Area international POPular group
Maledetti (Maudits)

"Maledetti" represents the ultimate expression of the Counterculture movement, the most evolved branch of the complex experimentation begun by Area in 1973.
The perfect picture in the Italian post-industrial chaos.
To better understand the album, however, one must not only look at the record itself, which already stands out thanks to the lyrics of a much-matured Stratos no longer under the conceptual control of Gianni Sassi, who up to "Crac!" had guided the lyrics and two super guests, but also and especially the Italian situation.
End of 1975, a crisis begins that will last more than a decade, devaluing the lira and prompting a heavy managerial offensive that will nullify a decade of workers' struggles.
A transition that leaves a deep scar not only in the industrial field but also in the social context.
In this stalemate, opportunities to perform concerts are significantly reduced (the various Counterculture festivals like Re Nudo are now dead) and the public starts losing interest in the Prog scene; some groups like PFM, New Trolls, and Orme adapt by switching to sophisticated Pop or simple chamber music.

Area, on the other hand, begins to focus on individual studies, collaborations, or leaving the group. Stratos returns to Greece and collaborates with John Cage, Tofani leaves the project to become a monk, Tavolazzi and Capiozzo first study the folk music of the Basque Country and then join the Mingardi orchestra for a short period, where Capiozzo decides to remain.
In fact, before entering the studio, they decided it would just be a collaboration and that in the future they would distance themselves from the project.
Once the main members reunited, it was noted that the various influences had evolved and expanded, making the future record the most eclectic ever conceived.
Two former collaborators of Stratos, Paul Lytton and Steve Lacy, were called in, respectively as a percussionist and saxophonist.
Even though later there would be many other collaborators like Eugenio Colombo, founder of the Italian Instabile Orchestra, Walter Calloni, and Hugh Bullen.
Now, after this brief historical/informative aside, let's talk about why this album must be evaluated primarily within the social context.
The poetics contained in the lyrics are decades ahead of the time when the record was released.
The story is based on a robotic brain whose task is to guard the history of mankind (a conceptual representation of libraries) that loses memory (Evaporazione) due to the prevailing chaos in society (Diforisma Urbano; incidentally, Diforisma is a neologism created by Area themselves, derived from the Milanese "s'té föra" meaning "are you out of your mind?" used to indicate a very stressed person who reacts incoherently to things).

Based on this foundation, Area presents three possible scenarios.
The first scenario chooses to give power to the elderly (Gerontocrazia) because they hold the memory of the past, but this leads to a dictatorship of memory.
In the second scenario, power is given to women. The reason for this proposal by Area is due to the feminist struggles which after '68 had increased exponentially; the title "Scum" indeed derives from Solanas's book, a feminist famous for attempting to assassinate Warhol.
With "Il massacro di Brandeburgo tre in Sol Maggiore", we realize that these various attempts start to create unrest in society and cause a further loss of mankind's memory, eventually eliminating all progress up to the neoclassical era.
After this, the scepter passes into the hands of children (Giro, Giro, Tondo) who attempt to rebuild society through innocence and imagination.
After these three phases, not counting the interlude, the now inevitable finale is reached, "Caos II".
This track is actually the continuation of "Caos", an improvisation during a concert, but never recorded.

This leads me to consider Maledetti not only the best album by Area but the best I have ever listened to. It is a demonstration of how Area is one of the few groups that not only experiments but builds around itself an immense picture that is nothing less than a keystone for understanding Italian society, past and present.