Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is easy to get lost in the lush jungle that a modern symphony can provide, especially when it is one person’s vision that brings it to life. However, the prevailing concertos is such that has the ability to make us feel more than the stirring effects and goose bumps that one might have considered unbeatable over the last few centuries, the immaculate sense of pride that was paraded, marched unhindered from orchestra to the stalls as if attached to nationalist fervour and demand, has now thankfully been replaced by a more subtle, straightforward realisation that pomp and ceremony are figures of a past that has no place when we realise that Earth Is Not A Place For Lovers.

Federico Romano’s latest opus magnificently portrays the music as a vision of the way we have treated our home, upbeat in places as if reminding the listener of all that is possible to be gained by stepping back from the romantic connection we feel, and melancholic, aurally bleak and wonderfully drowning in sound in its desire to punish, that we must not only make amends for our actions, but take responsibility by limiting the resources of those who seek to profit from the plunder.

Earth Is Not A Place For Lovers, not in the way the romantics would have us believe, for how can it be when the pomp and circumstance of old is continually being performed as if it is a measure of pride, that we look upon the realms of old masters as if there is nothing more to be gained, nothing more to be learnt, that their world was the crest of human endeavour. The Earth may not be a place for the lover, but it is the right place in which to start a revolution of the mind; in which to fight back against the tyranny in which we have imposed upon sacred soil, and one in which a new place, one perhaps in which enthusiasts and followers can breathe in a new considered way of thinking and away from the paramours of destruction.

An insightful album, one that looks to the likes Jean Michel Jarre or Jeff Wayne for guidance, one that is passionate about steering clear of old, misguided stereotypes which encompass the dangerous side of pride and pomp. Earth Is Not A Place For Lovers, but under the vision of Federico Romano it can be a place where love thrives again.

June 1974’s Earth Is Not A Place For Lovers is out now via Visionaire Records.

Ian D. Hall