Progressive Rock
SPmusic · 1 May 2026
The title track, which opens disc one, begins with David Torn alone on acoustic guitar and Panunzi’s keyboards a long way behind him. Grice sings low and held-back until Torn returns on electric with an effects-soaked outro that stretches the piece out to 9:54.
From there the record alternates sung and instrumental pieces without missing a turn. On “I No Longer Know Who You Are” (6:25) Nicola Lori’s guitar rides over the upright bass of Fabio Trentini (of Le Orme) while Alessandro Inolti’s drums sit high in the mix, playing around the beat rather than marking it. “Hidden Ties” (6:52) belongs to Tim Bowness, singing in the same voice he uses in No-Man, and to Theo Travis on flute and sax.
The guest list runs past twenty. Jakko Jakszyk sings and plays guitar on “Every Drop Of Your Love (Reprise)”; Markus Reuter takes the guitar on the instrumental “Don’t Touch Me” (5:24), where Travis blows until there’s nothing left; Travis opens “Hold” (8:58) with a flute line that turns eastward before Colin Edwin’s bass takes charge; 05Ric sings “Endless” and adds guitar, stick and percussion to “Simple Man”. On disc two, Luca Calabrese’s trumpet carries “If It’s Not Love, What Is?”, and “Gaza” (6:32) closes on bass, trumpet and synthesisers alone.
Twenty-four tracks, two hours and thirty-four minutes. The alternation of sung piece and instrumental piece holds from end to end, and since almost everything sits between five and nine minutes at the same held-in tempo, only two short pieces (“In Those Your Words”, 2:56, and “Tribal Innocence, Part 2”, 4:18) break the block. Panunzi keeps his own keyboards out of the light on purpose, and the cost is that each track ends up identified by whoever is visiting it.
It’s his fifth album under his own name, after “Timelines” (2005), “A Rose” (2009), “Beyond the Illusion” (2021) and “Pages from the Sea” (2023). It came out on 1 May on his own SPmusic, and DPRP didn’t review it until the issue of 19 September.
Rating: 7.5/10
Text by Guillem Cardós