Sean Trane
“A tour of waltz for tomorrow” is the title of A&M‘s second album, which fails to sport a strong artwork like its predecessor did. Indeed the dancing artwork with the innerfold illustration of a dance manual is anything but exciting or enticing. Strangely enough, given its title, musically-speaking the album is a tad jazzier than Tilt, even though the Mahavishnu influences are not as obvious here (but still enough), except for main composer Venegoni’s guitar, sounding like McL at times. An unchanged line-up despite the addition of specific singer Gaza, the album Giro is also more energetic and dynamic, but I find that the musical propos is less enthralling and more academic than its predecessor, despite being sensibly similar to its older sibling.
In terms of musical contents, Giro is a bit of a confusing affair, sporting 17 tracks, mostly under or around three minutes, except for three of them topping 5-mins early on the album’s opening side. Despite (and unlike Tilt) better track separations, one gets quickly lost in the evolution and whereabouts in the track progression, partly (or mostly) because most of those numbers are a bit samey. This remark is to taken with a grain of salt, because repeated listenings will indeed unveil some differences if you have the patience to keep up.
Generally, the (Gaza’s) vocals are less gentle than in Tilt (less PFM and more BMS), but I’m not sure this is an improvement, because the music’s mostly instrumental nature (despite a specific singer) makes that whatever few vocal interventions seem a bit intrusive and needless. One of the aspects where Giro does top Tilt is concerning Furio Chirico’s drumming, which is simply excellent and unavoidable. For the other musicians, they are sensibly in the same excellent shape and mood than in their debut effort, but Crovella’s ttrons are not nearly as present. After Giro, the group would observe a few years of vinyl silence, coming back in 79 with the same line-up with a yet-jazzier effort before continuing in the next decade under various forms, releasing a few music slices of decreasing interest as time went on. Not nearly as essential as Tilt (which was not either), GdVpD still has many qualities, but it will never find a spot in my shelves, because so much more works are more important to these ears.