Area - Militant Rock for Freedom

A for Area

Open any encyclopedia of classic rock, then one on jazz, then one on progressive, and finally one on Italian music. What are the odds that the same band would be mentioned in each of these volumes? Vanishingly slim. And if we narrow the search to bands of Italian nationality, chances are we could comfortably stop at the very first letter of the alphabet.

This little exercise should give some sense of what the Area meant, and how much they meant, to music in the second half of the twentieth century: even within the turbulent, multifaceted political and musical maelstrom of the Seventies, theirs was a singular saga, helped along by their partnership with Gianni Sassi's Cramps label, which had the foresight to glimpse the dialectical potential of the group and the imagery it would go on to build around them. An experience deeply rooted in its historical context, yet still able, today, to shake listeners from the inside and win them over with the very same energy and the very same rage that were its foundation.

The project was born in 1972 out of an idea by the ethnic drummer of Turkish origin Giulio Capiozzo, a student of Kenny Clarke who had already played with Demetrio Stratos in the rhythm & blues band I Ribelli, remembered for the romantic ballad "Pugni chiusi" and for backing, among others, Adriano Celentano and Don Backy on a few commercial singles. The Greek-Egyptian Stratos was in Milan to study architecture and was starting to pay his dues as a singer in dance halls.

The Area experience falls, in fact, within the historical phase marking the decline of the beat genre, a sterile, watered-down copy of trends from across the Channel and the Atlantic (the infamous Italianized cover singles). With the arrival of '68, the first wave of rock also made its way into Italy, a finally free music that went hand in hand with growing political awareness. The era of the dance hall was supplanted by that of the live concert, thanks to the new emerging singer-songwriters and the pioneering bands of the progressive scene (Pfm, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Le Orme, New Trolls).

It's within this entirely new context that Stratos was able to partly set aside his blues leanings and shape the use of his voice in the image of the newborn band's eclecticism. Initially, the lineup featured Leandro Gaetano on keyboards, Victor Busnello on horns (mainly saxophone), Johnny Lambizi on guitar and Patrick Djivas on bass, alongside Capiozzo's drums, of course. But also present from the very first rehearsals was a friend of Capiozzo's: Patrizio Fariselli, who managed to impress him with his astonishing improvisational technique, far more in line with the drummer's ambitions than Gaetano, who was replaced before long.

The story behind the name Area is not agreed upon by everyone: among the most credible accounts is the one tracing it back to an eponymous track by Alberto Radius, which our protagonists also took part in (all except Busnello); whatever the true version of events, the choice proved fitting, lending itself to multiple interpretations and to the band's potential appeal abroad.

The full-fledged project built around the group became the driving spark behind the cultural and record-label venture Cramps, the first experiment by Gianni Sassi (operating under the pseudonym Frankenstein), who turned the band into a vehicle for propaganda through the sheer power of their music. It was Sassi, again, who appended to Area the tag International POPular Group: an inspired touch that, besides freeing them from the relatively narrow progressive category, perfectly captured the melting pot they genuinely represented, both in lineup and musical alchemy. But as graphic designer Monica Palla is keen to point out, Area were not "built" but "conceived", shaped under the guidance of Cramps' founder, whose label became one of the first independent Italian record companies, and thus not bound by sales quotas or pre-set commercial returns.

Sassi would play a central role for nearly the entire span of Area's artistic journey: a Communist Party intellectual, a provocative performer and a skilled communicator, he is described, in a short biographical volume by Maurizio Marino, as "the man who invented cultural marketing" (Gianni Sassi. Fuori di testa, Castelvecchi editore, 2013); having closely studied the image-making choices of the great international acts — the Beatles above all — he fuelled the band's thriving musical ideas together with a few other loyal figures behind the scenes, including manager Franco Mamone, who discovered them and introduced them to Sassi himself. Mamone secured Area their first dates opening for established bands such as Atomic Rooster and Gentle Giant; shortly after, when Lambizi left the group, it was again Mamone who suggested Paolo Tofani as the ideal replacement, given his already highly advanced guitar technique and his skill in manipulating electronic sounds.

