L'Isola Di Niente

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Premiata Forneria Marconi's third album, 1974's <i>L'isola di Niente</i> (the title means "the island of nothing"), is even more musically sophisticated than its renowned predecessors, which were pretty complex affairs themselves. The rate at which the band shifts between time signatures, textures, and moods here is enough to induce vertigo, and while PFM's aesthetic always incorporated the influences of rock, jazz, classical, and folk music, the band's multifarious inspirations bounce off each other here with a more intense, thrilling velocity than before. The relative respite of the muted, mellow "Dolcissima Maria" aside, <i>L'isola di Niente</i> is a nonstop rollercoaster ride through Flavio Premoli's careening synthesizer lines, Franco Mussida's angular-but-epic guitar licks, and Mauro Pagani's multicolored violin and flute tones. But PFM temper all the dizzying technical prowess with the kind of passionate romanticism associated with the best of '70s Italian prog, achieving an emotion/intensity balance that puts them on a par with their U.K. peers.

via Apple Music