Febo is an album I decided to pick up for a number of reasons, none of them particularly compelling. Basically, it's an album I just decided to take a chance on. L'Estate di San Martino has only one other album to their credit, Alder, which was released in 1981. I have not heard Alder, but its (admittedly few) ratings on Gnosis lead me to believe that I might find it enjoyable.Febo is a concept album, containing another album. The idea is centered around a young Generation Y boy, Febo, who downloads music, but only listens to things very briefly. Febo listens to some music he has found classified as "Italian Music" and feels the urge to buy the physical album. When it finally arrives, he finds the experience of holding the album far more profound than anything he has felt after simply downloading music. So much for the concept; in execution, the first two and final tracks frame the "album within the album." Track 2, "Download," features sound bites from the following tracks, signalling that we are about to hear what the boy hears when he puts on the album.
At this point I should talk about the music itself, lest this review become just my own philosophical ramblings on the nature of packaged music. The first thing to note is that L'Estate di San Martino don't sound like any of the typical Italian prog bands, nor indeed like any of the atypical Italian bands I have heard. That's not to say that they are in any way groundbreaking; they're not, it's just that most of the usual touchstones don't apply. If you absolutely must have a comparison, think of a Fabio Zuffanti project inspired by Sade.
The overall tone of the album is melancholy and subdued, usually involving clear guitar sound with lots of reverb, slow tempos, minor keys, synthesisers holding one chord per bar and some very tasteful bass patterns. The male vocalist, Marco Pentiricci, has a husky quality that reminds me a little of Maxophone's lead singer. Personally, I prefer the guest female vocalist, Conny Rausch, who appears on the trilingual song "Animarum Mare."
While I think of Febo as a good album rather than a great one, there is something compelling about it, and I found myself playing it far more often than I expected to. Unfortunately, music is a buyers' market these days, and this sweet little album is likely to go largely unnoticed. But it's nice to know that there are albums like this out there, and I feel more than adequately compensated for having taken a chance on it.
review by Conrad Leviston — 8-26-08 —
