Il Canto Dell'arpa e del Flauto

Pepe Maina’s debut album, released in 1977, picks up some of the threads laid down by the likes of Aktuala – there’s an emergent fourth-world energy to some of Il canto dell’arpa e del flauto (The song of the harp and the flute); elsewhere, Maina sketches in the kind of ambience that was being explored within the gentler ends of progressive rock and Krautrock, and indeed, some moments here are tinged with the otherworldliness that characterises groups like Popol Vuh. The most seductive thing about it is the drift of it all, and the way it flicks, casually, through indexes of possibility, often across the same song – the eleven-minute title track shifts between phases before landing on a gorgeous, near-opaque guitar-and-flute reverie. There’s a live insert; gently struck zither; birdsong, burbling electronics, and sky-bound reels from guitar that are pure Daniel Fischelscher (on album highlight “Spring Song”). Very lovely.