I’m still not 100% sure what drove me to dive so deeply into RPI, aka Rock Progressivo Italiano, but its claws are buried in my flesh and there’s little hope of extraction.I know I love the analog, larger than life music out that came out of the adventure that was the 70s, and Italian prog is just out there enough to give me surprises with each band I discover. Case in point: Semiramis, who up until this year earned their wings on the heights of a single album, 1973’s Dedicato a Frazz. I got tired of waiting for a decently priced vinyl, so grabbed an import CD and I couldn’t be happier. No surprise the keyboard work is exquisite, but overall the songs are really well composed; there’s a lot of rock and grit in the guitars, and it’s one of those releases that as a prog fan is essential. Let’s dive in.

Listening to opening track “La Bottega Del Rigattiere” it’s incredible to think the band, founded by keyboardist Maurizio Zarrillo and his cousins, were only teenagers at the time of recording this. Joined by 16-year old brother Michele Zarrillo who took over guitar and vocals, every track captures the thrill of young kids transmogrifying the music of their heroes into something fresh and thrilling. There are hints of Zappa, of King Crimson, but also of what their (slightly) older peers at home were expressing, like Banco del Mutuo Soccorso with the heavy keyboard component. Getting back to the opening track, it’s slightly fractured, a series of ideas that don’t quite congeal, like putting a shattered mirror back together but some of the pieces don’t quite line up.

But oh, what pieces. Panned extreme left and right, the Zarillo brothers work their instruments like inspired demons, the solos that end “La Bottega Del Rigattiere” blast right into the heavy dual-lined riffing of “Luna Park.” Drummer Paolo Faenza, who would go on to be the sole member taking part in follow-up album La fine non esiste – a sophomore record that took 51 years to arrive – has a great feel, alternating between almost Bonham-esque power and more elegant, jazz-bordering-on-classical fills and flourishes. There’s a sense of that classical element at large on “Uno Zoo Di Vetro” and later on “Frazz” which has moments that feel like chamber music, albeit chamber music made baby a bunch of teenagers who can’t wait to speed back up again.

I think that’s the real reason I enjoy Dedicato A Frazz so much. That sense of sprawling, fragmented arrangements that don’t cohere as tightly as the giants of the scene is a feature, not a bug when you contextualize it as the youthful exuberance: who didn’t want to be their heroes the first time they picked up an instrument? Who knows what a second album with the same members would have sounded like. I did listen to the new album (you can listen and grab a copy here thanks to Bandcamp) and it’s fine. Not only fine, but pretty damn good. But it sounds like a bunch of really seasoned players playing some really nice progressive rock. It doesn’t have that bite, that sense of going off the rails and not caring because it’s so fun. Everything is balanced and expertly produced, but give me that grunge and dirt bite of something like the rock and roll chaos that sprouts a minute into the closing track “Clown” and you’ll hear that thing that made this, the truly sole album by Semiramis, such a hit.