Phoenix Again - Look Out
SKU
19-PA 2014
"Excellent second album from this instrumental Italian prog band. Interesting story about this band. Its based around the Lorandi family and the members have been together since the early 80s. They recorded some material for an album that was never released. Key member, guitarist/vocalist Claudio Lorandi passed away in 2007. The band recorded an album, ThreeFour, as a tribute to him. Now the band is carrying on, creating new music.
Sometimes its a cop out to compare a current Italian band to one from the 70s - the so-called "Rock Progressivo Italiano" school. Phoenix Again really has nothing to do with these bands. You would be hard pressed to call this a modern sound. Its clearly very much Prog (with a capital P). The music has a beautiful flow to it with excellent soloing on guitar and keys but with real nice back and forth interplay as well. Just when I think a certain tune is skewing towards guitar a nice synth solo breaks out. Yeah...the more I listen to this I would have to say that European bands like Focus and Camel are much more of an influence than say Banco or PFM. You'll even hear some inflections of fusion crop up. Claudio Lorandi turns up on vocals on one track. It's probably the least successful piece on the album, reminding a bit of Marillion, but its not a bad piece of music. It just pops out a bit since the rest of the album is all instrumental. Highly recommended."-Ken Golden