Oscar Wilde once said, “Music is the art in which is the
most nigh to tears and memories.” And when it comes to hearing unheard music
that had been lost in the basements or has been waiting to look at the light at
the end of the tunnel, you might have come to the right place. When a band
releases one, two, or three albums before calling it a day, its maybe because
it was right place at the wrong time to release it in a time period as it wasn’t
ready to hear something like this before becoming ahead of its time. They might
look back on it and think, “What we were thinking? We have influenced a younger
generation who admired this piece of music and arrangement and we are finally
getting a lot of recognition for this!”
All said, one of the most overlooked bands to come out of
the Space Rock and Krautrock scene, was a three-piece experimental band from
Italy called, Sensations’ Fix. Recording
these pieces of arranging and composition was almost like a dark
science-fiction movie and what made them had a huge cult following. In this
2-CD set, the recordings were made from 1974 to 1977 in Virginia and their home
in Italy by using a reel to reel tape recorder (Teac 3340) and the track
Machine to make the music sound like it was recorded back in 1982.
Both Franco Falsini and his son Jeyon worked on a huge
painstaking process to find the recordings to re-master and restore the
original mixes with positive results with alternate versions and unreleased
material that never made it on the first six albums. While they were paving the
way for the Electronic Music score of the 21st century of what the
future holds for us, the music itself will make you relax, terrify, and take
you into another imagination that you are about to embark on. Like the swirling
yet mysterious singing that Franco does on the opener, Barnhause Effect with a
New Age feel as Franco goes into his layered virtuoso guitar feel and synth
structured atmosphere.
As a Virtuoso, Falsini’s usage of his voice and the two
instruments he plays makes him feel as if he made one of the earliest home
recordings at his house and make him feel right at home along with drummer Keith
Edwards and bassist Richard Ursillo to make sure he’s okay and in the clear.
His spacey and spooky sounds on the Synths and Guitar work would make him
inspirational as if he was listening to Phil Manzarera, Robert Fripp, Klaus
Schulze, and the early Tangerine Dream from the Polydor and Virgin period from
1969 to 1975.
However, Franco’s sound is the real kicker. Sometimes his
guitar playing can take you into different levels of the music by making
different sounds with some strangely strange areas that his adventurous and
moody at times. Combinations of acoustic crisps and double-tracked vocals
inside someone’s head is evidential on the instrumental take of Warped Notions on
a Practical Joke and the spooky yet soaring take on Dark Side of Religion.
But on Cosmic Saudade, he uses the synths to make it more of a dystopian
nightmare as if he recorded it for Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.
Yet with all the wild experiments the trio has connected and
structured, Sensastions’ Fix can really go beyond the infinite with a lot of
soothing and poignant energy to hold them into the areas of the risk and the
envelopes they go beyond to push in their sound and vision. On the alarming Leave
My Chemistry, the band comes in full swing as a siren going off as if the city
was under attack in the styles of Can while Crossing Berlin could have been
recorded during the sessions of Bowie's Berlin trilogy.
While this is my introduction to Sensations’ Fix, Music is
Painting in the Air, is one of the most strangest, yet haunting compilation set
I’ve listened to. I’ve listened to it about three times and I’m surprised and
blown away from what I’ve heard. Throughout the history of Electronic Music,
this band will finally get the recognition they deserve and how they would take
the road into unbelievable results that will give you goosebumps for the rest
of your life.
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