Best known as the keyboarder of Italy's premier post rock combo Giardini di Mirò, wowing fans and sceptics alike with their formidable long players and impressively intense live performances, Luca Di Mira has now come up with his fi rst ever solo outing, Flowing Seasons. Sharing nothing but an undercurrent of deep melancholy with his main band, the album reveals Di Mira's prodigious song-writing talents. Its fi rst track, Song For Beginning, a gradually unfurling pop song bolstered by the luscious beats of Northern Italian electro hop specialist Populous, already hints at the general direction the record sets out to pursue. While the song leaves us with the niggling suspicion that individual sounds are constantly trying to slip away, this impression is reinforced by Cut-Out-And-Keep Quarrels where Patrick Zimmer's (fi nn.) fragile vocals are almost drowned out by the sparsest of acoustic guitars ' a long, strangely crepuscular song undermined almost imperceptibly by the hum of an old-fashioned organ. An