What emerged was a factory of ideas that served as a genuine "home" for the band, supporting them through every stage of their life and creative process. For Gianni Sassi, having his own record label was the means to "bring the historic avant-gardes (of which he considered himself a bearer) into contact not with the cultured, refined audience of art galleries, but with the mass of young people, with the people of the Movement. Sassi had no interest in being a record man in the strict sense; his aim was to intervene in the cultural process, giving value to musical ideas that were sometimes extreme, pairing them with the seductive power of image and firmly anchoring them to social and political issues, subverting the status quo" [Coduto, 2005]. A mission that, as we shall see, could not have been launched in a more disconcerting, and therefore more effective, way.

Forced to wage war on the code of silence

How much of a stir could a debut album cause in the early 1970s? In a political climate running red-hot, amid overflowing musical creativity, there was still plenty of room to shock and to cause real scandal: and Arbeit Macht Frei did just that. Starting, quite evidently, with its tragically familiar title: the grotesque sign that loomed over the entrance to the Nazi concentration camps brings back, in a single stroke, all the horror of the Second World War. With this outright slap in the face, Area introduced themselves to the world, pointing an ideological gun at the listener's temple: the very same paper gun included with every copy of the record and depicted on the gatefold, alongside other eloquent, provocative symbols (a photo of a concentration camp, the stylized drawing of an angel, the hammer and sickle, the keffiyeh worn by Capiozzo, a globe, and a row of padlocked statuettes on the front cover). A melting pot of iconographic elements recalling the most burning issues of their time, inseparable from the album's actual content: a sound with anything but rigid contours, genuinely multicultural, and one that, for once, it is no exaggeration to call inimitable; the blend of jazz, rock, progressive and experimental elements makes it an elusive, volcanic debut, a harbinger of entirely new ideas that would later be developed and refined over the course of an entire career.

Arbeit Macht Frei was released in September 1973, exactly one year after the news events involving the Palestinian cell "Black September", both victim and perpetrator in the clashes with the Israeli people. A still-open wound that gives its title to the album's opening track, with an incipit that has become legendary for three distinct reasons: the first minute is taken up by a poem recited in Arabic by the passionate Rafia Rashed, followed by the first two harrowing lines (Giocare col mondo facendolo a pezzi/ Bambini che il sole ha ridotto già vecchi); and finally the full-volume blast of Tofani's guitar run through a synthesizer, kicking off a frenzied dance of fervent ideological protest and musical multi-ethnicity. A progression of odd-time rhythms building in speed — somewhere at the crossroads of King Crimson, Weather Report and Balkan folk music — that pave the way for the first horn solos: on this debut, in fact, Busnello's spirited saxophone enjoys a prominence it would never again have in the project's later mutations.

The title track is another clear manifesto of dissent against the social conditions of the time: the Nazi analogy, updated to the Seventies, denounces the exploitation of workers within the capitalist machine; a sinuous bass line, drums played on the cymbals' edge and various sound samples lay the groundwork for a session in the style of "Third", whose slow build leads us toward a groove with an ever more frantic cadence, unmatched in Italian music of the time. Tetra economia/ Quotidiana umiltà/ Ti spingono sempre/ Verso "arbeit macht frei": after these lines the rhythm turns so frenzied it almost draws attention away from Fariselli's schizoid solo, which already reveals a staggering technical mastery.

Stratos's vocal style is still tied to his R&B roots but is already distinguishable in its high notes and distinctive "yodel" — reminiscent of Pharoah Sanders' spiritual litanies — early signs of the exclusive diplophonic technique he would later achieve. It's his charismatic voice that, without issuing blunt verdicts, outlines the following hymn to "awareness", that is, to the critical capacity that comes from knowing the facts that surround us (Imprigionato tra mediocrità/ Lascia partire il tuo ascensore/ Lascialo andare e prendi il potere).

