UK act Airbridge was active in the early 1980's and released their debut album Paradise Moves in 1982. A nice album which I bought myself at the time. However during the following years no news came out about further releases. Then suddenly out of the blue the band released two new studio albums. Namely Memories Of Water (2021) and Openings (2023). And now Airbridge main man and songwriter Lorenzo Bedini released his first solo album Who Never Was. Lorenzo Bedini is a multi-instrumentalist who lives in Roccalbegna, Italy. He has made with Who Never Was a hand-crafted album, on which all instruments and voices were recorded live, in real time and without MIDI, artificial intelligence to preserve feeling and atmosphere. He played, engineered and produced everything himself. So a true solo album. The album is about charting the effects of life on the development of a human being, what we set out to be, and what we become. Music wise the album incorporates, Progressive, Psychedelic, Classic Rock and Electronic influences. All compositions are written by Bedini except The Walrus And The Carpenter. Here he got some help from Lewis Carroll helping out with the words. As for the music he wrote it together with Stephen Bennett. As you look at the cover and the artwork inside the booklet you can't avoid the similarity with the artwork of A Trick Of The Tail (1976), the seventh studio album released by Genesis. Even the overall colour is the same. Both in yellow. Also music wise there are influences notable throughout the entire album. The Mellotron, guitar and synthesizer parts could have been done by the musicians of Genesis. Many times the same musical feeling comes to the surface as on many albums released by this band in the seventies. But also the neo progressive rock bands from the eighties are incorporated in some of the twelve compositions on this album. Bands such as Marillion, Pallas and IQ come to mind. The twelve compositions on Who Never Was are of a rather high level. Picking out any favourites isn't that easy. But I guess Could Have Been, The Walrus And The Carpenter, Make The Silence and Voyager belong to the highlights on this release. Unfortunately my only negative remark is that the audio could have been recorded a bit better. This way the end result might have turned out even better than it is now. I guess this has mainly to do with the financial budget that was available to realize this album. My final conclusion is that Bedini came up with an excellent album of which he can be very proud. On his own he created an album that will be loved by many who are into retro prog and neo prog mainly. Despite that the audio quality could have been better I loved Who Never Was all the way. ****- Henri Strik (edited by Tracy van Os van den Abeelen) Where to buy? |
