Bandcamp L’Ira del Baccano have been drifting through the cosmos out of Rome for the better part of two decades, and The Praise of Folly, their fifth album, is the sound of a band comfortable taking the long way around. Built loosely on Erasmus and recorded live in a single take, it is a warm, hypnotic hour of instrumental doomdelic space-prog, four extended pieces that value trance over impact and atmosphere over aggression. When it locks into its slow orbit, it is genuinely immersive.
The best of it earns that patience. “Stigma” is the standout, an organic, analog-warm track that works real contrast between massive fuzzed riff-walls and long, minimalist ambient passages, the dynamics left uncrushed so the heavy sections actually feel heavy. The two-part title suite drifts between clean, delay-drenched guitars floating at the back of a cavernous room and denser eruptions, and at its most spacious the record conjures the wide, weightless dread it is chasing. This is music built for headphones and a dark room, and it rewards that attention.
The limits are in the sound and the pacing. The mix is warm to the point of dull, extremely weighted to the low mids and almost entirely without high-end air, so the whole thing can feel muffled and, when the fuzz piles up, contourless, the bass and downtuned guitars melting into a single frequency wall. And for all the dynamic contrast on “Stigma,” other stretches simply sit still: “The Praise of Folly (Part 1)” runs long and linear with no real payoff, and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” is a monolithic, static drone-wall that shifts only in the smallest increments. Hypnosis is the goal, but the line between hypnotic and inert is thin.
The Praise of Folly is an atmospheric, warmly analog, genuinely immersive record from a veteran band that knows exactly the trance it wants to induce, and “Stigma” shows how good they are when the dynamics move. A brighter, more separated mix and a little more of that motion across the runtime would lift it considerably. For patient listeners with time to drift, though, there is a deep, dusky world to get lost in here.
Warm, hypnotic instrumental doomdelic space-prog, four extended pieces recorded live in one take on an Erasmus concept, valuing trance and atmosphere over impact. The best of it earns the patience: “Stigma” works real contrast between massive fuzzed riff-walls and long minimalist ambient passages, organic and analog-warm with the dynamics left uncrushed, and the title suite drifts between cavernous clean guitars and denser eruptions. The limits are the sound and the pacing: the mix is warm to the point of dull, heavily low-mid-weighted and almost without high-end air, so it feels muffled and, at full fuzz, contourless as bass and guitars melt together. And some stretches sit still, “The Praise of Folly (Part 1)” running long and linear with no payoff, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” a monolithic static drone-wall. Immersive at its best, inert at its flattest.
Standout tracks: Stigma, The Praise of Folly (Part 2)
