Gleemen - Gleemen (Reissue, Remastered) (1970/2008)

The Italian band Gleemen was created around 1965 in Genoa and played in some festivals making covers of Beatles and Stones in diversified versions. In 1970, they decided to release their self titled album led by a well-known figure in the progressive Italian scene, Pier Nicolò "Bambi" Fossati, tremendous guitar player and a huge fan of Hendrix. Fossati besides being a talented guitarist, has a wonderful voice and also, shared stage with Van Der Graaf, Santana and Uriah Heep. Actually, Gleemen is nothing less than the embryo of the great band Garybaldi, established in the same year of the release of this album and had the same formation but with some more progressive vein in their compositions. This made Garybaldi became one of the most important bands of the Italian scene in the early '70s. This record is quite atypical to what we are used to when it comes to 60s, a bit strident guitars, with strong influences to the master Hendrix, dueling by wonderful and energetic passages of Hammond, creating a pretty damn psychedelic atmosphere. Not to mention the perfectly prowess of the lead drummer conducting the band. Absolute highlight for track "The Confusione Dei" which brings excellent guitar passages followed by the beautiful voice of Fossati and a Hammond tone quite different but wonderful! Here's an atypical audition to what we are used when it comes to Italian Progressive Rock and i´m quite sure that everyone will be surprised with this innovative album for the time. The record gets to a near perfection when the issue is psychedelic rock.