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Italian avant-prog ensemble
Yugen came together at the end of 2004 under the impetus of guitarist
Francesco Zago and music festival organizer and AltrOck label head
Marcello Marinone.
Zago envisioned a group uniting prog rock and chamber music elements, and began writing compositions for
Yugen, whose membership by early 2005 included, in addition to
Zago, keyboardist
Paolo Botta, reed players
Markus Stauss and
Peter Schmid, and bassist Stephan Brunner. As the year progressed,
Zago continued to write additional music, and the band's lineup expanded to include the diverse instrumentation required to realize the guitarist's vision: Massimo Mazza on vibraphone, marimba, and glockenspiel; multi-instrumentalist (everything from harpsichord to shakuhachi to theremin)
Giuseppe Olivini; pianist
Maurizio Fasoli; violinist
Elia Mariani; and clarinetist Marco Sorge. By the time
Yugen commenced the recording of their first album,
Labirinto d'Acqua (Water Maze), in June 2005, the lineup also included drummer Mattia Signò; noted avant-prog drummer
Dave Kerman (
Thinking Plague,
5uu's,
Ahvak,
Present); and -- on mandolin --
Tommaso Leddi, a member of
Stormy Six, one of the original bands that participated in the Rock in Opposition collective during the late '70s.
Labirinto d'Acqua was recorded between June 2005 and January 2006, and ultimately featured a total of 14 musicians -- not all playing together on every track, it should be noted. The album was mixed and mastered by Udi Koomran at Ginger Studio in Tel Aviv, Israel, and saw release in late 2006 as the first album on
Marinone's AltrOck label. Two years later,
Yugen's second CD,
Yugen Plays Leddi: Uova Fatali, was issued as the fifth AltrOck release; entirely comprised of
Tommaso Leddi compositions, the album made an even more explicit connection between
Yugen and the RIO sound that had first emerged 30 years previously. In addition to
Leddi on mandolin and
Zago on guitar, a number of other musicians heard on
Labirinto d'Acqua also returned for
Uova Fatali, including keyboardist
Botta, pianist
Fasoli, violinist
Mariani, multi-instrumentalist
Olivini (here heard on percussion and glockenspiel), and drummer Signò. This edition of
Yugen also included keyboardist Pietro Cavedon and reedist Valerio Cipollone, and a number of guest musicians also participated.
In September 2010 the third
Yugen album on AltrOck,
Iridule, was released -- the ambitious recording featured the participation of 19 musicians in total, including (in addition to such usual
Yugen suspects as
Zago,
Botta,
Fasoli, Cipollone,
Mariani,
Schmid, and
Stauss) a number of musicians who might be seen as keeping elements of an RIO style alive in the faraway western U.S.A.: guitarist Mike Johnson, bassist Dave Willey, and vocalist Elaine diFalco, all of whom have been affiliated with Colorado avant-prog group
Thinking Plague. Also present on the recording are drummer
Kerman and mandolinist
Leddi on two tracks each, and former
Univers Zero bassist
Guy Segers is featured on one. Other participating musicians include
Simone Beneventi (a replacement for Massimo Mazza) on vibraphone, marimba, and glockenspiel; Giacomo Cella on bassoon;
Enrica Di Bastiano on harp; Michele Epifani on harpsichord; and Alberto Roveroni on drums.
The AltrOck label's batch of September 2010 releases also included another album on which
Yugen appeared: A_Live by a 21st century version of
Picchio dal Pozzo, an Italian group that began in the mid-'70s playing in a style heavily influenced by the British Canterbury scene before moving in an RIO direction. A_Live was recorded live at the 2008 AltrOck festival in Milan, and features a quartet version of
Picchio dal Pozzo (including original members
Aldo De Scalzi and Paolo Griguolo) with support from
Yugenites Zago,
Botta, Cavedon, Cipollone, and Signò.
In September 2011 a septet version of
Yugen (
Zago,
Botta, Cipollone, and
Fasoli along with Jacopo Costa on marimba and vibraphone, Matteo Lorito on bass, and
Michele Salgarello on drums) performed at the Rock in Opposition festival in Carmaux, France; the set was documented on the album Mirrors, released by AltrOck late the following year. Mirrors featured
Yugen repertoire penned by
Zago and largely derived from the
Labirinto d'Acqua and
Iridule albums -- with new arrangements reflecting the seven-piece lineup and live setting -- along with a version of "Industry" from the 1979 album Western Culture by
Henry Cow, an appropriate inclusion given
Henry Cow's status as founding members of the original RIO collective. Mirrors proved that even with a comparatively small lineup and relatively short rehearsal time, in concert
Yugen could duplicate -- and indeed build upon -- their studio-recorded material with power, precision, and virtuosity. ~ Dave Lynch