Ataraxia - Autunna Et Sa Rose (split)

"La via verso il Cielo" / "???? ??? ?v?????"
(Equilibrium Music)
Total time: CD1 50:52 CD2 51:01

What a beautiful autumnal surprise! Not only the consantly restless ATARAXIA do not rest ripping the fruits of their labours of their long list of discography, but, on the contrary, they are seeing to enriching it with new exciting episodes. This time their headquarters was the cathedral of St. Michele in Rovigo (where the rocks speak, as mentioned by ATARAXIA themselves) and just for the occasion the compositions were executed based only on piano, classic guitar, bells and of course, on the unique talent of Fransesca Nicoli, for which I am obliged to call forth other decorative adjectives, as I have exhausted most of them in my previous review for the Italian dream seekers. But this release (the title of which is rendered in Greek) does not belong only to ATARAXIA, but it accomodates as well AUTUMNA ET SA ROSE, who I didn't know personally. It will be released in a limited number of 3000 copies, under the form of a double CD, where each band covers a CD. I believe that AUTUMNA ET SA ROSE did the right thing, because by doing this they will approach the distinctly larger audience of ATARAXIA, which it seems to increase by the year, prompting the four-membered band of Vittorio Vandelli, Giovanni Pagliari, Riccardo Pagliari and Fransesca Nicoli, to consantly plan new concerts as well as new songs that are included in their albums or the endless compilations that pop up from time to time having as their strongest selling point the participation of the always restless and enterprising Italians.
Let's cut to the chase!

CD1: ATARAXIA - "Strange lights"
"We gave this title to our album due to the masks we used (creations of Angelo Zanella), some representing the karma of the living and others the karma of the dead, while Angelo himself created the setting by lighting each mask from behind with candles . Then came the music."
What the band mentioned is already enough for those of us who had the misfortune not to be present, to imagine the idyllic place and the devout situation. The term "concert" seems unidiomatic to me and that's why I am not going to use it. Those who have already lived the experience understand what it means to have seen ATARAXIA live. It concerns a spectacular show, unique in its field (with simple settings), full of emotions, a musical-theatrical performance where the spectator is all of a sudden transported to parallel worlds, fabricating in his own mind his desirable, fairy-like scenery, the common denominator of which is met in the calling of the same siren. Did you happen to read Clive Barker's "The Thief of Always"? If not, I recommend it to you as an accompaniment of this listening. Glancing at the track-listing, we discover 2 brand new and unreleased songs, the "Strange lights", and "Seas of the moon", while the rest of the CD is covered by several historical moments like the seductive "Ophelie", the monumental "Shelmerdine" (from "Orlando" which by now is hard to find), the classical "Faust in una sala maledetta" from the "il Fantasma del' Opera", as well as "Medusa" from "Lost Atlantis". But I can't help wondering about the reason they didn't include not even a song from the very best album of their long career, "Suenos", but they know best. In conclusion, this musical performance is keeping piously to the austere ritual of ATARAXIA and I put it a step lower from "Live in Portugal - Os cavaleros do templo" of 1998, that is near excellence. But I repeat that ATARAXIA's music is unbreakably attached to the choreographies on the stage, resulting to the fact that while we enjoy the sound document, we lose the important visual part. Are you considering buying it? But, ladies and gentleman, we are talking about ATARAXIA, the most important representative of an idiom long forgotten, we are talking about the uncontested leaders that lead as well as define, with each release, new sound spheres.
For one more time, charmed!

CD2: AUTUNNA ET SA ROSE - "Logos"
The trio of Sonia Vinsentin (Soprano), Simone Montanari (Cello) and Disorder (Piano, Vocals & Composition), seems to be activated for years now in a experimental hybrid where the profuse melancholy is being engrafted with the arias of the Soprano. From the one hand, the piano in connection with the cello create bursts of a soundtrack-like romanticism and on the other the high-pitched vocals in syllables (taken out of the lyric stage) gave me mixed impressions. In substance, they can very well be called a band of classical orientations, but there is no way you will see them on the same stage with all those arty, formally dressed middle-aged fellows that one day they put up operas and the next they "execute" classical symphonies. Either way, "Logos" contains 11 compositions, 8 of which come from their 3 first albums (I don't know if there are any other than those) while they have added the lure of three unreleased ones ("Landschraft der Vergangenheit", "Canzona", "Egypt") for the directly interested fans of the band. I will simply remember them because somewhere, some time, they shared this split with ATARAXIA.

Reviewer: Andreas Stasinopoulos

Rating: N/A

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Added: November 18th 2005

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