LORENZO BEDINI – WHO NEVER WAS (Bandcamp/ distributed by Burning Shed) (2025)

Lorenzo Bedini is from the prog band Airbridge. I like his ‘mission statement’ – “a hand-crafted album, on which all instruments and voices were recorded live, in real time and without MIDI, artificial intelligence (unless you count my intelligence as such) to preserve feeling and atmosphere.” (Let us please be careful where AI takes us!)

After a nostalgic opener ‘Could Have Been’ about childhood dreams, the world of Lewis Carroll is entered next – it’s based on the ‘Walrus and the Carpenter’, and I liked the way the music is broken up by passages of guitar and organ with atmospheric synths and fairground ambience towards the end (I thought of Genesis). Fans of Airbridge will be familiar with ‘Images’, as Lorenzo moves onto to reflect on the challenges of his adolescence, with acoustic guitar, tuned percussion and prominent synth. I totally agree with the statement that the Devil comes into everyone’s life expressed on ‘Snake in the Grass’ (“a choice between a pit and paradise” with a quote from a nursery rhyme), which the writer describes as a “foray into electro-jazz”. (inner demons and ‘shadows’ are also explored in ‘Make the Silence’). I also loved the idea of two teenage lovers unexpectedly meeting in an airport lounge (Much later in life I presumed) on ‘In Flight’, with nostalgia tempered by the ravages of life’s experience. A Brighter Flame’ is reminiscent of Peter Hammill’s reflective ruminations, although King Crimson is cited as an influence (the guitar presumably).

The earnestness and ringing guitar work on ‘August Storm’ bears sonic similarities with The Bevis Frond. I might be way out there but it’s never a bad thing to quote from Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” (‘Largo’) as Lorenzo does on the experimental 9-minute long ‘Voyager’, a piece that came to life when trying out a new synthesiser (I know the feeling!) I really enjoyed the ‘groove’ on ‘Cold’, a song about reacting to events differently now than in the past ‘Psweet Psychedelic Psychosis’ is a tribute to The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” and the strange things happening that we can’t make sense of (Again, I know the feeling!) ‘Who Never Was’ is about what the elderly version of the child in the opening track would say to his younger self; thus, the concept is complete.

Lorenzo Bedini has produced an album that is thoughtful, intimate and relatable, a stylistically varied album that warmly reaches out on many levels with elements of progressive and psychedelic rock, as well as electronica, in twelve intriguing musical stories.