Area
Caution Radiation Area

The second effort by Area, a historic band of Italian progressive music. The lineup is the same as the first, very unique "Arbeit Macht Frei", which evokes in the unsettling title "our miseries," the "street" rage (to quote Stratos) that the group decided to represent—at least until the tragic death from leukemia of the singer (in 1979). And, besides this, the singer's mind-blowing vocal excursions, the hermetic lyrics, and the skill of all the musicians involved in the project will surely remain in history. Among these, we name the great Patrizio Fariselli and Ares Tavolazzi.

"Internationalist-type fusion music", as they defined it, both for the obvious political and social content (alienation, injustice, suffering, lobotomy in the sense of moral depletion and repression) and for the type of music, which is characterized as a kind of free-progressive. In fact, the influences of the various musicians are very diverse, including, among others, Greek folk music and jazz. Some more critical voices simply labeled them as elitist music, mental masturbation unfit for the "serious" general public—as if, especially in these musically vaporous times, this could be a flaw.
The class is there, the originality certainly is not lacking, but there remains a certain dose of "indigestible" passages that seem to never end... perhaps the only reasonable criticism is precisely the excessive length of each track, which becomes harrowing, obsessive, and often reaches delirium. But in reality, this does not constitute a true flaw, as it is part of the musical conception mentioned at the beginning—and above all, it does not prevent me from giving the album 5 stars...

Worth noting are Stratos's onomatopoeias in "Mirage? Mirage!" and the various vocal acrobatics present throughout almost the entire album—he studied singing techniques all over the world and, after several years, was able to develop a singing ability that allowed him a vocal range up to 7000 Hz and the ability to perform multiple vocal lines simultaneously.
"Lobotomia" is dedicated to the political activist of the time, Ulrike Meinhof: a disturbed sequence of incoherent, chaotic, and at times indescribable sounds... as they themselves said, "perhaps it's the memory of U.M. threatened with surgical death by the German federal government"...
...surely, the first part alone is practically worth the price of the CD...

LINEUP:
Percussion: Giulio Capiozzo
Electric Piano/Piano/Bass Clarinet/Percussions/ARP Synthesizer: Patrizio Fariselli
Electric Bass/Double Bass/Trombone: Ares Tavolazzi
Electric Guitar/EMS Synthesizers/Flute: Giampaolo Tofani
Vocals/Organ/Harpsichord/Steel Drums/Percussions: Demetrio Stratos

"Cometa chiudi la bocca e
vattene via.
Lascia che sia io a trovare
la libertà."