Dalton Riflessioni: Idea D'infinito (1973)

Dalton was formed in 1972 by keyboardist Temistocle Reduzzi, Aronne Cereda on guitars, Alex Chiesa on flute, Rino Limonta on bass and Walter "Tati" Locatelli on drums, they released a very good debut album with "Riflessioni: Idea D'infinito". With a great use of flute and good guitar riffs, the album has some very good moments, like Idea d'infinito with some Jethro Tull influences. The album has a very short running time of around 30 minutes but it moved the band to a moderate success. They even won the first prize in a swiss Pop Festival in Zurich. Affinity to early UK prog is noticeable in the blues-influenced guitar riffs and leads, typically breathy and percussive flute lines, occasional stabs at (then) avant-garde electronic episodes based on Moog and a Mellotron.

Nuova Idea was among a seemingly tiny minority of bands of the nascent Italian progressive rock of the early-1970s that actually managed to release more than one album before disappearing without trace. The band's battle scarred line-up changed with the release of each of their three albums, although the music progressed in parallel with the changes in personnel and was so much the better as a consequence. In addition to being their most full- on prog album, 'Clowns' is also their most critically acclaimed work and rightly so for a work that runs the entire gamut of classic RPI.
The music is both sensitive and robust, complex and hard rocking, and like the band's previous release ('Mr. E. Jones') 'Clowns' is a concept album based on the realities and dreams of its main protagonist who in this case is a circus performer…

The group was formed in 1972 by keyboardist Temistocle Reduzzi,Aronne Cereda on guitars, Alex Chiesa on flute, Rino Limonta on bass and Walter "Tati" Locatelli on drums, they released a very good debut album with "Riflessioni: idea d'infinito". With a great use of flute and good guitar riffs, the album has some very good moments, like Idea d'infinito with some Jethro Tull influences. The album has a very short running time of around 30 minutes but it moved the band to a moderate success. They even won the first prize in a swiss Pop Festival in Zurich. Affinity to early UK prog is noticeable in the blues-influenced guitar riffs and leads, typically breathy and percussive flute lines, occasional stabs at (then) avant-garde electronic episodes based on Moog and a Mellotron…

Among the names that no Italian prog enthusiast can do without we undoubtedly have the legendary Dalton, a band that in the early ’70s left an indelible mark with the LP’s “Riflessioni: Idea d’Infinito” and “Argitari”. Their voice, guitar and one of the main composers was – and still is – Aronne Cereda, author of the recent “Memories” published by AMS Records in September 2017. In “Eden”, alongside the songwriting, folk and Celtic sides already present in “Memories”, echoes of ’70s progressive rock come back, unmistakably: an indelible sign of an era, that only those who have lived those years in first person can faithfully bring back to life; in particular, the songs “Giardino dell’Eden” and “La forza di Dio” will delight those who never forgot about Dalton, and still listen to their first two LP’s regularly.

Some find Karen Dalton's voice difficult to listen to, and despite the Billie Holiday comparisons, it is rougher going than Lady Day. But Dalton's vocals aren't that hard to take, and they are expressive; like Buffy Sainte-Marie, it just does take some getting used to because of their unconventional timbre. Her debut album has a muted folk-rock feel reminiscent of Fred Neil's arrangements in the mid-'60s, unsurprising since Neil's Capitol-era producer, Nick Venet, produced this disc too, and since Dalton, a friend of Neil, covered a couple of Neil songs here ("Little Bit of Rain," "Blues on the Ceiling"). Although clocking in at a mere ten songs, it covers a lot of ground, from Tim Hardin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Leadbelly to the traditional folk song "Ribbon Bow" and the Eddie Floyd/Booker T. Jones-penned soul tune "I Love You More Than Words Can Say." The record is interesting and well done, but would have been far more significant if it had come out five years or so earlier. By 1969 such singers were expected to write much of their own material (Dalton wrote none), and to embrace rock instrumentation less tentatively.