New influences surface in "Le labbra del tempo", the most Zappa-esque arrangement of the bunch, and in the sole instrumental, "240 chilometri da Smirne", built around Victor Busnello's sax — whose long career in jazz was a decisive factor in forging Area's original sound — and Patrick Djivas's smooth bass, indebted to Jaco Pastorius. Just when the element of surprise seems to have worn off, along comes the most atypical conclusion imaginable: another brief jam introduces the experimental character of "L'abbattimento dello Zeppelin", a parallel dimension traced with threads of musique concrète, into which Stratos's narration inserts itself with broken phrases and onomatopoeic sounds already distantly recalling Artaud's "theatre of cruelty". Stratos himself would later reveal that the song's "pompous windbag" was meant to ideally embody all the record executives responsible for pushing repetitive music that never changed (an accusation that, in the title, also takes aim at the superstars Led Zeppelin, who thus serve as rock's scapegoat).

The sounds drift away in a swift fade out, signalling a discourse left suspended, ready to take on new forms before long. Although the lyrics may sound somewhat uninspired to us today, their message still burns, and the innovative drive of the music carrying them shows no sign whatsoever of aging. The sonic synthesis achieved by blending the individual ideas and experiences of its members has, quite simply, no precedent anywhere in Italian music. Arbeit Macht Frei, in short, has all the hallmarks of a true classic and manages to embody the very definition of fusion: its "impure" free jazz lineage makes it wide-ranging, appealing to any sufficiently curious listener.

Corroding the cables of freedom

Area aren't yet ready for crowd baths, nor are they publicly questioned about their political stances, so the message of their debut is initially misunderstood and nearly sparks trouble at a Joan Baez concert organized by the Milanese left in 1974 at the Milan velodrome. On this occasion Area preview material that would appear on their second album, Caution Radiation Area, released about six months after its predecessor. Meanwhile, for different reasons, Victor Busnello and Patrick Djivas part ways with the group (the latter joining Premiata Forneria Marconi): following a series of auditions, Area bring in only bassist Ares Tavolazzi, whose far more advanced and daring technique proves perfectly in tune with the group's ideas, thus decisively contributing to the unpredictable turns their path would later take.

Largely devoid of lyrics, Caution Radiation Area immediately stands out as an uncompromising, experimental record, no longer built on well-defined structures – however intricate – but on entire sessions of improvisation. A clearly more "intellectual" choice, inspired by early electronic music and the free jazz of Ornette Coleman and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. With Tavolazzi's arrival and the loss of the sax's warm tone (compensated for by Fariselli's bass clarinet and Tavolazzi's trombone), Area's sonic attitude turns harsh and menacing, considerably less accessible even to the audience that had already come to know them. The whole "concept" seems pervaded by the tension of an atomic threat, capable of triggering a collective sense of madness that is well mirrored in the free form that defines the album. The exception is the famous opening track, "Cometa Rossa": the only one still tied to the sound of the debut, introduced by a spiraling interplay of keyboards and guitar, over which Capiozzo's drums can finally launch into a frantic odd-time rhythm; in the calm midsection, amid guitar arpeggios, Stratos recites a brief poetic text in Greek, yet another hymn to independence from other people's thinking ("Cometa chiudi la bocca e vattene via/ Lascia che sia io a trovare la libertà").

From here on, the already faint song-form disappears entirely, giving way to medium-to-long tracks in free style. In "ZYG (Crescita zero)" we can at most identify three sections: an abstract, unsettling incipit, marked by concrete sounds derived from factory machinery over which Stratos's modified, depersonalized voice delivers a chilling statement like an epigraph (L’estetica del lavoro è lo spettacolo della merce umana); the other two sections, instead, start out from melodic phrases only to abandon them shortly after – the first, more free form, built around Tofani's nervy guitar, the second around Fariselli's piano. A scorching, exuberant track, one whose theme would surely have won the approval of militant composer Luigi Nono, and which partly anticipates the extreme avant-gardism of the three remaining episodes, even more uncompromising still.

