Claudio Rocchi

** One of the  Claudio Rocchi's finest albums, included in the Nurse With Wound's influential list. A perfect combination of experiment, progressive music, acoustic foundations with tape collage, singer-songwriting, with lots of inspiration and invention with a good materialisation of it with clear structures, and interesting contemporary ideas. Trippy streched improvisation like tracks, as if the whole album are a kind of (acoustic) outro-freak outs, as stoned composition (still song based) trips. Volo magico n.1, is usually considered as his best effort, in much the same style as Alan Sorrenti's Aria with a side-long title track and softer tracks on the other side. The 18 minute long title track starts with a soft introduction and goes on with hypnotic move based on the guitars of Alberto Camerini and Ricky Belloni (from Nuova Idea and later New Trolls).

A great little known 1971 early gem of the Italian Progressive scene. Drugged up Mike Oldfield collides with peak period Incredible String Band isn't too far away from the feel of Claudio Rocchi's best known album. As others have mentioned, this one is hard to categorize-but it does follow the pattern of early prog in Italy: one side long song and three or four shorter songs on the other side. Alan Sorrenti's Aria and some Lucio Battisti are reference points-folkies who got the prog bug and expanded their singer songwriter vibe into some different territory. The side long title song Volo Magico N. 1 is the centerpiece here, and is perhaps his most ambitious and successful work. In 18+ minutes we are taken on a ride-tablas and hand percussion with raspy acoustic underpinning gives off a primal Oldfield/ISB hybrid vibe, but the continual building towards some elusive crescendo that never seems to quite arrive is part of the allure of this piece (taken from Progarchives)