Area (Area International POPular Group) - The Essential Box Set Collection (2010)

Area's uncompromising blend of jazz-rock, ethnic folk, experimentation, and political philosophies made them a unique presence in Italy during the 1970s. Fronting the band's musical fusion was singer Demetrio Stratos, who embellished his own operatic technique with yodels and growls. Stratos died in 1979, and the remaining members disbanded after releasing one instrumental album.

The band was formed in 1972 by various musicians who had experience in pop, avant-garde, and jazz groups. The band consisted of Demetrio Stratos (born 1945, Alexandria, Egypt; died June 13, 1979, NY - voice, organ, harpsichord, percussion); Giulio Capiozzo (born 1946, Boretto, Italy drums, percussion); and Patrizio Fariselli (born 1951, Cesenatico, Italy - piano, electric piano, bass clarinet, percussion, ARP synthesizer). Guitarist Johnny Lambizzi and bassist Victor Edouard Busniello were soon replaced by Giampaolo Tofani (born 1944, Florence - electric guitar, EMS guitar synthesizer, flute) and Patrick Erard Djivas (bass). Manager Gianni Sassi signed the group to the independent Cramps label, and their debut, Arbeit Macht Frei, was released in 1973. The album's bold title, cover imagery, and lyrical content were packaged as a protest of fascism, and by declaring themselves an "International POPular Group," Area gave new meaning to playing music for the people. Musically, the album showed the early influence of jazz rock acts like Soft Machine and Nucleus, with hints of folk music of the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Middle East.

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Area (Area International POPular Group) - The Essential Box Set Collection (2010)

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After the first album, Djivas joined PFM and was replaced by Ares Tavolazzi (born 1948, Ferrara, Italy - bass, double bass, trombone, pocket trumpet). A second album, Caution Radiation Area, perfected the group's unique sound, combining the punch of rock and the frightening chaos of experimental music. It also showed their continuing political activism. By dedicating one song to German guerilla activist Ulrike Meinhof, the group began to get more international press for their politics than for their music. Over the next few years, Area would play benefits for controversial political causes, and they allied themselves with leftist youth and working class movements in Italy, including the socialist and communist parties. Winning a progressive music award in Italy, Crac! (1975) was the best evidence of Area's crazy fusion: furious, mind-bending rhythms and melodies balanced with humor and the avant-garde. A live album, Are(A)zione, followed in the fall of 1975.

But Area seemed to stall in its search for even more experimentation. Maledetti (1976) brought in guest players to contribute to the band's activity, and in some ways it backfired and fragmented the band. Event '76, one of those classic headache-inducing recordings, was a live album which found Area at the furthest point of their orbit: noisy, unmelodic sounds make up most of the record. Anto/Logicamente was a 1977 "greatest-hits" release, while Stratos had begun recording solo albums of voice experimentation.

y 1978, the band had reeled in their uncompromising and splintering directions, and recorded an album that was enjoyably melodic and playful, but by no means "pop." 1978 Gli Dei Se Ne Vanno… was Area reborn, a masterpiece of world melodies, jazz virtuosity, and off-the-wall attitudes. Sadly, the band's career was interrupted in 1979 by the loss of Stratos, who died of leukemia in New York. A memorial concert, featuring the brightest stars of Italy's progressive arts, was performed and recorded for a double album. Area returned with the mostly instrumental Tic & Tac (1980), an upbeat album that celebrated instead of grieved. It leaned towards the contemporary jazz fusion sound popular at the time. At the end of 1996, Capiozzo and Fariselli re-formed Area for a new release called Chernobyl 7991, with the collaboration of jazz bassist Paolino Dalla Porta (aka Paola Dalla Porta) and guitarist Fabio Condorelli.

Posthumous live recordings of Area have since been released, and the band continues to influence those who dare to listen.

