St. Tropez ‎– Icarus (1977-78, CD, Italy)

In 1978, ST-Tropez was formed out of the collapse of Celeste, a seminal Italian band that published the fabulous "Principe di un Giorno", a couple of weaker follow ups and then promptly disbanded. Keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist Ciro Perrino brought along his "celestial" mates Giorgio Battaglia on bass and Bat DiMasi on drums, adding newcomer Alex Magazzino on guitar (an obvious Steve Hillage fan) and a female "space" vocalist "Lady Mantide", plus a few others for both studio and live gigs. But contrary to the pastoral tendencies of Celeste, the St-Tropez project was firmly interested in developing space prog , more intone with latter Soft Machine, Here & Now ,Nucleus but mostly trilogy-era Gong. The band seasons its craft with numerous live performances that go very noticed, even though by now the punk phenomenon had kicked in with a vengeance all over the world. Alas, even though Polydor had picked up the contract and released "Icarus", Perrino soon lost interest in the touring routine, preferring to work on researching new synthesizer technology, which would culminate in a future solo disc "Solare". Not many ISP bands sought out the spacier, jam-infested groove music that qualifies this disc and thus makes this a rather unique one shot wonder