Sunday, January 14, 2007

Albergo Intergalattico Spaziale LP(1978)

After the huge success of his previous band I Giganti in the 60's, Giacomo "Mino" Di Martino totally dedicated to exploring avantgarde music, forming this duo with wife Edda "Terra" Di Benedetto after a short spell with a group called Telaio Magnetico. Albergo Intergalattico Spaziale was the name of a private club in Rome owned by them.
Their only album, privately released in 1978 but recorded a couple of years before, contains keyboard music in a similar vein as many german cosmic music LP's or some of Franco Battiato's experiments, with the organ as main instrument, only accompanied in some parts by Terra's voice. The album was intended as an anti-nuclear message. The result is a difficult LP, that can be interesting for those into Battiato's early works. The 37-minutes long album is enriched, in the recent CD and vinyl reissues, by the dreamy bonus track Hymalaya, more accessible than most of the LP.
After the album Di Martino and Terra have followed their experimental path with many concerts until the 80's, and Mino also released in the mid 90's a theatrical piece, Le campane del gloria, based on film director Pier Paolo Pasolini's poetry with help from former Stormy Six keyboard/violin/guitar player Tommaso Leddi.


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Terra Di Benedetto (vocals)

Mino Di Martino (keyboards)


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mino di Martino also released a cd in the Nineties, with a guy named Saro Cosentino, called TV Dinner. The music is a mellower version of early Eighties Richard Pinhas (e.g., East West). An excellent, atmospheric cd.
If I ever get it out of storage, Maybe I can post it............

mutantsounds said...

yeah!that would be great!

RTC said...

Mutantsounds,

thank you thank you thank you! I was looking for this and voilà, you guys have it, of course...

You are a fantastic source of obcurities...

Emc said...

Mutantsounds, you're fantastic! Everything you wrote is really Interesting! Thanks for your work!

Matteo, Italy
And sorry for my English ;D