The suspended atmosphere of the first two minutes of "Brujo" ("sorcerer" in Spanish) opens onto a nightmare of post-nuclear desolation, punctuated by a more agitated entrance of keyboards and drums in impro-jazz mode (Fariselli's electric piano is a direct descendant of Chick Corea on Davis's "Bitches Brew"), two parallel monologues underpinned by Tavolazzi's double bass, showing off his acoustic skills for the first time. Finally it's the shaman Stratos's turn, who, as on "L’abbattimento dello Zeppelin", strings together disjointed phrases halfway between singing and theatrical recitation: his voice increasingly establishes itself as an "instrument" on a par with the others, never asserting itself as a vocalist/frontman. The finale ends on a questioning note, and not even the lengthy "MIRage? Mirage!" will provide any answers: Stratos's diplophonic voice resounds through the acoustic space alongside shrill low-register horn notes in the distance, the double bass is deep and mournful; then, as if on some imagined Stockhausen tape, the scene fills with tribal demons and the spirits of departed jazzmen, amid layers of tragic choirs over which Nono's shadow still looms. A sort of alternative soundtrack for Antonioni's "Red Desert", where Fariselli's alien synths, heard today, seem to anticipate by many years some of the most acclaimed exploits of our contemporaries Supersilent. Texts of various origins and guttural throat sounds intertwine, followed by fresh flashes of total delirium reaffirming the supremacy of free form.

We thus arrive at the infamous closing track, anything but conciliatory: the acoustic nightmare "Lobotomia" takes its cue from an unsettling piece of international news concerning Ulrike Meinhof, the German dissident and terrorist threatened with surgical death by the federal government – in 1976, following her alleged suicide in prison, no autopsy would be authorized. This was the suggestion Gianni Sassi gave to Area: "You need to write a piece that causes the listener physical pain." It would be the expert Paolo Tofani, a devotee of electronic experimentation, who brought this deafening sonic manipulation to life: a vacuum, crossed by brief keyboard melodies lifted from TV ads and jingles, through which we can imagine the deafening silence occupying the space of a missing section of brain, as well as a prophetic trash tv trance thirty years ahead of Fausto Romitelli. The track's extremely high frequencies repeatedly shocked Area's audiences, stunned by their daring performance, complete with flashlights pointed at the faces of those present.

It's fairly obvious that the release of a second work like Caution Radiation Area amounts to a move in the exact opposite direction to market logic: an undeniable step forward in their artistic research, but one that would lead part of the audience to brand them as "too difficult," if not outright snobbish. Nothing could be further from the truth – especially looking back at their career in hindsight – and Fariselli himself attests to this: "We were not born as provocateurs, but as musicians who wanted to pursue our uncompromising path, following our own inspiration as artists […] The provocateur is someone who seeks confrontation, destruction. We wanted to build and awaken, to lay different foundations for making and listening to music" [Trambusti, 2009]. An attitude also borne out by his long-standing collaboration with Sassi, who firmly believed in a cultural logic in which a creative product holds far greater value than sales figures or fame (that same year he launched the innovative Nova Musicha series on Cramps). Consistently, this is confirmed by Mamone's departure from the project: despite having been the first to support the band in its early moves, he found his managerial logic clashing with Area's relentless determination to create and experiment free of commercial constraints.

