Finisterre - Progressively Yours

Early '70s. The golden age of progressive rock and, if I may be forgiven, of rock in general. This is where a musical and cultural epic is born, amid singers leaping about on stages wreathed in smoke and multicolored lights, thundering guitars, slapped basses, pensive keyboardists, topographic oceans and the Holy Grail. Art and lifestyle. Is there really nothing left to say about progressive rock after that? Countless CDs, a bloated output, sometimes poor, often pleasant but pointless. C'est fini? I think I've found a story worth telling, and it's that of a group of Italian musicians, based in Genoa, who created - under various names, within a progressive framework but not only, as we'll see - a body of work that stands among the most significant since the "big crash" of the late '70s. The original band is called Finisterre, and they debuted in 1994 with their self-titled album. The timing was, all things considered, fairly favorable: progressive rock was climbing out of the damp basements of the '80s, output was becoming more substantial and higher in quality, and also more layered; a few years earlier Marillion, a cornerstone band of a small progressive renaissance, had enjoyed considerable commercial success, artistic merits aside.

The original Finisterre line-up was made up of Fabio Zuffanti (bass, vocals), Stefano Marelli (guitar, vocals), Boris Valle (keyboards), Marco Cavani (drums) and Sergio Grazia (flute). The debut album, Finisterre, mostly instrumental, is stylistically very close to historic Italian progressive rock, full of grand instrumental openings, themes that intertwine and chase one another, the occasional inevitable keyboard flourish, explicit classical quotations here and there (Mozart, Gershwin), epic guitar breaks, and vividly imaginative flute lines.

Of particular importance to the overall sound are the pervasive use of flute, often in a lyrical key - closer to McDonald than to Ian Anderson, to be clear - which frequently sustains and drives the compositions, and the piano, used all too sparingly but capable of marking a real leap in quality whenever it appears. The quality of the music is beyond question, with a profusion of themes full of nuance and layering that reach their fullest realization in "SIN", 15 minutes of sonic patchwork featuring Satie-esque piano, bucolic flute passages, sudden forward lunges, abrupt stops, alternating riffs, even a touch of latin fusion, all thrown into a dispersive yet fascinating melting pot. On their debut, Finisterre deploy the full stylistic arsenal of progressive rock in abundance, breathing new life into well-worn clichés as much as into genuinely captivating passages. The only real weak point is perhaps the less-than-irresistible vocals.

The progressive-rock microcosm responded very well: Stefano Covili, in the sorely missed fanzine "Melodie e dissonanze", called it the best Italian progressive album since Locanda delle Fate (1977). I wouldn't entirely disagree, though one does notice, within the context of an otherwise accomplished record, a certain urge to overreach and a certain lack of a clearly defined musical personality - in that sense, it should be regarded as an excellent yet immature debut.

That immaturity becomes clear in 1996, when a follow-up finally arrives. It's In Limine, in this writer's opinion one of the best progressive albums of the decade just gone, and the band's masterpiece. The line-up had changed, with Marcello Mazzocchi on drums and Francesca Biagini on flute, plus a long list of guests. The album is far more intricate and sophisticated than its predecessor, with canonical thematic recapitulations as in the title track, with its splendid finale and tarantella-rock passages already explored by Pfm, or in the gorgeous "XXV", a delicate elegy with a Genesis-like aftertaste, or in "Hispanica", with lovely acoustic-guitar passages over a dance rhythm, alternating with more oblique pieces such as the extraordinary and intricately crafted "Preludio", an impalpable little gem of vocal exploration set against an instrumental backdrop as light as a butterfly's wings, or the ambient jazz of "Ideenkleid Leibnitz Frei", or the chamber-music feel of "Interludio". Above them all stand the 13 minutes of "Algos", a meditative piano opening that blossoms into a section indebted both to the "cosmic couriers" and to the progressive electronics of Heldon, and the 16 minutes of "Orizzonte degli eventi", Finisterre's progressive summa.

In Limine is an album much closer to the idea of "art rock" than the debut, with passages of great refinement that, in tension and mood, recall certain moments of King Crimson's "Lizard" and "Island" more than mainstream symphonic/progressive fare. The album received good reviews, even though awareness of it remained confined to the progressive-rock microcosm.

In Limine was followed by two live albums, both good: Live... ai margini della terra fertile and Storybook, the latter recorded in the US. Fans will be interested to know that the first includes a Genesis tribute, with Marelli taking on the solo from "Firth Of Fifth", while the second pays tribute to Pfm's "Altaloma". A third live album, At The Nearfest, rounds out the band's live output.

