Murple was one of the many progressive rock bands from Italy that released just one album before fading into obscurity. Founded in Rome in 1971, the quartet consisted of Pino Santamaria (voc, g), Pier Carlo Zanco (voc, org, p, synth, db), Mario Garbarino (b, bo, tri) and Duilio Sorrenti (dr, cga, tim, g). They borrowed the band name Murple from an inside joke about an invisible penguin, whose story and adventures also turned their sole album Io Sono Murple into a concept album. It consists of a suite divided into two parts, each filling an entire side of the LP. The live recordings took place in 1973 at Chantalain Studio in Rome, produced by Roberto Marsala, who, after a concert in Naples, secured them a record deal with Fare, the new label of the German BASF Group.

Elaborately designed with an imaginative, fully laminated gatefold cover and a fold-out lyric sheet printed on thin brown paper, their debut album was not released until a year later, and only in Germany. Furthermore, it received no promotion whatsoever from the record company, which shut down its newly founded Italian sub-label after just one year, bringing the band’s career to an abrupt end. Their first and only LP, featuring lush, symphonic soundscapes as well as harder rock passages with complex time signatures and occasional vocals, is today regarded as a gem of Italo-prog and is a sought-after collector's item.