The second Barrock album is the one that reached people. A Dutch progressive label put it out, an American magazine reviewed it twice in the same issue, and a Dutch critic wrote it up in detail — which for a band this small counts as a moment.

The short version

Oxian was released in 1994 by SI Music, catalogue SIMPly 53, as a CD in the Netherlands, mastered by Peter Brussee with cover illustration by Ricky Andreoni. It is the only Barrock album on a non-Italian European label. Valter Poles wrote almost all of it, with one track co-composed by Mauro Martin. The label collapsed about a year later, which is what pushed the band to Mellow Records for their third and final record.

A Dutch label, and the widest coverage they ever got

The line-up here is the largest that plays as a band rather than as a core with guests. The three Poles — Valter on guitar and synthesizer, Giampaolo on bass, Maurizio on drums and percussion — are joined by Giuseppe Vendramin on acoustic guitar and synthesizer, the two singers Graziella Vendramin and Paola Polese, and Ermanno Giacomel on recorder. Note that the first album credits a keyboard player as Pino Vendramin and this one credits Giuseppe Vendramin; Pino is a common short form of Giuseppe and these are very likely the same musician, but no source states it, so the pages here keep the names as printed rather than merging them.

The sound

Recorder-led, synth-shadowed chamber prog. Reviewing it in January 1995, Jurriaan Hage noted that the album contains a fugue and passages of spinet, found the drum sound thin, and observed that the classical and progressive elements are usually presented separately rather than fused. On ProgArchives, Marcelo describes a delicate and largely instrumental record with a medieval atmosphere and two operatic female voices; b_olariu hears symphonic passages combined with folk and pastoral arrangements and reaches for Renaissance and The Enid as comparisons. Hage notes that lyrics in both Italian and English are printed in the package, which is a fact about the booklet rather than about what is sung; no source states the sung language outright.

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The songs

‘Fuga Sul Tema Di Oxian’ opens the album at one minute thirty-seven. ‘Il Tempio’, five minutes eleven, is the one track co-composed by Mauro Martin with Valter Poles. ‘Il Vampiro’ is the longest piece at eight minutes thirty-six; like ‘Tarantella’ on the previous album, a track of this title already appears on the 1985 cassette. One other piece, ‘La Rivolta Del Popolo’, is credited as adapted by Valter Poles from Bellini’s Norma, and lyric credits attach to only two tracks on the whole record. The sleeve spellings on ProgArchives differ from those on the release itself, so the titles here follow the disc.

Reception and legacy

This is the best-covered Barrock album. Exposé carried two reviews in its seventh issue, by Peter Thelen and Rob Walker. Jurriaan Hage reviewed it at length in January 1995. On ProgArchives it holds a community average of 3.39 out of 5 from nineteen ratings, with Marcelo at four stars and b_olariu and Paco Fox at three; Paco Fox thinks it never reaches the level of The Enid. No chart placing, sales figure or reissue exists.

The verdict

Oxian is the Barrock album to hear if you are only going to hear one, because it is the one with enough written about it to argue with. The recorder and the two voices give it an identity, the fugue is there in the title and in the music, whatever Hage thought of its debt to Bach, and his complaint about the classical and rock halves sitting side by side rather than merging is fair and also the thing that makes the record interesting. Take it as chamber music with a rhythm section, and it works.

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