The Italian band Delirium hailed from Genova. Most band members once formed part of a band called I Sagittari established in 1970. The band's debut album Dolce Acqua (1971) contained a good and original mixture of prog, jazz and some radio-friendly melodies. In 1972 they participated at the San Remo music festival, which led to their biggest success ever with the hit single Jesahel, soon followed by a similar song Haum! Delirium always mixed their commercial side on the singles with a more difficult approach on the albums. After releasing two more albums in the seventies, they broke up. However, at the beginning of 2007 Delirium made a come-back with a new line-up featuring the original members Ettore Vigo (keyboards, vocals), Peppino Di Santo (drums, vocals), and Martin Grice (sax, flute, vocals) supplemented by the newcomers Roberto Solinas (vocals, acoustic and electric guitars) and Fabio Chighini (bass, vocals). They released the CD Live-Vibrazioni Notturne which is a fantastic return from this excellent Italian prog band. The record contains tracks from their previous albums and some singles along with two covers and the new song Notte A Baghdad. The album certainly shows the great form of the revived Delirium. With the help of various guest musicians, including their original guitarist Mimmo Di Martino, Delirium released in 2009 their fourth studio album Il Nome Del Vento. The line-up for live performances includes once more the multi-instrumentalist Rino Dimopoli. In 2010, the long career of Delirium finally got a highlight with the release of Il Viaggio Continua: La Storia 1970-2010, a nice retrospective on DVD. This release includes a concert which took place at Genova in 2008. A selection of songs from this concert has been included on a bonus-CD. The DVD also features the complete series of the RAI TV-clips made between 1971 and 1975. After this extensive intro I'll give you some more details about the items on this DVD-release. Of course, the main part is the hundred-minute concert held at the Teatro Politeama in Genova. Both the sound and the images are very good with nice close-ups of the musicians. For me that's always an important factor. During the concert all musicians get a special introduction and a solo spot. Most of the material comes from the band's latest studio album that can be regarded as their best written material so far. Especially songs like VersoIl Naufragio and Dopo Il Vento are beautiful pieces of music, the latter having some fine guitar and synth solos. They play a fine Jethro Tull-medley as well including Bourrée and Living In The Past. It's a pity that the vocals sound rather poor here. After this medley a string section gets on stage to play along with a couple of songs that obviously gives the music an orchestral sound. During L'Acquario Delle Stelle you can enjoy the same video footage that was used as a bonus video with their latest studio album. The hit single Jesahel was played toward the end of the band's performance. As an encore the band performs Joe Cocker's rendition of With A Little Help From My Friends. As a nice extra the almost eighty minutes of music from the DVD-concert have been released on CD as well. However, they had to leave out a couple of songs and therefore the Jethro Tull-medley has not been included. The thirty minutes of TV-footage show how the musicians looked in the seventies, but it also shows that a lot of music recorded in those days can't be considered as being prog rock. However, on the tracks Dolce Acqua and Jill I noticed a real Mellotron moving Delirium's music in the direction of a progressive rock style. The live footage from the concerts at the Teatro Della Gioventu (King's Road, 2007) and Bloom (Viaggio Negli Arcipelaghi Del Tempo Fuga 1, 2003) are some nice extras on this DVD. However, the quality is of a lower level than the footage from the 2008 recordings, but still worth listening and watching. Other extras are an interview with the band and a photo gallery, but these features have no additional value to this release. Well, this brings me to my final judgment for Il Viaggio Continua: La Storia 1970-2010. This is mostly very positive, because I can hardly indicate anything that I find disturbing or not worth watching or listening. Therefore thumbs up for Delirium and all the people who were responsible for this fine document! ***+ Henri Strik (edited by Peter Willemsen) Where to buy? |
