Celeste (6) – Celeste

The album is fantastic. Amazing music. One of the best Italian albums I've heard. From an audiophile point of view I wouldn't know how to judge it well, I don't have comparisons either with the first release or with the Japanese one that seems to be very good. It seems to me that it sounds pretty good, it's nice, wide and detailed. Accurate. Maybe the sound is a hair closed, but I'm not an audiophile and I don't even have a great system to be able to judge it professionally. And anyway the music that comes out of it captures you so much that the audiophile aspect definitely takes a back seat. Splendid.

This pressing sounds amazing compared to anything I can find streaming. Super detailed and clear.
I haven't compared this to an original Italian pressing. Anyone that has?

The AMS LP reissue is a surprisingly good pressing of this pastoral Italian prog masterpiece.

AMS did a very good job on this reissue. It is fitting that it be on white vinyl - as it fits well with the white cover art. I always wanted the 1981 Japanese pressing, and now that I have purchased it on eBay, I realize the AMS is every bit as good.

Smooth, mostly instrumental. Great harmonies and playing.
This LP is beautifully mixed too. Never had the original, but the repress sounds beautifully.

It was really strange that I actually found an original Italian LP pressing of this at a Eugene, Oregon record store near where I live! So I bought it, since it's incredible rare, I hardly seen any copies ever show up elsewhere, like on eBay. I've seen plenty of Japanese and Korean reissue pressings, though (online, that is).

Some of the of Celeste was in a group called Il Sistema (which also included Museo Rosenbach ). Early 1969 to 1971 recordings surfaced in the early '90s, but they're more of a historical curiosity rather than something I would regularly listen to, since they were poorly recorded (probably meant for demos) and the music isn't that great, but you can see the potential there, and it certainly improved when these guys ended up with Museo Rosenbach and Celeste, who both managed to record albums regarded as the cornerstones of Italian prog.

This album was recorded in 1974 but did not surface until 1976 as the Italian prog scene was already on decline. Well, better late, than never, although it would have been nicer if it came out shortly after it was recorded. This is really up your alley if you enjoy the more mellow, pastoral end of prog rock. Such as the more pastoral moments of PFM's Storia di un Minuto, the more pastoral moments of King Crimson, and Quebec's Harmonium with Les Cinq Saisons. In fact, other than PFM, Celeste was frequently compared with Harmonium, but it's probably just coincidence, since Harmonium was never known outside the Francophone world (in fact I've met my share of Anglophone Canadians who never heard of Harmonium, probably due to the cultural divide in Canada). Celeste tends to the more acoustic end of prog, but the keyboardist uses lots of Mellotron, some spacy synths, organ, and even a little Eminent 310U. If you love the sound of the Mellotron, this is an essential purchase, as almost every cut it loaded with it! It's very safe to say if you like your Italian prog on the heavy side, like Museo Rosenbach's Zarathustra or Il Balletto di Bronzo's YS, you'll probably want to give this one a miss, but for the rest of us, this is an incredible album. This is regarded as a classic of Italian prog, and rightfully so.