Area
Caution Radiation Area

This umpteenth review (perhaps I should limit myself a bit) begins with yet another purchase of a superb 180 gr. vinyl reissue, directly pressed from the latest generation remasters, which, once placed on the turntable at the appropriate volume, remarkably replicated (but not entirely unexpectedly) a 1974 recording, not particularly refined at the time of recording and mixing. Once on the turntable, I mean, but only when the rest of the family had dispersed for various reasons, because this is not a record to play in its entirety, especially in the presence of your wife (unless you are married to Carla Bley... congratulations. I understand, but my wife is more beautiful).

When Area arrives at their second LP, the first one has plunged into the effervescent but ultimately reassuring panorama of Italian pop, as it was called back then (remember the magazine 'Gong'?). This isn’t entirely true, as there had already been quite restless or even extreme musical realities – the Gruppo Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, for example – but no one cared about them until now, when progressive and singer-songwriter records, albeit of excellent craftsmanship, are flooding in.

The story of Area, instead, tells of accomplished musicians forced to work their way up in dance halls to earn money, but with very different musical preferences, devoted to contemporary music and the most politicized and extreme fringe of free jazz. Musicians who are openly angry (Stratos would always insist on this point) because they had to play the music imposed on them by their masters for too long, and now they can take their revenge through the albums that a reckless man named Gianni Sassi will allow them to create without any constraints.

Said and done. The so-called International POPular Group dishes out in their first album a very uncompromising jazz rock, close to the avant-garde, extremely politicized and polemical in its lyrics, and characterized – besides the daring instrumental solutions by the virtuoso musicians – by the unprecedented and revolutionary voice of a singer of Greek origin, who, in addition to vocalizing in a particularly free and expressive manner, is able to produce phonemes, trills, and glottal attacks of rare power, having developed revolutionary techniques of voice emission up to diphony and triphony. The album is beautiful and seminal, but initially it causes bewilderment, it is full of chaos and noise, and there are critics who dismiss the experiment, or draw comparisons to the Soft Machine in order to undermine the new ambitious Italian formation.

Area reacts quite prickly to the obviously stupid (with hindsight) criticism, but it was somewhat expected, as this music is difficult and requires time to be understood and appreciated. Instead, they are very agitated and have no intention of being subtle, and even if the lineup changes with the renunciation of Victor Busnello's (unreliable) wind contributions, the musical and political-cultural attitude does not change at all, and the group aims to respond by hitting where it hurts.

The irritation significantly worsens with Patrick Djivas' defection, who one night – understanding which way the money carousel is turning – abruptly leaves the band and suddenly accepts Franz Di Cioccio's offer, leaving the group without a bassist right on the doorstep of the second album. The penniless but very proud Area will never forgive him, and they will not miss an opportunity to reproach Djivas and PFM for the betrayal, but in the meantime, they struggle to find yet another replacement and have to resort more or less to deceit, promising the sensational session musician Ares Tavolazzi (who has a family to support and would need economic security) a secure salary within the band, which of course is not true and will never happen.

The quintet thus formed enters the studio charged and fiercely determined: even the last arrival understands that the group will never make a dime, but their music and communism are their entire life. Area responds to difficulties and misunderstandings with an inconceivable record, which makes the first one seem like a collection from Zecchino d'Oro and roughly clarifies their vocation and anger: uncompromised free jazz, enriched by the possibilities of rock instrumentation and stuffed with noise and conceptual avant-garde, sound terrorism, and extremely violent experimentation, the electronics of Paolo Tofani and the verbal and vocal acrobatics of Demetrio Stratos. Fariselli's electric piano and synthesizers pay tribute throughout the album to the electric experiences of Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock (the alien one from 'Sextant'), while Tavolazzi and Capiozzo (along with Furio Chirico the best Italian drummer) pulse and hit everywhere, free and unbound by any rules; for his part, Paolo Tofani, who has accumulated considerable experience in the field of musical electronics in London, rages between concrete music, industrial sounds, and very rapid phrases of acid and nervous guitar.

