In case you didn’t catch it, the band’s name is an anagram of the title this Italian prog band present as their debut. You can also see how their arrived at the name of the band from the two main members Davide Guidoni (Percussion, Samples – DA) und Alfio Costa (Keyboards, Samples - AL) using first 2 letters of each person’s name.
Destruktive Actions Affect Livings has a mixed style of industrial, progressive, space, and experimental that often reminded me of Absolute Elsewhere (In Search of Ancient Gods) and many of the similar 70's progressive space rock bands of that era. This is more experimental than some of those but carries on the genre nicely. Although the first cut had me thinking it was a horrible quality recording, I soon realized they did it for effect. The rest of the tracks were clear and clearly produced and mixed to perfection. I can also compare the CD to Pink Floyd in many some places (esp. Dark Side of the Moon’s Moog synthesizer dominated moments). Track 5 ( “The dance of the drastic navels Part II”) is a 16 ½ minute gem that has all those elements, along with guest musicians on violin, bass, and voice. This song not only stabilizes with a melody, but also is the first song on the disc to actually feel like a structured song. Daal have a formula of moving fast through their music and in the beginning, it felt dissembled and somewhat unfocused. After more listens, I saw they intended a partially chaotic music, after all, the songs are written about the heavy topic of birth, death, doomsday and end of the world times.
Davide and Alfio play lots of different instruments and take advantage of the modern keyboard technology that will allow most anything to be done with an entire orchestra of instruments so realistic that it will fool anyone. Listen to “Aglatarium” (track 7) and it sounds like someone is playing a soprano sax, but no, it’s synthesizer ( although I feel they might be using synthetic wind instrument such as Yamaha makes or lyricon like Chuck Greenburg used with Shadowfax). The only guest they list on that song is Bobo Aiolfi on fretless bass. Needless to say, the musicians here make a huge array of instruments work in this adventurous concept recording. The title track (song 8 “Destruktive actions affect livings”) shows just how much technology Daal have at their disposal. Here they list the suspected synthesized wind instruments, as well as Yamaha Handsonic, Korg Wavedrum, Korg Kaoss III, samplers and much more. It’s a cornucopia of sounds which is also a feast for the listener’s ear. The music gets chaotic again towards the end as this is a 10 minute extravaganza.
The last song is dedicated to a real friend of Alfio Costa’s named Giuseppe Ottoni and is simply beautiful, using grand piano, real soprano sax ( by guest Alessandro Papotto ) haunting cymbals, gongs, keys, which give way to the Tangerine Dream keyboard sequence that kicks me back into Rubicon era space trip music ( That was sentimentally my favorite TD album ever ), then comes that beautiful reprise from the start with more strings and some classic mellotron to end the piece. What a nice song! And a perfect ending to a somewhat frightening concept of things like Anti-Christ, 666, and the destructive way the giant money hogs have screwed up our planet so badly .And then the people who do the same. Daal present things in a very artistic way, as each song stands like a portrait. The music here does not terrify you, but it seems to just be sad that things are the way they are, and wonders how they got like this. So while you do not have lyrics and vocals on the recording, it is still a social commentary with just the music speaking. I really liked this release and look forward to many more from Daal.
Reviewed by Lee Henderson on April 30th, 2011
