Andrea Remondini - Non Sequitur (Self-Released)

Andrea Remondini is an Italian musician/sound engineer/writers, working with hit-making dance artists over the past few decades. Releasing his new solo album, Non Sequitur, it has the obvious marks of someone who knows his way around a studio. Beautifully polished, dense, and carefully paced and planned, the single forty-four minute title track is a grand and ambitious slice of progressive synth pop. Remondini takes the cue from artists like Mike Oldfield and Rick Wakemen, sounding exactly at home amongst 70s progressive ventures, even down to the album’s Genesis-esque artwork.

Over the span of its forty odd minutes, the album doesn’t go any where one would expect it to, leading to both its greatest asset and its major defect. On one hand it constantly surprises and amuses, wildly careening this way and that, but on the other hand, it often leaves you with a feeling of wanting something more. Just as it gains traction, it veers off into another direction. The first minute or two feels like a great dance beat will come in any second, but ultimately it just dissipates.

It’s a quirky album that must be recognized for the great achievement undertaken. Not every minute is a success and it falls just short of something truly fantastic, but Non Sequitur is undeniable in its charm. It’s an album you can’t, or at least shouldn’t, just put on in the background and forget about, and the album title makes sense, because it seems to have come from nowhere, having little bearing on anything prior to it, and is of its own. _Non Sequitur might be the perfect album to join the separate worlds of progressive rock and synth pop together.