by Patrick Little, AMG

Appearing as it did in 1973, Area's debut album must have sounded to the average Italian pop critics like the end of the world. Issued on the Cramps label (and reissued by Arkarma as part of the Area box set), the album highlighted Area's early sound, which featured overt folk melodies, Canterbury Scene prog rock, acid psychedelia, and vanguard jazz all filtered through a particularly Italian sensibility. Those who came to love PFM later will not be able to handle the beautiful – yet very disciplined – weirdness of Area, at least on this disc. The Soft Machine comparisons are inevitable, especially in the free jazz sax blowing of Victor Eduardo Busnello. But in the deep funky guitarism of Paolo Trofani and rock-steady rhythmic invention of Patrick Djivasa on bass and Guido Capiozzo on drums, this band, fronted by keyboardist Patrizio Fariselli and vocalist-from-Mars Demetrio Stratos, Area was, at least in this early stage, a rock & roll band more than it was a jazz unit in the same way Soft Machine had evolved into one. Stratos is closest, sounding like Leon Thomas fronting Eno-era Roxy Music playing Mahavishnu Orchestra tunes, but Busnello's saxes are a close second. The rockish angles come from the guitars, while the bridge to progressivism comes from the rhythm section. Of the six tracks here, clocking in at just over 36 minutes, "Arbeit Macht Frei," the title track, is the one that brings all the pieces together most seamlessly. There are quotes from King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" and Jeff Beck's Beck-Ola album wrapped around towering rhythmic architectures and bleeding key changes that blur the boundaries between the various musics that made up the pursuit of Area. This is ambitious, strange, and ultimately very beautiful, an album that has dated very well into the new century.

by Thom Jurek

Tracklist:

01. Luglio, agosto, settembre (nero) 4:28
02. Arbeit macht frei 8:01
03. Consapevolezza 6:10
04. Le labbra del tempo 6:04
05. 240 chilometri da Smirne 5:16
06. L'abbattimento dello Zeppelin 6:54



Musicians:

- Demetrio Stratos / vocals, organ, still drums
- Patrick Djivas / bass
- Patrizio Fariselli / pianos
- Gianpaolo Tofani / guitars, VCS-3
- Giulio Capiozzo / drums, percussion
- Victor Edouard ('Eddie') Busnello / sax, bass clarinet, flutes

Area's second album takes its cues from the most serious side of early-'70s British progressive rock, particularly Soft Machine and King Crimson. There's a high-voltage, at times furious energy to the quasi-jazz-rock fusion, with keyboards showing some influence from Miles Davis fusion records, and the guitars wheeling off lines with a busy anxiety. Despite some sinister progressions and overlays of electronic squiggles (the closing "Lobotomia" consists almost entirely of disquieting electronic effects) and white noise percussion, there's a shortage of memorable riffs. That approach, combined with the impenetrability of the Italian-sung lyrics to the English-speaking audience that comprised much of the art rock audience, confined their international audience to a small cult one. Some idiosyncratic features distinguish it from other little-known Continental prog rock of the era, particularly the eerie yodeling vocals, though those are only occasionally heard. It's a dark record, and obviously intended to provoke and disturb; it's just not too special.

by Richie Unterberger

Tracklist:

01. Cometa rossa 3:59
02. ZYG (Crescita zero)5:30
03. Brujo 8:02
04. MIRage? Mirage! 10:28
05. Lobotomia 3:57



Musicians:

- Giulio Capiozzo / drums, percusion
- Patrizio Fariselli / piano, electric piano, bass clarinet, synthesizer
- Ares Tavolazzi / bass, trombone, contarabass
- Paolo Tofani / guitar, flute synthesizer
- Demetrio Stratos / vocal, organ, cembalo, percussion

The third mid-'70s album from Italy's progresssive rock forerunners Area originally appeared on the experimental Cramps label and is reissued here for the first time. Favoring incredibly complex rhythms à la King Crimson, the group's fusion of folk and ethnic music, leftist political diatribe, and free jazz and hard rock coalesces into a distinctive sound further accented by the abstractions of vocalist Demitrio Stratos. His inimitable avant-garde vocal techniques are something to be heard to be believed, and the agility with which the ensemble cuts between genres and motifs is astonishing, deploying techniques way ahead of their time. Laced with high energy and abundant humor, Crac! is a standout concept album in avant-garde and progressive rock scenes, yet somehow neither genre would appropriately house this music. Further evidence of their groundbreaking fusion can be heard on their Maledetti and Arbeit Macht Frei albums.

by Skip Jansen

Tracklist:

01. L'elefante bianco 4:34
02. La mela di Odessa 6:40
03. Megalopoli 7:53
04. Nervi scoperti 6:36
05. Gioia e rivoluzione 4:38
06. Implosion 5:01
07. Area 5 2:08



Musicians:

- Giulio Capiozzo / drums and percussion
- Patrizio Fariselli / electric & acoustic pianos, bass clarinet, percussion, synths
- Demetrio Stratos / vocals, organ, percussion
- Ares Tavolazzi / electric & acoustic basses, trombone
- Paolo Tofani / electric guitar, synths, flute

