Artist: Homunculus ResAlbum: Limiti All'Egualianza Delle Parte Con Il Tutto
Year: 2013
Label: AltrOck
Review: Diego Camargo
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Thoughts: It’s not every day that we see new bands bringing back the sound known as Canterbury. In my personal opinion, I don’t think Canterbury should be considered a Prog Rock subgenre. It this should be seen as a scene instead. But I agree that this few bands have a similar kind of sound.
Homunculus Res is one of these bands. Coming from Palermo, Italy, this septet emulates the Canterbury sound as if they were in the 70’s.
Formed by Dario D'Alessandro (vocals, guitar, minimoog, glockenspiel and percussion), Davide Di Giovanni (keyboards, percussion, acoustic guitar and vocals), Daniele Di Giovanni (drums, percussion, acoustic guitar and vocals), Domenico Salamone (bass), Mauro Turdo (guitar), Federico Cardaci (Minimoog, organ) and Dario Lo Cicero (flutes), Homunculus Res released their first album in June 14 by the Italian label AltrOck.
Homunculus Res Homunculus Res recorded an album with small tracks in a total of 18 and lots of humor.
They begin with the funny and weird ‘Culturismo Ballo Organizzare’, and in the next two tracks you can see that the band will have many marvelous and curious moments, especially if you understand a bit of Italian to laugh with their lyrics.
‘ΔU’ and ‘Dj Psicosi’ for example, are perfect examples of that.
Limiti All'Egualianza Delle Parte Con Il Tutto (2013) is a 50/50 album, the instrumental part has tracks spread through the album like ‘Preparazione Bomba H’ that brings the Canterbury sound very alive, ‘Sintagma’ that is weird and almost electronic, ‘Rifondazione Unghie’ that has a bit of Jethro Tull on it and ‘Nabucco Chiappe D'Oro’ that is an explicit Caravan influence.
The other part of the instrumental tracks are ‘Il Papa Buono’ with a great drum work by Daniele Di Giovanni, ‘Accidenti’ that is just a really short intro kind of track with a very nice bass line by Domenico Salamore. And while ‘Centoquarantaduemilaottocentocinquantasette’ (which means 142.857) is a weird track with broken time signature, ‘Profiterol’ is a bit more melodic with guitars taking the lead.
The next two tracks ‘Estate 216 Solstz’ and ‘Puk 10’ come to show how weird Homunculus Res can also be when it comes to choosing the names for their songs.
Now, talking about the tracks with vocals and lyrics, it’s quite incredible how Dario D’Alessandro’s compositions can emulate the classic 70’s sound so well without falling into the copy field. ‘Jessicalaura’ and ‘[Che Ne Sai Tu Di Un] Cerchio Nel Grano’ present us another unexpected mix of sounds that could figure in any great 70’s record of the subgenre.
Going forward we’ll find ‘La Ballata Dell'Amore Stocastico’ that, as the name suggests, it’s a love ballad. Also, we have ‘χΦ’ that once again has a symbol as a track name and ‘Il Contrario Di Tutto’ that is the last track on Limiti All'Egualianza Delle Parte Con Il Tutto (2013), a solid song with a good melody and many vocals.
Throughout the album one thing that impresses is the big amount of vintage keyboards used in the recordings: minimoog, casiotone, memotron, piano, organ, microkorg, Wurlitzer, arp odyssey, farfisa and hohner.
This shows how serious the band is about having their sound ‘real’.
Once again, the Italian label AltrOck delivers a high quality product with beautiful artwork in one of their albums.
Homunculus Res is a band that if you’re not aware of them you’ll swear that Limiti All'Egualianza Delle Parte Con Il Tutto (2013) was released in 70’s and you’re just discovering it now. This fact makes them perfect for you, fan of Canterbury.
The band was included in our Podcast #23 and you can listen the track 'Nabucco Chiappe D'oro' HERE.