadowed narrative ambition of Van der Graaf Generator but Diaspro never sounds like a revival act. It sounds like a contemporary Italian prog band that knows its heritage well enough to move beyond it. A brooding, meticulously crafted, emotionally resonant debut. Not an album you "listen to" so much as one you "enter", wander through, and return to each time finding a new corner still humming in the dark. Listeners who prize atmosphere over flash, story over spectacle, and depth over display will find much to enjoy here a modern Italian prog record that listens to its ancestors, but speaks in its own quietly insistent voice. My one complaint is that the album is much too short. **** David Carswell Where to buy? |
