Albergo Intergalattico Spaziale

It’s not exactly a unique trajectory, from successful sixties beat-pop group (I Giganti) to strange, unravelled avant-prog explorations, but that’s what Mino Di Martino did when he turned his attention to this notionally solo project. The cover of Albergo Intergalattico Spaziale (Intergalactic Space Hotel) is just the first of many arresting, oddly alienating things about this 1978 album, where Di Martino is joined by vocalist Terra Di Benedetto. The latter sings with preternatural calm, which feels all the weirder as she’s often marooned in massive lakes of droning organ and clanging, rolling cymbals and rumbling toms. Elsewhere, mellotron, synths and electro-acoustic experiments give the album an appealingly frazzled edge; it’s as though Di Martino’s trying to navigate his way out of an eclipse. The spectral voices on “Senza Titolo,” lost in their own echoplexed maze, sound almost exactly like halation looks. A particularly beautiful moment on an album rich with beauty.