Le Orme
Collage

Release Date: 1971 | Tracklist

“Collage” is the second studio album of Le Orme that was released in 1971. The line up on the album is Aldo Tagliapietra, Antonio Pagliuca and Michi Dei Rossi.


Anyone who is used to prog rock music knows that it’s usually considered that it was born in the UK. However, that movement spread out in many other countries, especially in Europe. Of all European countries, there was probably one who stood out more than the others, Italy, that became a great hot bed to prog, and that still is. Of all the greatest bands that were born in those days in Italy, four became probably the most famous, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso, Le Orme and Area. Le Orme is the band with the subject of my review with their album “Collage”.

Le Orme was founded in Marghera, Venice, Italy in 1966. Despite a hiatus from 1982 to 1986, the band returned to active in the beginning of the 90’s and still is active today. Le Orme was formed by the vocalist and guitarist Aldo Tagliapietra, guitarist Nino Smeraldi, bassist Claudio Galietti and drummer Marino Rebeschini. Le Orme released their debut studio album with a different line up. The former drummer Rebeschini was substituted by Michi Dei Rossi and a keyboardist was added to the band, Antonio Pagliuca. With five members, Le Orme released “Ad Gloriam” in 1968, an album in the Beat and psych roots. From the Beat and psychedelic roots, they moved into increasingly sophisticated structures and released their second studio album “Collage” in 1971, the album that can be considered their first prog work.

As I mentioned before, “Collage” was the first album from this incarnation of Le Orme, and their first of interest in the prog rock context. Musically, the song material here is still a bit unpolished and doesn’t quite reach their compositional maturity. The album still has connections with the Beat scene of the 60’s, but at the same time it marks the overcoming of it through the massive use of keyboards, arrangements aimed at the symphonic and long instrumental fugues. All this pointed towards a much more prog style. Le Orme celebrate their typical, keyboard dominated prog rock with a romantic touch. But, what catches the eye most of all is their undoubted originality with a Mediterranean flavour, which was able to draw inspiration from the symphonic and Baroque rock of The Nice and Emerson, Lake And Palmer without being simply clones like many other bands, in those times, made of the Anglo-Saxon’s sound their main characteristic.

“Collage” has seven tracks. The álbum opens with the title track, a simple but bombastic instrumental that can remind of The Nice in one of their better and more elegant moments. It has Baroque influences that make us imagine Bach and the harpsichord sonatas by Scarlatti. The moving “Era Inverno” follows, with some evident pop-melodic sounds and a percussive interlude with tribal flavours. It shows a nice track particularly in the part with the Hammond and the drums in evidence. Following is “Cemento Armato”, basically a long and raw jam with a short vocal beginning and end. It has a nice melodic taste besides the excellent technical skills of the three band’s members, which manifest themselves with free intertwining in the long instrumental interlude. But, the quintessence of Le Orme’s sound is all contained in the dreamlike “Sguardo Verso Il Cielo”. It’s a piece well constructed and arranged that sounds compact and precious in the arrangements and with an excellent acoustic guitar that gives a dreamlike dimension to the whole. “Evasione Totale” is another number of pure experimentation, almost jazzy, dominated by Pagliuca’s long solos on the Hammond, this time even with a quite spacey feeling. It has an evident mastery in the instrumental passages, especially in the Moog games. The group then leaves us with the short composition “Immagini”. It’s a soft and sadly delicate track that manages to go beyond the banal while maintaining a repetitive structure. It relies on Tagliapietra’s evocative voice and on descriptive and dreamy lyrics, as the title itself indicates. The sad pop melody with the celebratory ending “Morte Di Un Fiore” still feels the effects of the past Beat sounds, but perhaps it was a deliberate choice. It’s a touching closing to this album.


Conclusion: We can say that decades after its release, “Collage” still sounds fresh and flowing and has well stood the fateful test of time. Despite “Collage” represents a large step from their debut “Ad Gloriam” from 1969, have marked the band’s entry into the progressive field and have been heavily influenced by groups such as The Nice, Le Orme’s grasp on the progressive rock was still perhaps a bit raw and not fully developed on “Collage” compared to their next albums, “Uomo Di Pezza” from 1972, “Felona E Sorona” from 1973 and “Contrappunti” from 1974. Still, the album marked a promising start for this new and best chapter in the band’s career making that Le Orme would soon become one of the few Italian bands to achieve major success by transcending the Italian borders and making of them as one of the best and most representative acts of the Italian progressive rock music. So, this is a great album that I highly recommend.


Music was my first love.
John Miles (Rebel)

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