Toward the end of that same year, Area released the single featuring their reworked version of "L’Internazionale," a clear act of nonconformity whose inspiration came from the American anthem "violated" by Jimi Hendrix's guitar; a double-edged auto da fe’, which at once declared their allegiance while also expressing a desire to "make movement" in their own way and on their own terms. Their "Internazionale" drew criticism from hardline leftists but, inevitably, also became a live staple of their performances. As Fariselli recalls: "If we had to twist the knife, we did it, but as people free to answer only to our own talent and our own condition as artists." Thus, through both words and concrete actions, Area always found the most unpredictable way to insert themselves into the political discourse of the Seventies. From this point on, their bond with the Milanese Movement grew considerably stronger, seeing them take part, without fail, in all its major future initiatives.

A battle fought with the sound of fingers

By 1975 a calmer, more peaceful international climate was beginning to take hold: Greece, Portugal and Vietnam had freed themselves from the yokes of dictatorship and war, and this was reflected in the popular mood of our own country as well. Immersed in this historical moment, Area too drew benefit from these new political hopes, giving voice to emotions far removed from the harshness of their beginnings. Thus Crac!, starting right from its onomatopoeic title, marks yet another break from the patterns and expectations that had built up around the band.

Just when the band seemed set on a path of pure avant-garde, their increasingly varied discography produced a perfect compromise between catchiness, eclecticism and political commitment: a compendium capturing the group's full maturity, featuring several tracks that have since become iconic, true alternative anthems of youth activism.

A breath of fresh air compared to the suffocating, dehumanized scenarios of its predecessor, Crac! is also the album with the most explicit political commitment and messaging: sometimes directly in the lyrics, other times in the ideas behind the titles of instrumental tracks like "Megalopoli," referring to the controversial construction of the city of Brasilia, the new capital replacing Rio de Janeiro; the gatefold also features the words of Buenaventura Durruti, a prominent figure of the Spanish Civil War.

So, fewer explicit statements and more action, with the instrumental element taking precedence, its melodies often imitated by Stratos in real time. The immediately recognizable, easily absorbed themes of this third studio album make it comparable, in its own modest way, to a classic Return to Forever-style fusion record, as well as, in certain passages, recalling the instrumental masterpieces of Zappa's 69-72 period.

The opening plunges in medias res, and the addressee of "L’elefante bianco" is the Kid, a member of the youth Movement fighting for power, fist raised to the sky (Vai avanti, non ci pensare/ La storia viaggia insieme a te). The main theme is, if anything, even more dizzying than usual, an urgent call not to stand still, to educate oneself (Imparare a leggere le cose intorno a te/ Finché non se ne scoprirà la realtà) before diving headfirst into protest and raising one's voice.

What follows is one of the group's most original and playful creations: the quirky narrative of "La mela di Odessa" is inspired by the tale of the Dadaist Apple, who in 1920 hijacked a German ship and steered it to the Ukrainian port, where, amid the celebrations for the Russian revolution, it was blown up. A sort of metaphorical fairy tale – though not even that thinly veiled ("the world turns left-handed," "the reddest suit") – which structurally forms a dreamlike counterpart to "Arbeit Macht Frei": a brief initial improvisation (with honorable mention for Tavolazzi's intense double bass) followed by an irresistible groove that accompanies the apple's madcap sea voyage astride a leaf. A story that asserts the merits of a "well-rounded" imagination over flat conservatism, which the horns seem to mock by aping certain pompous orchestral flourishes typical of Italian pop music (Battisti?) and ironically commenting on certain lines of the lyrics (the country "full of happy people" is undercut by a funeral march). An overflowing divertissement that the Dadaists would surely have approved of.

Between one instrumental piece and another – some more conventional than others – comes the track destined to become an imperishable anthem to freedom of thought: "Gioia e rivoluzione" celebrates imagination in power, the kind that turns a machine gun into an upright bass exploding with thoughts instead of bullets; the simple guitar riff that accompanies it isn't so much a pop concession to a wider audience, but rather yet another face – the most passionate, or even "sentimental" – of a musical reality that knows no boundaries and isn't ashamed to set aside its technical prowess for a moment, belting out its own intellectual independence at the top of its lungs (Canto per te che mi vieni a sentire/ Suono per te che non mi vuoi capire/ Rido per te che non sai sognare).

