Madrugada - Madrugada (1974)

It took me a while to warm up to Madrugada’s output which, initially, I tended to pair with Saint Just in the Italian prog scene, but not so much anymore. Their sophomore efforts might be somewhat similar in their electrified avant-jazz-prog-folk miscuglio; however, when it comes to their debuts Madrugada certainly wins it for me. It’s rather atypical for that scene, which is giving it increasing credit in my appreciation: no fussiness, no grandiloquence, and vocals that manage to avoid the two polar registers that symptomatically dominated it (high-pitched castrato or gruff latin macho; a fact which I'm sure some gender studies theorist could make something of). 

Instead, we are offered a set of mild-mannered autumnal songs and jazzy digressions, delivered in as accomplished as unassuming fashion by a band of youths struggling with the privilege of having the spare time to entertain existentialist considerations (I share your pain, ragazzi). Even when they try to be a bit more upbeat on a couple of numbers (which was clearly not their forte), they can’t help but distill a melancholic hew, which soaks some of the best tracks here (“sei un uomo blu”, indeed), always dropping "mille forme d'ombra" (love that turn of phrase) with their Fender Rhodes, that made even their collective chants for us to join them happily down the road not such a sappy proposition as it might sound on a first listen. 

Particularly, I may have become a sucker for the right piano chords at the beginning of a song - what with Radiohead’s Pyramid Song and The National’s Fake Empire (weird references in this context, I know, but good music does pop up in the darnedest places, including bands that can fill up arenas) - and sure enough, just as the record begins, that simple piano opening over a windy backdrop immediately gets to me. It feels like an aural translation of how stoics would experience the duality of nature in Antiquity; the bitter-sweetness of enjoying its fruits while anticipating the rot, working with it, instead of being blindsided or consuming much of your lifetime just trying to stave it off (as the delusions of modernity, doggedly denying all intimations of mortality, coax us to). 

So, enjoy this while you can, and always choose wisely what (and who) to dedicate your time to next: it, me, and you (unless you're a big tech mogul; who knows what thou, mine beloved overlord, are up these days?), like Seneca, drawing wine from the krater, leaning against an olive tree and writing letters to Lucilius, hoping to bang him at some point (I'm sorry, that's entirely apocryphal; but, I mean, so many letters), aren't bound to be around forever. I know, who would have thought?

Sylvette Allart / Théodore Parasquive – De L'Onde À L'Infini (1974)

A bit of a waste of a perfectly good instrument this is. I’m always prone to thinking that any occasion to showcase esoteric instruments - in this case, the Ondes Martenot (grand name, to begin with) - is a good one, but the fact is that, by its very nature, very few people find a way to make them interesting, especially when the instruments arise from more or less individual invention rather than evolve from a cultural tradition, refining its use around its specific musical properties, from which forms of individual appropriation can more consequentially arise. 

So, in many examples (particularly in electronic music) of musicians (and/or engineers) trying to advance and legitimise instrumental novelty, they opt for using it to mimic a conventional aesthetic, hoping to make the new medium acceptable to a larger crowd, and render it socially, culturally and economically viable. 

Usually it’s adaptations of popular songs and/or classical pieces - as in Clara Rockmore's Theremin (1977), of which, sadly, I'm not a fan. Here, Sylvette Allart (the "ondist", as it were) and Théodore Parasquive (or "Theodor Paraskivesco", in other releases, on piano) actually bothered to go for original works (a big plus in my book) but, unfortunately, still slightly to no avail, since most are dainty neo-classical compositions, rather ill-fitted to make full use of the otherworldly sonic emanations the instrument is capable of (L’oiseu de Java, by Luc André Marcel (of whom, unsurprisingly, I know no other work), probably comes closest to tapping into that). 

As such, this is a bit like the musical equivalent of using a computer to hit a nail. There's nothing wrong with the execution here, and it’s fine as a curiosity, but if you are hoping to get your Ondes Martenot rocks really off, I'm afraid Messiaen’s compositions - particularly when handled by the ondist Jeanne Loriod, sister of the pianist Yvonne Loriod, in turn Messiaen's second wife (what a family!) - or even the odd Radiohead track (after Jonny Greenwood latched onto the instrument, morphing into something of a socio-musical symbiont), are still the way to go.