Biography
Stormy Six may be
the only band in the Rock in Opposition movement to have started
life as a pop band. They're definitely the only
RIO band to open for the Rolling Stones. But after some
lineup changes, the band did an about-face and reappeared as
a heavily political Marxist folk group. Avant-gardist
musical tendencies started to appear in the second half of the
70s and reached their fruition on 1980's Macchina Maccheronica,
which included contributions from Henry Cow's Georgie Born.
Even though they got more conventional again before breaking
up around 1982, some of them reunited in 1984, joining Cassiber
to form the one-shot band Cassix and participating in a project
designed by modernist luminary Hans Werner Henze.
1993 brought a
reunion and a live recording, Un Concerto. They
appear not to have done anything as a band since then, although
individual members, particularly Tomaso Leddi, are still playing
concerts and working with performance artists. Leddi also
released a solo album in 1995, entitled Algoritmo Ballabile.
- Alex Temple
[May 2002]
L'Apprendista
(1977)
Stormy Six were
the oldest of the original RIO bands, having released their
debut album as early as 1969. As a result, they were pretty
far into their career before they started to sound remotely
"RIO-ish," and while L'Apprendista is quite complex and
certainly "progressive," it's not nearly as avant-sounding as
its successor, Macchina Maccheronica. While that
album is as hardcore RIO as you'll find anywhere, this one has
a lighter tone, eschewing harsh dissonance in favor of quirky,
mostly acoustic chamber music with odd chord progressions. It
tends to get compared to Gentle Giant, and while that's not
entirely inaccurate, it's also somewhat misleading. What
we do get is occasional tinges of Renaissance and Baroque music
(the flourishes at the beginning of the title track could be
right out of Telemann), and detailed counterpoint, including
some wonderful three-part a capella polyphony in "L'Orchestra
dei Fischiettei." What we don't get is keyboard synths,
vocals that sound remotely like Kerry Minnear and Derek Shulman,
or anything approaching a rock-out. Picture the instrumental
opening of "Schooldays" or the middle section of "Black Cat"
instead of "Experience" or "Proclamation" and you'll start to
have a better idea.
Qualifications
aside, this is a very nice piece of work with some outstanding
tracks, and it's both accessible enough for most mainstream
prog fans and complex enough for most RIO fans. Aside
from the vague similarities to Gentle Giant, there is also an
influence of Italian folk music which gives the album a cheerful
character, especially on the first few tracks. As the
album continues, it gets gradually more serious -- one of the
highlights is "Il Barbiere," in which the music begins to take
on a more strident sound, including some wonderful sections
in which the vocals sing triplets against duplets in the accompaniment.
The song also contains a long section in which Franco Fabbri's
vibraphone solos over a constantly varying chromatically tonal
groove in the bass and lower string instruments, providing a
much-needed contrast to the twiddly counterpoint of the surrounding
tracks.
Also of note is
"Il Labirinto" -- easily the "proggiest" track here, with the
electric instruments and saxophone more prominent than anywhere
else on the album, and a spacey, jam-like section in the middle
that wouldn't feel out of place on Gong's Camembert Electrique.
Oddly, the more experimental elements of the band suddenly crop
up at the end of the album, giving us the largely atonal art-song
of "Rosso," which actually reminds me of Ernst Krenek in his
twelve-tone period. The last song, "L'Orchestra dei Fischietti,"
is more tonal, but manages to encompass more genres in six and
a half minutes than any other piece I can think of, including
jazz, Renaissance polyphony and freeform noise improv.
For me, there's
only one thing that keeps L'Apprendista from being great,
which is the lack of variety around the middle of the album.
While the songs from "Carmine" through "Il Labirinto" all have
distinct characters due to their arrangements, their main tunes
and chord progressions sound rather similar to me -- a problem
made worse by the vocals, which aren't bad per se, but are rather
flat and uninflected. As a result, I sometimes find myself
skipping "Cuore." This is still a good album, but it's
not on the level of Macchina Maccheronica. -
Alex Temple [May 2002]
Click
Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info
Macchina
Maccheronica (1980)
It probably goes
against some sort of Progweed policy for me to write a really
gushy review. But I figure that since nearly all of my
reviews contain some amount of criticism, I'm entitled to this
one. Cause this album is amazing. I thought
L'Apprendista was good, but this one blows it out of
the water. In fact, it blows a lot of other RIO out of
the water as well. In terms of sheer compositional sophistication,
this may be one of the most impressive works rock music has
produced. In terms of attitude, it reminds me of James
Grigsby's work with the Motor Totemist Guild and U Totem, particularly
in its stylistic eclecticism and its enormous debt to modern
classical music. On the surface, that doesn't seem so
unusual -- all RIO is influenced by modern classical music to
one degree or another-- but _Macchina Maccheronica_ takes it
further: not only is it influenced by more experimental composers
-- Berio and expressionist-era Schoenberg rather than the usual
Stravinsky and Bartók -- but the rock element that can
be found in many of the RIO bands is largely absent here.
