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History of the band.
This is already the fourth CD from this Suisse band. (1991 “Hologram”,
1994 “More Grains of Sand”, 1997 “Fears”). Last year, Marco Cerulli
released a solo CD “Guitar
Ambiences”
(see review on this site). In 2000, there was also “Alya” from Shakary a
project of ex-Clepsydra Gabriele Hofmann, on which Maggini did the
vocals. (That album was on many favourite lists, that year)
The album.
The album was released with 3 different front covers. The music is the
same on all three of them. At the time, there were probably Genesis fans
that bought the three different “Abacab” front covers, but I can’t
imagine you’ll find a Clepsydra fan doing the same. But you can buy all
three albums for the prize of two.
The division of the tracks is also very peculiar. Sometimes you find
CD’s from other bands where one track is divided in three parts, each
with a different subtitle. On this album they divided some tracks in
three parts, without subtitles, without any reason. Even in the lyrics,
I can’t find any reason for this division. Once you know the tracks, you
start to recognize some different parts, but they could have left the
songs in one track.
The music.
To review a successor of a masterpiece as “Fears” is not an easy task.
So I gave “Alone” a lot of listenings to make sure I could compare it to
“Fears”, which I know very thorough. And I have to admit, this has once
more turned out to be a highlight in the progressive rockworld.
It’s
a pity, they didn’t dot the i’s and cross the t’s on their vocals. Not
only the Italian accent of the singer, but especially the mistakes in
the lyrics and the pronunciation of the words are the main problem. It
was already a problem on “Fears”, but yet again, four years later, they
didn’t do anything about it. It’s such a pity, because this would have
been the album of the year. Fortunately, Aluisio Maggini has a very
beautiful voice, which compensates the problem a little bit.
For
the rest, the album is really first-rate progressive rock. The guitar
solos by Marco Cerulli are filled with superb melody lines and are
played with a feeling that I didn’t find on his solo CD. Especially
Marco and Aluisio give an extra touch to the sound of Clepsydra. There
are references to Marillion and Pendragon from time to time, but they
are forgiven, as I prefer a Clepsydra that sounds more Marillion then
Marillion themselves.
“Tuesday Night” and “Travel Of Dreams” are the best songs of the album.
These two songs cover the first 6 tracks and last about 24 minutes. They
contain a lot of progressive elements and variation, great guitar and
keyboard solos, magnificent vocal lines, splendid percussion and a
flawless bass riff on the beginning of track 2. The rest of the songs is
also of a higher quality than the average progrock song.
Listen to the samples on their site and let them convince you to buy
this album.
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