Le Orme

by Bruce EderIt's easy to forget that America and England didn't exist in a vacuum in the 1960's, and that rock's influence was felt far beyond the English-speaking world. France, Italy, Germany, and much of the rest of Europe spawned their own groups emulating the sounds of psychedelia and other cultural exports from the USA and the UK. Le Orme were part of this phenomenon, a quintet formed in Italy in the late 1960's, who cut two albums of psychedelic rock for the Lord label in Milan. Aldo Tagliapietra (vocals, acoustic guitar, flute, celesta), Nino Smeraldi (electric guitar, vocals), Claudio Galieti (bass, cello, vocals), Toni Pagliuca (keyboards), and Michi dei Rossi (drums, percussion) started out sounding something like the Beatles circa the Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine albums, complete with distorted lead guitar solos and song intended to evoke the variant states of mind associated with certain recreational drug use. Smeraldi, who co-wrote (with Tagliapietra) all of the songs on their first album, also arranged all of their material. The group stayed together during the 1970's, by which time they'd evolved into an Emerson, Lake and Palmer-type progressive rock band, cutting four albums in that vein.