I remember commenting to a friend at one point, "Well, it's
certainly In Opposition..."
Actually, Macchina
Maccheronica is a less-than-favorite for some prog fans,
and maybe this lack of a rock base explains that. What
I hear, though, is a brilliantly composed album that takes an
Ivesian delight in juxtaposing folky circus music with dense,
thorny modernism. The first two songs set up the dichotomy:
the title track is a catchy, driving song that combines the
mood and instrumentation of circus music with the harmonic patterns
of the Baroque (and a chorus that shows off Umberto Fiore's
wonderful bass range), while "Le Lucciole" is a tangle of gestural,
atonal convolutions and cross-rhythms. There are aggressive,
jagged passages that recall Henry Cow, but they don't last long,
so the music never settles into a real "groove." Still,
even at its most abstract, the album never feels random or incoherent,
particularly because the of vocal parts, many of which are almost
modal and have a beautiful plaintiveness about them.
The sharp contrast
between these opening tracks is not matched again until the
end, with the highly elaborate "Verbale" and the rollicking
"Somario." In the middle of the album, the stylistic contrasts
are subtler, allowing the opening of "Rumba Sugli Alberi" to
segue from 16th century brass polyphony to modernism and back
again without a seam audible. There are also a few brief
tracks thrown in as relief from the density of some of the longer
pieces -- the four songs called "Madonina" are different arrangements
of a quirky tune by Giovanni D'Anzi. Particularly weird
is "Enzo," recorded live in Milan, whose demented barbershop
strains and goofy vocal noises ought to be irritating, but somehow
manage to be really good. It actually reminds me of Ligeti's
Aventures, a strangely compelling piece based on grunts,
shouts and sighs.
In short, the
album kicks ass. It's one of the best RIO albums I've
ever heard. Given the negative reviews it sometimes gets,
I can't guarantee it'll be one of your favorites as well --
but I certainly hope so.
- Alex Temple [May 2002]
Click
Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info
Al
Volo (1982)
Where the hell did THIS come from? Stormy Six are known for
sounding different on every album, but no one would have predicted
from the previous few increasingly complex and dissonant acoustic
albums that they would turn up the electrics and go New Wave
on us. Not poppy New Wave, but dark, aggressive, arty Euro
New Wave. The closest comparison I can think of is to the
spikier tracks on Wire's 154 ("Once is Enough") but
that doesn't really work either, especially since formerly
unaffected vocalist Umberto Fiori has turned into a decent
approximation of the Archetypical Italian Prog Vocalist (think
Gianni Leone, Alberto Piras, Demetrios Stratos), and traces
of their RIOish past still creep in here and there too.
It's
really quite a bizarre combination of styles, but for the
most part it works very well. Admittedly, the album is a bit
uneven: "Reparto Novità" drags a bit, and "Roma" is way too
melodramatic (though it did grow on me eventually). There
are also two bizarre songs that walk the line between awkwardness
and beauty: "Panorama" and "Ragionamenti" both use the trappings
of 80s electro-pop, but the chord progressions are all wrong,
the melodies never quite do what they're supposed to, and
the structures are weirdly aimless. The latter is particularly
strange: halfway through, trilling vibraphones appear out
of nowhere, in the wrong key, and lead into a section of solemn
High Renaissance vocal harmonies, which dominate the rest
of the song.
I
find those two tracks fascinating in their refusal to conform
to expectation, but there are also a good handful of tracks
which are just plain awesome, such as the piano-led "Denti,"
which sounds like an electrified outtake of L'Apprendista,
only better. "Non si sa dove stare" opens the album beautifully
with extremely low, rapid, staccato bass notes, dissonant
organs and perfect, incisive drumming reminiscent of XTC circa
Drums and Wires. "Cosa danno" is wonderfully catchy
and rhythmically elusive (and based on a tritone!), and the
last third of the brilliant "Piazza degli Affari" sounds like
how you might image Gentle Giant gone New Wave (not how Gentle
Giant actually /went/ New Wave), with complex contrapuntal
vocal lines weaving massive syncopated spirals around each
other over a drone bass and a propulsive backbeat. With songs
this good, a few weak tracks don't matter. Al Volo
is definitely recommended to Stormy Six fans and arty electro-pop
fans alike.
- Alex Temple [December 2002]
