Osanna L'Uomo

[winkersnufs]

And on a Monday Morning...

Quite NEW to me, I listened to Osanna L'Uomo this morning over at YouTube. The listening had me watching the live footage that accompanied one of the cuts from the album. Hmmmmmm… facepaint on all bandmembers, lead vocalist who also played the flute, and a horn/wind player who played two instruments at once. My mind wandered to Gabriel/Genesis and his flute playing (similar as an addition to the composition), Mr. Jackson from Van Der Graaff, and also those others who have used facepaint as a sort of 'interest creating statement'.

Chickens or the egg here??? Again I am familiar with NOTHING in regard to Osanna! Teach us please... those out there that have followed the band.

Carry On
Chris Buckley

[interbellum]

There's a wonderful version of this track on the live CD/DVD Live In Tokyo 2017 from Cervello.
Osanna's keyboardplayer Sasà Priore plays in this version of Cervello.
You can listen to 50 seconds here: http://www.corradorustici.com/cervello/cd.html

I don't know anything about Osanna either, but when I just saw the Cervello-DVD I also thought of Gabriel/Genesis, Jackson/VDGG and early KC.

[Zappathustra]

I think I like Osanna more than the actual music, I mean their aesthetic choices suit me more than what results out of them. I love their wild sound, the imagination that meets no accepted boundaries.

As every Italian schoolboy knows () the place to go for some Osanna magic is Palepoli. L'Uomo is good, but nothing really special to my ears and the same goes more or less for Milano Calibro 9.

Palepoli is another story altogether, an incredible pastiche of musical themes, thrown almost arbitrarily at the listener, gaining a relative coherence only at the level of the intensity of the performance and the overall dramatic atmosphere. I could argue equally well of Palepoli being a masterpiece or of being a disaster. In my opinion it is neither: it is an essential piece of the Italian progressive movement, that does not hide its loans (correctly the OP is citing Van Der Graaf Generator) and finally wins the day thanks to the youthful creativity and experimentation involved.

Anyway, good to hear that people still discovers this kind of music in our days.

[Progbear]

Never saw live performances by the band, but I guess I already knew about the face-paint thing based on the L’uomo cover and the Italian cover to Milano Calibro 9. You really hear the band wearing its influences on its sleeve (chiefly, KC and the aforementioned VdGG), oddly enough, on Landscape of Life, which is presumably why so many see that album as such a disappointment. Palepoli is the only one of theirs I’d consider “essential,” even if I enjoy all of their 70s output to some degree. Milano Calibro 9 is my second favorite, though it feels a bit soundtrack-y. Some interesting experimentation on that one; I don’t think Luis Bacalov’s orchestration was integrated as well as it was on RDM’s Contaminazione album, but I like the edgier feel of the Osanna album. L’uomo is a little formative and a touch dated, more hard psychedelia than prog, but there’s some tasty guitar riffing and flute/sax solos on that one. I’ve gone on about this before, but I think that Suddance is crazy underrated; a very strong fusion album, and the experimentation with Neapolitan dialect lyrics is an intriguing touch.

[spacefreak]

Palepoli is an italian classic in my opinion. On my top albums from that country's progressive rock scene.

[Scrotum Scissor]

^ Palepoli is basically the one to get and keep. The others are… fairly alright.

I've written this a number of times already, but for all their attack and volume, Osanna's style never fully gelled in all of its fragmentations - IMO. But Palepoli remains a rewarding listen and perhaps the most indicative release of that very specifically Italian "manic-symphonic" type of 70s progressige rock; like early Crims, VdGG and Tull teaming up over a case of Sambucca in a Napolitan garage. Osanna were also politically radical, a fact that somehow escapes most threads but which was rather seminal to their lyrical universe, where alienation, oppression and destruction were common factors of topic.

Cervello, their "baby brother" act, were far more refined but every bit as powerful. There was a recent mention of their Melos somewhere in here.

[Zappathustra]

... like early Crims, VdGG and Tull teaming up over a case of Sambucca in a Napolitan garage.

This didn't go down unnoticed It's also extremely accurate.

Somehow the political aspect of prog has to be concealed, since it doesn't fit the hobbit/cape/escape-from-reality narrative that is equally sustained by haters and lovers of progressive rock.

What puzzles me is the unanimity that Palepoli achieves in the Gnosis site. One would expect to see some low ratings there for such a controversial record, but a great part of raters assign it masterpiece status. I think I would give it a 12.