In 1998 Finisterre's third album, In ogni luogo, came out, and from the artwork alone it's clear that a lot had changed. The line-up was pared down to four (Zuffanti, Marelli, Valle and newcomer Andrea Orlando on drums), plus a few guests; the flute was scaled back in favor of a leaner violin; the album is dedicated to Jeff Buckley; production came from Roberto Colombo (Alberto Camerini, Matia Bazar, and husband of Antonella Ruggero herself); the sound is far more synthetic and rhythmic, though some of the band's typical redundancies and intricacies remain, much more guitar-driven and acidic (Marelli is the absolute protagonist here), with keyboards pushed into the background. Finisterre try - always, mind you, from a progressive perspective - to fit into the landscape of modern Italian rock, with an approach at times not unlike post-rock bands such as Giardini di Mirò or Gatto Ciliegia ("Snaporaz", built around dialogue from a Marcello Mastroianni film - "La dolce vita", perhaps?), at other times venturing into classy lounge territory, aided by Francesca Lago's lovely voice, as in the title track or in "Continuitàdilaraneltempo" (written just like that, it's not a typo), the only two sung tracks, plus a few small ethnic touches (the ending of "Coro elettrico") and flashes of jazz-rock; Marelli alternates between minimalism, somewhat Floyd-ian solos, hard rock riffs, biting harshness sometimes doubled by guest Sergio Caputo's violin, and sudden moments of tenderness. Not everything is gold - some passages are far from irresistible (the riff of "Ninive" sounds distinctly familiar) - but the album is very good, full of personality and vigor, talent and creativity, forward-looking in a progressive sense yet thoroughly contemporary, with real impact and structure. The production, meanwhile, marks a genuine leap in quality. But for many the shift was too much: the progressive-rock faithful pulled a face, some criticism followed, and many longed for the first two albums. With a few years' distance, I'd suggest a reappraisal of In ogni luogo - far from the splendor of its predecessor, but a brave attempt to redefine a style, and a creative effort worth appreciating.

Finisterre then went dormant for several years - though their side projects, as we'll see, did not - before returning in 2004 with La meccanica naturale, which saw Marco Cavani return on drums and Agostino Macor (of The Wax Mask) join on keyboards. To quote myself, I'll refer you to this very site's review of the album: a highly refined record with wonderfully assured songwriting, it comes across as a successful synthesis between the formal progressive orthodoxy of the early works and a drive toward contemporary refraction and leanness, channeled and crystallized into ten mid-length songs full of instrumental surges, modernist syncopations, epic digressions and jazzy tangents.

But the Finisterre galaxy also includes many other projects, all under the aegis of bassist Fabio Zuffanti.

Hostsonaten

Hostsonaten is Zuffanti's progressive project, featuring the ongoing involvement of numerous musicians, including several members of Finisterre such as Boris Valle, Stefano Marelli and Francesca Biagini. The debut album from this line-up was released in 1997, and its closeness to the parent band is underlined by the title, Finisterre Project-Hostsonaten.

The music on the debut somehow comes across as an offshoot of the style of Finisterre's own first album, albeit with a more linear, more romantic, and even more acoustic and understated approach. The record is excellent, perhaps even better than Finisterre's self-titled album, with the 40-plus minutes of the track "Hostsonaten" dominating the work, alternating extremely delicate acoustic guitar and flute passages with broad symphonic openings, folk interludes, and a few more abstract cameos tinged with a touch of jazz; Zuffanti also takes on vocal duties here, and while few would call him a great singer, in this context his understated vocals prove very functional to the music. The other tracks are also of a good standard, such as "The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner" (naturally set to Coleridge's text) and no fewer than two covers of Japanese prog bands: the short "Tsuki no Symphony" by Mugen, performed solely on flutes, and the sweet "Remember You" by Cindarella Search.

Proving that this was no fleeting project, a second album, Mirrorgames, followed in 1998, and it's hard to hide a certain disappointment. It retreads the ground of the first record, but almost entirely lacks the poetry and delicate balance of the debut; at times it reaches for somewhat heavy-handed, bombastic solutions with markedly new-prog passages, while thoroughly inadequate vocals and a flat recording undermine even the good moments that are nonetheless scattered here and there. The best material is perhaps found in the suite "The Dream" (24 minutes), which contains some stylistic ideas that would later resurface in the rock opera Merlin and in Mirrorcloud.

Hostsonaten then disappeared from the scene for several years, only to resurface somewhat unexpectedly in 2002 with Springsong. Much had changed: the album is entirely instrumental, which works in its favour, and is predominantly acoustic, built around flute, violin and acoustic guitar. Many tracks carry a vague Canterbury air (Camel above all), with a folk aftertaste (Dan Ar Braz, Fairport Convention) and occasional new-age overtones, though there's no shortage of more introverted, experimental passages, as in "Lowtide" and "The Underwater". A very good album, light and flowery without ever being banal, topped off by a splendid digipack artwork.

In 2004, a collection of unreleased material brought the Hostsonaten adventure to a close, at least for now.

