Elias Nardi Group: Flowers Of Fragility - Metal Reel 1/4" 38cm/s (15ips) Tape, Premium

Flowers of Fragility – this is the title of the third album by Elias Nardi, the man that is introducing the world of music to the gentleness and magic of the Oud, the traditional Arabic lute, capable of evoking the atmospheres of mesmerizing Persian sunsets.

Accompanied by an outstanding band, consisting of Daniele Di Bonaventura – bandoneon, Didier François – viola d’amore a chiavi, Nazanin Piri – flute, Carlo La Manna – bass, Elias Nardi plays a fluid, oneiric music, where the various all-instrumental compositions flow one into the other, telling a story that carries the fragrance of Arabia.

Flowers of Fragility is a bare, sometimes minimalist, meditative album that makes room for the listener’s personal interpretation. Elias Nardi Group goes heavy, featuring harmonies in which the underlying rhythm is often made up of pauses, and where the band’s ancient instruments blend their sounds together to create tracks that are sometimes claustrophobic – like Riflessioni or La Barca Ubriaca – and sometimes warm, cheerful and magical, like Il Dono or Impermanenza.

These are ‘solid’ tracks, that seem to have been composed in some remote village somewhere between Baghdad and Teheran during the Persian war, but that also find a connection to our present time thanks to Carlo La Manna’s pulsating bass.

The masterpiece in this album is undoubtedly Sine Nomine, a track that could have been composed by Pink Floyd at the peak of the Middle Ages, and in which Carlo La Manna’s bass, again, provides a hypnotic, psychedelic rhythmic setting for the entire composition.

Flowers of Fragility is like a journey in 8 dreamlike, oneiric tracks, a real must-have for all Ethno Jazz enthusiasts.

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