Author: Gianmaria Consiglio

Title: Il Balletto di Bronzo and the idea of organized delirium

Publisher: Eclysse

Pages: 190

Price: 25.00 euros

When, quite a few years ago now, I first happened to listen to Ys by Balletto Di Bronzo, I was rather surprised. At the time I had no fondness for the Italian variant of progressive rock, so I approached the album with thinly veiled disdain. Yet it only took the first five minutes of dell'Introduzione to win me over. Balletto Di Bronzo's sound was unlike that of any other "spaghetti prog" band I'd heard up to that point. It had (and still has) a far broader scope, and was able to temper the genre's excesses (while still retaining its stylistic traits), making room instead for influences that had only so much to do with progressive rock.

And this is precisely the merit of "Il Balletto Di Bronzo e L'Idea Del Delirio Organizzato," written by the excellent Gianmaria Consiglio: it draws connections between the music of Ys and the multiplicity of languages that, over the past century, have shaped both "high" and "low" music. This is what the first part of the book addresses (the most interesting one, as far as this writer is concerned) — the connections, sometimes implicit, sometimes more pronounced, between Ys and a range of "other" musics that, according to the author, find more or less legitimate citizenship within its multi-referential sound. It's fascinating, for instance, to read the reflection on how the decadent, delirious atmosphere of most of the tracks echoes the "sense of mourning and absurdity" found in Ligeti's Lux Aeterna. Or to discover its ties to free jazz, and further still, the dynamics of exchange between sound and noise.

The second part of the book, meanwhile, traces the history of Balletto Di Bronzo, from its origins up to the present day. Here the historiographical approach is enriched by a series of juicy anecdotes concerning the band's birth and evolution, as well as the ties between the members of Balletto di Bronzo and other musicians on the Naples music scene between the late Sixties and early Seventies.

It's worth noting how Consiglio's writing is precise and well informed, yet never heavy-handed or rhetorical. In short, the book seems to exude the sound of those years, almost making it perceptible to smell and sight. The third and final part is devoted to the individual tracks of Ys, to their strictly musical features, but also to the atmospheres they manage to evoke.

For those who lived through the Italian progressive rock era firsthand, this book will certainly offer new keys to decoding — perhaps in a different way — not just the album, but more broadly, that climate, that way of being and of having been part of it. Those instead looking to delve into Ys for the first time will find in the book a valuable listening guide, as well as a good primer for understanding what Italian progressive rock once was. The book comes with an accompanying CD containing live versions and excerpts of Ys drawn from Gianni Leone's private recording archive, plus three further unreleased tracks.

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03/10/2025