Sistra is the project of Italian artist, Fabrizio Di Vicino. Feed the Head is the sixth album release, available as a digital release on Spotify, alongside a full YouTube video library of all eighteen pieces of music, so not without ambition in terms of length, and on that point, I will be giving readers of this review an overview of the work, concentrating on a small number of pieces, as opposed to my usual expose of each individual track.
About the best descriptor of this album, and, indeed, the act is acid rock, an extreme form of psychedelia which oughtn’t to exist in polite society, and therein, of course, lies its charm and attraction.
It is challenging. It is not the sort of music that you will play to your parents whilst they visit for a special dinner. It is at times disturbing, but always extremely well performed and sounds very good, with a fair degree of eclecticism within it.
The first track I have embedded is Alisei, which translates as trade winds in English. There are some gorgeous flutes at the start here, fine guitar work, throbbing bass, and it is a wholly dreamy, ambient, piece of psychedelic meandering, the final passage putting one in mind of classic sailing ships crossing a particularly difficult ocean.
Teseo is the Italian name for Theseus, the ancient Greek hero who slayed the Minotaur. Flute swirling, a magnificent bass rumbling, effects mirroring the chase and kill, this is a world away from the track I played for you first, so a good example, I think, of the diversity of music inherent in this. As I said in my introduction, this is not easy listening, but it is fascinating, and those of you who enjoy the extreme spacey or Kraut end of the progressive spectrum will find a lot to enjoy in this.
Pareidolia is the imagining of human faces in inanimate objects, so clouds, for example. This piece is over eleven minutes long, as dark as an ant’s arse, and as disturbing as a colony of them deciding to crawl over you. There is some wilful crooning amongst the noises, and it is spartan in its impact.
These three give you a good flavour of what to expect here. This music is not typical listening in the Lazland household, to be sure, but what it is is a very strong example of that type of music warmly welcomed by those of you who like their listening as experimental as it is possible to get.
You can see and hear all of it at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL133tF8eGRbig3i1p3RsvnPFb2gfiuuK1