Sensazioni - "Doctor Faust Suite" {Italy} [1981]

It amazes me that there are still true progressive gems out there to be shared, not yet released to cd, not well known. I wonder just how bottomless the pit is, of 70s albums in this genre, or when we will finally start scraping the bottom of that barrel. One thing I do know is we're close to the end when it comes to St Pierre et Miquelon progressive bands.

Regarding Italy, here is a true late progressive treasure which to my knowledge is not out generally for the fans. It is mostly memorable for a fantastic side-long track, which recounts the famous story of Dr. Faust in symphonic style, beautiful arrangements with string synths, guitars and piano, a dark atmosphere, reminiscent of masters Banco in the way the themes are worked and redeveloped throughout. Starting out with three notes of a minor scale then an augmented fourth, very atmospherically it moves into some mysterious sounds, some piano invention, then some sung passages... A gritty uptempo end part full of minor seconds harkens back to the energy of Banco's Darwinian album. How odd, to hear this true-blue prog in 1981 Italia! I guess this band exchanged their afterlife in posterity for the ability to write great music -- exactly the opposite of most pop bands. Their curse was to write advanced music no one would like, at least no one but maybe a couple thousand in a population of almost 7 billion now.
A couple of tracks are poppish or discoish in a way that reminds me of Il Volo's albums, still some progressive elements pull us fans back from the edge of nausea, well, maybe some of you will require antiemetics on the third track. A fourth track of reflections of autumn really hits the spot in good songwriting. The last track incorporating some 80s beats makes me feel sad since the band was really trying to come up with a single style of radio-friendly unit style-shifting song.
Fabulous side-long though all in all makes this worth a listen or twenty.

Doctor Faust Suite...