Saturday, June 19, 2010

Siamo, Il volo di Icaro

Here we have two light-prog italian albums, late 70s. The first, Il Volo di Icaro, features quite good songwriting. It's worth briefly repeating the ancient Greek story of Icarus although I have a feeling everyone knows it well. Daedalus was an artisan who had been imprisoned on Crete by Minos, with his son, in order to escape he created wings made of feathers and glued with wax. He warned his son repeatedly not to attempt to fly too high but the son became intoxicated with the feeling and the sun melted his wings and he fell into the sea (a specific sea near Samos). Daedalus must have cried hard, it's difficult to lose a son, even in this way. It would've been heartbreaking to have known he could have avoided it with more care, and that it was a fully preventable accident. It generally takes months to years to get over a death like that. Constantly he would have been afraid to fly again, to even look at a bird would have been painful. He surely would have been able to commiserate with prometheus bound.
How close did Icarus have to get? Well since the temperature will drop inversely proportionally to the square of the radius from the sun, starting from a surface t for the sun of 6000 C, to the earth's minus 15 without greenhouse effect 93 million miles away, in order to reach a temperature of 40 degrees or so to melt wax while still being compatible with life would have meant getting about halfway to the sun.
This record doesn't get into the astronomical details, but has some beautiful tracks outlining the tale, some straight pop songwriting, some sweet folk guitar (Giorno di Marzo) some ingenious passages. The last song unfortunately is a throwaway song of street sounds. The second last Meditation is a very atmospheric piano piece in D minor. Check out the beautiful synths that then play out a spacey melody over a nice bass groove.

Meditation...

21 comments:

Tristan Stefan said...

http://sharebee.com/3b8c22c7 siamo
http://sharebee.com/d8593384 il volo

Unknown said...

both links are not found...
probably [space] in file name?

Anonymous said...

Hey, Friend Tristan, is not there any link :(

Ben Sommer said...

"...very atmospheric piano piece in D minor..."

Ahh, D minor - the saddest key.

Tristan Stefan said...

http://sharebee.com/3b8c22c7
is the link for siamo and same for il volo, ignore the artist name

PHSStudiosRJ said...

Sensational Tristan !!!


Thanks........

Unknown said...

just understood the link
sorry + thanks

Il Volo di Icaro is beautiful Cantautore album!
Siamo is better flamophone like music!
i love both
Tristan has good ears

Antonino said...

Il Volo Di Icaro è l'album solo di Alessandro Lencioni.

isabelbc said...

I found this info :)

Discography:
LP - Il volo di Icaro (Studiosound SSL 0100 - 1978)

Led by Alessandro Lencioni, composer and keyboardist, this group from Tuscany released a self-produced ten-track songs album in 1978. The LP was recorded in Florence and seven musicians helped Lencioni, but it's unclear whether this was a proper group or just session musicians helping in his solo album. http://www.italianprog.com/

Anonymous said...

Friend Tristan, Where is "Il volo di Icaro? I only found "Siamo".

Cristho70 said...

PLEASE !!!
I implore You :
Re up IL VOLO DI ICARO lp !!!!

isabelbc said...

hi Cristho70,

the link to Il Volo di Icaro (http://sharebee.com/d8593384) in the first comment works very well

isabel :o)

Anonymous said...

Alessandro Lencioni, during the Seventies, was one of my school mates at the Classical Lyceum of Viareggio, Tuscany. He was musically very active as a teenager, singing and playing guitar, keyboards and - with a vibrant swing of his own - drums. Personally, as a singer-songwriter and piano player, I owe him a lot: he was adventurous and dynamic, and although he listened mostly to Italian rock groups and I was a fan of blues and soul singers, I considered him a sort of teacher.

Anonymous said...

Hallo, it is possible to re-up "Il Volo di Icaro"? All links are dead. Thank you, Mario, Italy.

isabelbc said...

new link Il Volo di Icaro http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7BIC0570

Anonymous said...

Miss Isabel, thank you very much. Mario.

Anonymous said...

new link Il Volo di Icaro http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7BIC0570 dead & gone

isabelbc said...

new link: http://netkups.com/?d=757f844a9df4a

Anonymous said...

All links for SIAMO are dead.
Could you repost it?
Thanks very much.

isabelbc said...

new link Siamo http://netkups.com/?d=40f3eb3636e68

Anonymous said...

thanks

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