Daniele Caputo : drums, lead vocals, effects

Stefano Gabbani : bass

Gianni Vergelli : acoustic and electric guitars

Gianluca Gerlini : Hammond C3, piano, wurlitzer, fender rhodes, mellotron, clavinet

FGBG 4510.AR

www.londonunderground.it

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Imagine swinging London in the golden sixties, Soho in full bloom and fashion in full swing in and around Carnaby street and you get the picture about this Hammond driven Italian collective. The fierce opener ‘End of the race’ immediately reminds us of Atomic Rooster spiced up with Barrett-era Pink Floyd covered with a lush Caravan sauce. The Hammond’s Lesley speaker makes a wonderful vintage noise during the opening section for ‘Travelling lady’ where bluesy vocals and melodic flute alternate. When the saxophone steps in images of an experimental Ronnie Scott’s club pass by as well as the immortal Marquee club in Wardour street. With the rhythm section consisting of members from Standarte, London Underground doesn’t shun the experiment borrowing from the psychedelic heydays as during ‘Sermonette’ which sports some tasty guitar as well as nice harmonies.

Sometimes the band’s music contains some hidden funky textures which do remind us of Motown. ‘The days of man’ is a nice example of this delivering a wonderful rhythmic pattern which also gets close to the feel of seventies Santana, an atmosphere which is even enhanced towards the end of ‘A beautiful child’ when a fair amount of percussion is injected. In ‘Analonihum’ Daniele Caputo’s voice slightly sounds like David Bowie during his ‘Space oddity’ period whilst some tasty Fender Rhodes is introduced. The titletrack of this album could easily be sung by Gary Brooker as this song indeed is like London Underground’s very own ‘Salty dog’ seagulls included ! You can’t really say this band delivers it’s goods like the next Brian Auger and Trinity or the next Graham Bond Organisation as they really tackle various aspects of the progressive and psychedelic spectrum. The final track ‘Another rude awakening’ is a nice example of this as the almost classical mellotron in the beginning of the song combined with the acoustic guitar sounds like a forgotten Moody Blues tune. So although London Underground is a new band they deliver music which could easily have been composed towards the end of the sixties, beginning of the seventies. However each and every track on this, their second album, has the mark “quality” all over it. Without any doubt one of the most promissing newcomers in the domain of vintage prog to come from Italy for a long time !