Merlin

In 2000, Fabio Zuffanti let his ambitions run free and tackled a rock opera, Merlin, writing the music while leaving the lyrics (in English) and the screenplay to English theatre director Victoria Heward. The scale of resources and personnel involved is considerable, with different singers for the different characters, numerous guest musicians, and several choirs. The work, spread across two CDs, boasts some undeniably captivating parts, melodramatic and theatrical as befits the subject and genre; we're firmly in progressive-style territory with folk touches, featuring various choral sections, and for once the singers seem well chosen, especially the female voices, with a few fine ballads worth noting. What's truly missing, though, is real cohesion between the parts, and some rather predictable solutions crop up, especially in the electric guitar parts; it's not a masterpiece, then, but still a decent album that perhaps lacks a bit of compositional courage.

La Zona

La Zona is a project involving, besides Fabio Zuffanti, Stefano Marelli, Agostino Macor, Marco Cavani and Michele Nastasi (trumpet). Their first and, for now, only album, Difficult Nights, was released in 2003. Progressive has little to do with it this time around: it's actually a record that fits, with a genuinely well-defined personality, into the post-rock vein. The album contains four tracks: in "Solitudini", a slow ambient opening unfolds into a melancholy dialogue between guitar and trumpet over a background electronic texture; in "Babau", expressive, tense guitar chords doubled by trumpet open out into an extremely cinematic rhythmic progression; in "Sogno della scala", an insistent bass line beneath a sampled choir suspended in a void crashes against a guitar wall stretched out by the mellotron in a psychedelic vertigo reminiscent of "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" by Pink Floyd; then comes "Equivalenza", a tangle of harmonic and electronic hints accompanying "captured" radio voices. Somewhere between post-rock, Pink Floyd, Terje Rypdal, David Sylvian and Holger Czukay, Difficult Nights is a record of real substance, one that hopefully will herald further developments.

Quadraphonic

While progressive has only a marginal role in La Zona, in the Quadraphonic project, the work of Zuffanti alone, it has no role at all, this being instead an extreme electronic music project.

Quadraphonic debuted between 1999 and 2001 with three self-produced CD-Rs (Technicolor 2001, Third Ear Band Demixed, Six Landscapes in the Rain); personally, I'm only familiar with the last one, explicitly inspired by "Un Peu De Neige Souillée" by Bernhard Günter, and thus inevitably 23 minutes of metallic noise, a musical meta-language for many intellectuals, but a horror for yours truly.

Of a very different calibre is the project's first full-length CD, The Subtle Day, seven tracks of electronic elaborations close to the new electronica of Christian Fennesz, Biosphere and William Basinski, with broad echoes of Harold Budd in the final 34 minutes of "Bianco Bianco Giorno", dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky. Diaphanous music, stripped of emotion yet rich in intimate refractions, impressionistic, minimal in its reiteration of melodic cells and found sounds.

In 2003 came another CD-R (Le fabbriche felici), whose content is unknown to me.

Maschera di cera

In the 2002/2003 two-year span, a major return to progressive rock came with La Maschera di Cera, a band formed by the ever-present Fabio Zuffanti (bass, acoustic guitar), Agostino Macor (keyboards), Marco Cavani (drums), Andrea Monetti (flute) and Alessandro Corvaglia (vocals). Two albums, both very good: the self-titled Maschera di cera in 2002 and The Great Labyrinth the following year. This is a return to progressive rock on very different terms compared to Finisterre and Hostsonaten: Zuffanti and Macor, who wrote the music, carry out an operation that is a clear homage to 1970s Italian prog, with very "vintage" atmospheres featuring a lavish use of analogue keyboards, mellotron first and foremost, truly the stars of the show also due to the near-total absence of electric guitar, grand melodic openings, vocals that are very theatrical though actually quite good (which, to be honest, is somewhat at odds with real 1970s Italian prog, which was short on decent singers), a powerful sound thanks above all to the way the bass is used in this respect, a hazy, heavily layered sound with something of a return to the dark atmospheres typical of bands like Il Balletto di Bronzo and so on...

Put this way, it might sound like a nostalgia exercise like others in the past; what makes the difference is the quality of the compositions, almost always inspired despite being almost philologically "genre-bound".

A band with solid success within the small progressive rock market, La Maschera di Cera also found a clear live expressiveness, with several self-released live CDs and a DVD recorded in Portugal.

For the sake of completeness, I should mention a band centered on Agostino Macor, Zaal ("La lama sottile"), which however I haven't had the pleasure of listening to.

This is the brief story of Finisterre, of Fabio Zuffanti and a handful of musicians involved, open to who knows what further developments, given that several projects seem to be in the works, such as the announced pop project (Spazio), Aether, A.M.P., and Aries.

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