According to classic 1970s dictums, 1975's Are(A)zione is a "live" record by Italian vanguard progressive rock group Area. Taking one song from each of its four previous albums (recorded at as many festivals) and adding a complete freakout on the title track for over 15 minutes, the band nonetheless gives the impression that this is from a single performance. Area's energy and intensity were unequaled by anyone on either side of the Atlantic – rumor has it that Emerson, Lake & Palmer, who headlined a gig in Italy, wouldn't come onto the stage for a full two hours because they didn't want to follow the band that had driven ELP's crowd intro a frenzy. Everything that makes Area special is in abundance here: lightning quick directional and time changes ("Cometa Rosa"), astonishing improvisation ("Are(A)zione"), harmonic invention thought impossible for rock bands ("La Mela di Odessa"), intricately woven folk melodies that give way to sprawling free jazz jams ("Lugglio, Agosto, Settembre"), and vanguard free associative experimentalism laced with over-the-top lefty politics ("L'Internationale"). And while the aforementioned examples are used for quick reference, virtually all of what Area does, especially in these live settings, occurs in each and every song. On this set it becomes very obvious just how special vocalist Demetrio Stratos was. Many credit his importance in the development of vocal strategies and approaches to improvisational and compositional work to his work after leaving the band, but virtually all of it is in evidence here: cascading sounds stretched across three octaves, ululating inconstant and vowel sounds through blurs, and gathering sonic vibrations from the wells and caverns of the body itself for expression. This is as good a place as any to start with Area, and in some ways tells the Area story even better than the band's studio albums.

by Thom Jurek

Tracklist:

01.Luglio, agosto, settembre (nero) 5:40
02. La mela di Odessa 11:06
03. Cometa rossa 5:58
04. Are(A)zione 15:00
05. L'Internazionale 4:00



Musicians:

- Giulio Capiozzo / drums and percussion
- Patrizio Fariselli / electric & acoustic pianos, bass clarinet, percussion, synths
- Demetrio Stratos / vocals, organ, percussion
- Ares Tavolazzi / electric & acoustic basses, trombone, pocket trumpet
- Paolo Tofani / electric guitar, synths

Italy's premiere progressive rock outfit produced five albums of peculiar and outlandish music in the '70s. Fronted by madcap vocalist Demitrio Stratos, Area provided backing to the John Cage collaborator's extended vocal techniques and bizarre verbal utterances. The ensemble arrangements drew on progressive rock, jazz, and improvisation, and coalesced into a sound akin to Soft Machine, National Health, or Caravan. Maledetti is a critically acclaimed Italian progressive album, yet the group bridges many genres, including jazz and avant-garde. The free jazz influence of this 1976 recording is made evident by the appearance of two of the genre's most powerful practitioners, Steve Lacy and Paul Lytton, whose contributions put this album in more of an experimental/avant-garde mode than previous outings.

by Dean McFarlane

Tracklist:

01. Evaporazione 1:53
02. Diforisma urbano 6:28
03. Gerontocrazia 7:41
04. Scum 6:41
05. Il massacro di Brandeburgo, nВ° 3 in Sol maggiore 2:31
06. Giro, giro, tondo 6:04
07. Caos (seconda parte) 9:15



Musicians:

- Giulio Capiozzo / drums, percussion
- Patrizio Fariselli / piano, electric piano, bass clarinett, synthesizer, percussion
- Ares Tavolazzi / electric & acoustic bass, trombone
- Paolo Tofani / guitar, synthesizer, flute, tcherepnin
- Demetrio Stratos / vocal, organ, cembalo, steel drum, percussion

Guests:

- Eugenio Colombo / kazumba
- Hugh Bullen / bass
- Walter Calloni / drums
- Steve Lacy / soprano sax
- Anton Arze & Jose Arze / txalaparta
- Paul Lytton / percussion
- Paolo Salvi / cello
- Giorgio Garulli / contrabass




Tracklist:

01. Caos II Parte (1) 20:39
02. Caos II Parte (2) 9:26
03. Event '76 9:32



Musicians:

- Patrizio Fariselli / prepared piano
- Steve Lacy / soprano sax
- Paul Litton / percussions
- Demetrio Stratos / vocals
- Paolo Tofani / guitar, Tcherapnin synthesizer


All thanks go to Pasheka-Pacheka