Short Reviews [Alex Carpani - 2008 - ""Waterline"]

Swiss born, Italian based Alex CARPANI has made a promising debut as a progressive rock artist with his release "Waterline". In this first effort of his targeting a progressive inclined audience (he's made a number of other albums exploring different stylistic expressions) he takes on the symphonic part of the art rock universe with relatively brief compositions where keyboards in general and the piano in particular are the dominating instruments. Rapid changes in style and mood are something of a trademark feature of his, especially on the first half of this excursion. And although interesting for many I found this particular feature to be a weak point myself, as the changes became too rapid and too many, making it hard to enjoy or even get familiar with a theme before it's gone. This aspect becomes less frantic in the second half though, and the addition of musical elements more typical of fusion for this part of the album also made it more interesting in general to my ears. All in all a promising progressive rock debut though, and one that warrants being checked out by followers of symphonic progressive rock.

OMB: Agst 12, 2009