Ma.ra.cash

Silver Key is a progressive rock band from Milan whose roots date back to 1992. After many problems, a long hiatus, some line up changes and a period passed performing Marillion's covers, in 2012 they finally released a début album featuring only original compositions on the independent label Ma.Ra.Cash Records, "In The Land Of Dreams". The overall sound is in debt with bands such as Genesis and Marillion, of course, but Silver Key managed to add to their music a touch of originality and all their love for the works of writers as Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Robert William Chambers with excellent results. Incidentally, the band takes its name from a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft where the protagonist loses the magical key that enables him to enter an alternate dimension of dreams. This choice of name for the band symbolises the means by which they can fulfil their own long held dreams just as Lovecraft's character is able to visit his dreamed-of cities. The Screams Empire is their second studio album, released in 2015.

Notable Italian group Syndone, founded by Nik Comoglio, formed in the very early Nineties, with an expanded line-up delivering a selection of constantly more ambitious symphonic works since that time, 2014's `Odysseas' being their first showing of true greatness. While their latest `Mysogonia' is not a concept album as such, the nine pieces all share a mutual branching theme of women, in some cases the songs highlighting the way love, lust, obsession, depression, jealousy in themselves and suspicion from others affect their lives, and Syndone's keyboard-dominated music, often heavily influenced by legendary British rock group Queen, is presented in conjunction with a multi-piece orchestra here…

After their debut CD Istinto (2003) and the successor Storie Fuori Dal Tempo (2005), the Italian five piece band Conqueror has released its third studio album entitled 74 Giorni in 2007. Again the band has made notable progress, melodic, tasteful and varied compositions (some instrumental) delivering a wide range of instruments: a wonderful blend of soaring keyboards, powerful bass runs, a tight drum beat and sensitive electric guitar in Il Viaggio, lots of shifting moods with pleasant work on guitar and flute in Orca, a Sixties-like organ sound (The Animals/The Doors), wah-wah guitar, a flute solo and fluent synthesizer flights in teh alternating Non Maturi per l'Adilà , romantic piano play in the short Cormonrani…

Madame Zelle tells the story of Mrs. Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, better known as the Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari (1876-1917). The Italian band Conqueror takes on its fourth album ample time to tell the story of her life. Nine tracks in 66 minutes mean that the story gets enough room to develop. Singer Simone Rigano sounds exactly like Emila Derkowska, the former singer of Quidam, although Simone sings in Italian and not in Polish naturally. Also the often used flute by Sabrina Rigano makes the similarity with the old Quidam all the more striking. Nice flowing songs with flute and occasionally saxophone and frequently a civilized guitar solo in the long instrumental passages makes Madame Zelle not only a delight to look at, but also to listen to. This makes the final judgment much more pleasant for Conqueror than it was for Mata Hari!

La Torre dell'Alchimista loudly proclaim a strong connection with the tradition of the seventies, especially for the instrumental set. The album, basically, is based on powerful hammond organ excursions enriched by strong mellotrons waves, synthesizers, acoustic and electric pianos. It obviously recalls ELP, but not only. Some strong typical italian flavour such as Le Orme and Rustichelli e Bordini, for example, is well evident. Drums and bass lines are very convincing and remark vehemently the many shifting moods. The atmosphere is not completely vintage, though, due to the more soft, singed romantic parts that are wisely spread all along the running time. Classical mythological creatures such as "Cerbero", "Medusa" and "Idra" are, simply, the icing on the cake!

Even though they started out on Musea, EGOBAND is another Mellow Records Italian obscurity. What does that mean? It means it's hard to find band information. But there is enough to paint a picture. The first album's lineup consisted of Alessandro Accordino on vocals and keyboards,
Fabio Cioni on drums,
Massimo Fava on guitars, and Alfonso Capasso on bass. However, only Accordino and Capasso would be consistent with the group over its four-album career. This, along with the fact that there were no live efforts, leads to speculation that EGOBAND may have been more of a project than a band (a la Steely Dan). They went through interesting changes over their career. Starting out purely Neo, with heavy AOR tendencies, and ending up almost in Canterbury territory by the time they got to "Earth"…

6th CD in studio for Conqueror 5 years after the last Stems. The band returns to the classical 5-piece lineup (with wind instruments), it is part of the line up Tino Nastasi on guitar (already in the 2nd and 3rd disc). "In Orbita" is a very troubled record in its writing, which started at the end of 2014 and continued until 2017, right at the beginning of the final recordings. Great classic Prog close to the classic sounds of Canterbury Sound. The band deals with the early stages of Juri Gagarin's life before the famous space mission, focusing more on the intimate aspect of his perceptions.

Two years spent for composing, arranging, recording and mixing “Canvas”,the last double cd by Venegoni & Co. A strong band, put together by guitar player and composer Venegoni, to perform a repertoire which is not strictly prog, jazz, fusion, folk or classic but, hopefully, the musical sum of all these influences. The Cd features many great musicians: Jason Rebello (keyboard player with Sting, Jeff Beck and Wayne Shorter) on acoustic piano, Enzo Zirilli and Federico Ariano on drums, Alessandro Maiorino, Mauro Battisti and Paolo Franchini on acoustic bass, Roberto Puggioni (Arti & Mestieri) on fretless bass, Piero Mortara (Arti & Mestieri) and Francesco Sappino on acoustic piano and accordion, Silvano Borgatta on keyboards, Diego Borotti on sax soprano and Sandro Esposito on percussions.