reviews / 2007

ACCORDO DEI CONTRARI - Kinesis

Name: ACCORDO DEI CONTRARI – Kinesis
Item: Kinesis
Rating: 5.5
Author: Marco Sgrignoli

2007 (Altrock productions)

jazz-rock

by Marco Sgrignoli

5.5

What's the point, today, of recording an album like "Kinesis", stubbornly entrenched in a jazz-rock mannerism that nobody could stand anymore thirty years ago? In my view, none at all. I could never conceive of playing this kind of music, so locked into the past, almost oblivious to the existence of anything "other" beyond the sporadic metallic flare-ups the Bologna quartet occasionally lapses into (hailing, not by chance, from the same city as Deus Ex Machina, whom they closely recall). They, however, do see a point in it. Apparently their dream world is made up of meticulously polished homages to Mahavishnu Orchestra and Area, and I really don't think my inability to understand it is what's spoiling their fun.

To be fair, "Kinesis" is indeed an essentially kitsch and grandiloquent record, but extremely well crafted as an exercise in style, full of nuances and flourishes that make it, if not exactly light, at least enjoyable even for someone like me who can't stand the neo-prog gloss pervading its sound. What remains is a certain underlying coldness: whether it's the excessive "construction" of the tracks, or the fact that any conceptual design fails to shine through the artificiality of the ornamentation, the hyper-kinetic, ostentatiously "red-hot" style leaves the music at the mercy of an apparently empty virtuosity.

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03/12/2007

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Marco Sgrignoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition