Asia
Archiva 1

"On January 1st, 1996, Geoff Downes and I entered the studio to work on new material. As soon as we entered, we noticed the malfunction... Years of material were about to be lost... It seemed impossible, but we made it".

No, this is not a Montenegro advertisement, but more or less the account by John Payne, on the back cover, of the reason for the "Archiva"s, two CDs of outtakes released in two separate volumes. The tracks are not derived from years and years of work, but rather from the last four years amid fourteen years of activity, belonging to a band that, among other things, has hardly ever shined for creative flair and originality. Nothing, in short, suggests it will be a pleasant listen. Furthermore, the material has been split into two CDs sold separately, a choice that is, to say the least, questionable. Couldn't they have made a double one at the price of a single, so at least you could cry with just one eye? And instead, you would have to cry with the left eye for CD 1 and the right eye for CD 2!

I don't know at all how substantial the hardcore fan base of this band was at that time, and I wouldn't know how many were willing to make such expenditures for the "Archiva"s of Payne and Downes; I’m not even a fan of theirs and have had ample opportunity to express it. I would add that I'm not a lover of AOR, pomp, and Arena rock, but I have now learned to metabolize these genres quite well. In the past, I have often criticized-mocked Asia, but not for their musical genre per se, but rather for the absence of originality in their offerings and the "unhappiness" of some stylistic solutions.

The objective that, from album to album, Asia pursues would be to resemble themselves, remain recognizable at the first listen, to be a "hardcore band", precisely. And, after all, continuing to offer AOR and pomp in the '90s means exactly this. It can be gleaned from listening to this first volume of remnants, many of which were set aside precisely because they are different, not corresponding to what most of the hardcore fans, indeed, would expect from Asia. Nothing revolutionary or sensational, mind you, but it is finally possible to listen to the music of a band free from frameworks and clichés.

There are excellent catchy and well-crafted tracks, which have little or nothing in common with pomp, like "Believe", or the Queen-like rock opera "Fight Against The Tide". In "A.L.O." even John Payne sounds like Meatloaf, while "I Can't Wait A Lifetime" is a tenor track with a typical Asia chorus.

Among two decent instrumentals and some pop fillers, Adult Oriented rock returns. No Arena or pomp, just the 80s chart-topping rock. And those who can metabolize the genre, I'm not saying to appreciate it but at least to digest it, cannot fail to recognize the validity of well-crafted tracks like "Heart Of Gold", "Boys From Diamond City" or "Reality". If about the sound, the positives (Payne's big voice) and the negatives (the overwhelmingly, mostly outdated, and damned keyboards of Geoff Downes) are always the same as all the other albums, it is more than fair to highlight this volume 1 of "scraps" for the expressive freedom and the almost complete abolition of hackneyed solutions.

If they could break free from those old patterns even for the official albums, manage to give up that overdose of keyboards (kick out its founder-soul Geoff Downes?), and even find the good taste to give up this Roger Dean cover (really at a historical low here), this band could seriously appeal to me. But it couldn't be called Asia anymore.