The album is short and peremptory, and it is compiled with increasing listening difficulty. The only vaguely accessible track opens the album, the famous ‘Cometa Rossa’, but it is actually a series of unison scales and rapid phrases reminiscent of Macedonian and Central European traditions, in uneven and broken odd times, interpolated by an evocative guitar arpeggio over which Stratos sings a text in Greek (!) with incredible trills and octave jumps. (Let us move on, the unaware and optimistic listener may have thought). The subsequent ‘ZYG (Crescita Zero)’ (ZYG stands for Zero Year Growth) proposes a short initial section of industrial noise, broken by Demetrio's robotic voice, after which it is nothing but irregular free form, episodically gathered around a minimal guitar riff (in this piece Tofani really seems like John McLaughlin) up to a conclusion only a little more relaxed, entrusted to Fariselli's piano and Stratos's unusual phrases, who does not seem at all inhibited by the lack of real texts to sing throughout the album.

The eight minutes of ‘Brujo’, closing the side, are ideally children of Davis's experiments and Chick Corea's Fender piano and alternate more exploratory phases with real explosions of free jazz. The piece testifies to one of Ares Tavolazzi's best studio performances, who typically uses the acoustic double bass and proves to be an instrumentalist of exceptional technique, presence, and inspiration. (Let's flip the record, the same perplexed listener must have thought).

The long ‘MIRage?Mirage!’ opens side B with a deceptive semblance of calm, a distant but demonic and spirited crescendo, directly related to contemporary music and populated by diphonic vocal effects, that leaves room for a sensational jazzy improvisation in pure Davis / Hancock style - one of the most beautiful moments of the album - before collapsing into Demetrio Stratos's declamation of various texts simultaneously (including a negative review of ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’: they have not forgiven!) that goes from an inaudible whisper to shamanic screams. A new instrumental section, dominated by synthesizers, closes without resolving this experimental and uncompromising track, which foreshadows the concert improvisations of ‘Are(A)zione’ and remains the most disturbing and sinister ever recorded by Area.

In the conceptual crescendo of the album, which even our optimistic listener has now figured out, the burning conclusion perfectly aligns with the political and musical themes of ‘Caution Radiation Area’: in a subversive homage to Ulrike Meinhof, condemned by a German court to be lobotomized, Area offer their version of what ‘Lobotomy’ is in 1974 Italy. Paolo Tofani violently unleashes the ring modulator of the synthesizer and produces four continuous minutes of deafening ‘white noise’, while a crazy keyboard plays some popular TV jingles in dissonance (you can make out the News show and the China Martini advertisement) and the volume and frequencies rise to intolerance, then quickly fade into a menacing hiss that closes the album leaving an undeniable sense of unease.

When the album tapes are completed, manager Franco Mamone (who already tolerated the first record poorly) listens without speaking and then hisses a phrase that has gone down in the group's anecdotal history: ‘Mo' so cazzi vostri’. He slams the door and leaves, breaking off any relationship. Thanks to Gianni Sassi, boss of Cramps and virtual member of Area, the album is still released, and incredibly enjoys an excellent reception among the group's admirers and fans of Italian progressive. (A strange and wonderful country, ours, where for a decade it was possible to convey complex and challenging music, with committed and very un-POPular themes, achieving great success even in sales until the seasons of disengagement largely erased this undeniable cultural advantage).

Concerts go a little differently, because Area do not know how to rest on their laurels and know no half measures, and on stage, they push the lever of experimentation and provocation to the maximum. The free improvisations of ‘ZYG’ and ‘Brujo’ reach challenging durations and content for even the most willing audience, but especially ‘Lobotomy’ is blasted at extremely high volume for even twenty minutes, in complete darkness, while the four musicians not directly involved in the execution swipe the audience with powerful flashlights and everyone bumps into each other and yells and falls, in short, an absolute madhouse. Occasionally a brawl breaks out and Area take note, and especially Tofani takes note, who a couple of years later will evolve the number by throwing two electric cables connected to the synthesizer into the crowd and inviting spectators to close the circuit by holding the cables and touching each other while the random noise skyrockets and frequencies rise due to resistance. It's called ‘Chaos’, a sound, tactile, and social experience that the group will not include in any record but is documented in this film of Parco Lambro 1976, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOk7zWoDHrY.

The chronicle of 1974 does not end here for Area, who also record a single to raise funds for the communist cause. Their version of ‘L'Internazionale’ will become famous and will also be commented on by the dictator Ceaucescu, not exactly enamored by the interpretation. The group will respond tit for tat, but that's another story.