Portable Madness

Listening today to the music produced by Sensations' Fix, a project founded and directed by Franco Falsini in '70s, can't just leave anyone indifferent. Already in the mid-'60s, Falsini was full-time involved in musical activities: a tireless traveler and experimenter, an artist with uncommon curiosity and intuition, after having lived for some time in the United States and England, he finally established again in Italy where he gave shape to Sensations' Fix and signed a contract with Polydor for the release of six records in five years. Often associated with the sound of Tangerine Dream and the so-called German 'cosmic couriers', Sensations' Fix were much more than mere clones of something already existing."Portable Madness" is - along with an eponymous LP and "Fragments of Light" - one of the three titles published in 1974 alone, and can be considered the first true result of a group work. A fully instrumental record, conceived as the sum of two long suites (one on each side), dominated by keyboards and synthesizers, and also characterized by an energetic and pulsating rhythm section. If it were released today, with an adequate production, an album like this would stand among the leading ones inside the psychedelic scene, and probably more. Back in 1974, in addition to not receiving adequate support from the record label, it wasn't welcomed for what it actually was: avant-garde and ahead of it's time. Compared to the context in which it was created.Sensations' Fix albums are generally difficult to find; almost none of them has been reprinted in over forty years, but thanks to this series of reissues on the VM label it is now possible to rediscover them all.