A freedom that also comes through explicitly (if only halfway) in the album's closing track: "Area 5" is a short composition by avant-garde artists Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti, a sonic happening of unchecked madness, performed briskly and with total emotional detachment; another experience born of Cage's thinking on the simultaneity of autonomous musical processes. But where "Lobotomia" crowned an already intensely dramatic album, its counterpart here feels somewhat like a "forced" and entirely off-the-cuff experiment.

This new change of direction wins over both audiences and critics alike, and in 1975 Area are awarded the prize for Italian progressive music

(A)reactionaries and Internationals

As a testament to the many concerts held in the summer of 1975, Cramps puts together a collage of recordings that stands as the only "non-posthumous" live release by Area – though more archival releases would follow later on. According to the back cover, Are(A)zione is "recorded live in Milan (Parco Lambro), Naples (Festa dell'Unità), Rimini (Festa della Gioventù), Reggio Emilia (Teatro Comunale) and at a hundred other encounters with the public": performances that often coincided with political rallies and party festivals, captured with the most basic equipment – a simple two-track Revox recorder.

But even a release of this kind is neither accidental nor a mere stopgap, and indeed Are(A)zione carries the same weight as a studio album, since it reveals Area's identity in its most direct and well-loved form – one that many consider less "cerebral" – shining a light on a fundamental aspect of their history: their constant dialogue with the audience, developing themes and thematic variations on the spot, without filters.

The full power of their impact on an ever-larger and more engaged crowd comes through clearly, despite the poor audio quality (though we'll encounter far worse further on!) and the fake audience cheers, dubbed in during post-production.

The tracklist assembled here is undoubtedly strategic, featuring some of the most requested songs, one from each album released up to that point. The title track, on the other hand, is a jam, representative of the moments of pure improvisation that found room in every concert, sometimes for a full quarter of an hour, in the style of a classic jazz band where each musician gets a few minutes for a solo. What only partly comes across in the live recording are the gestures that accompanied the various songs, designed to grab the audience's attention and leave a lasting impression: eating an apple, shining torches into the eyes of bystanders, and finally raising a clenched fist as the crowning gesture of their reworked Internationale.

Though not outstanding in several respects, Are(A)zione is an important document of the band's most brilliant period, artistically at the peak of a trajectory that, before long, would inevitably slide into a downturn.

Two years later, in 1976, Area toured abroad for the first time, specifically in France (Fête de l'Humanité) and Portugal (Festa do Avante), experiences that would later be collected in the live album Parigi – Lisbona, released only in 1996. Once again, the dismal audio quality is the price to pay for discovering their unprecedented exchange with a foreign audience, which reacts with considerable enthusiasm to Stratos biting into the "pomme d'Odessa", while the all-out sonic assault of "Lobotomia" is met with shouts and whistles before the crowd is won over, or perhaps overwhelmed.

Portugal, finally free from the Salazar dictatorship, is the foreign country where our heroes are welcomed with the greatest fanfare, as these very recordings attest: in Lisbon they are introduced with full honors by a presenter who pronounces the band members' names with surprising accuracy; in the same way, the inspiration and deeper meaning behind each song performed here are explained in detail. On returning from Portugal, the band – not at full strength, as we'll see – set to work on their fourth studio album.

From chance to chaos

During their period of most intense live activity, Area never stopped experimenting with new approaches to push beyond their own limits, drawing the audience fully into the creative and experiential process of the live dimension. During the tours of 1974 and 1975, alongside the deafening crowd-pleaser "Lobotomia", a new happening-track was born, titled "Caos": Paolo Tofani's idea was to connect two long wires to two respective synthesizer oscillators, so that the audience's own body heat would alter the intensity and frequency of the programmed sounds. This gave shape to the idea of a collective music created through physical contact between audience members, as well as marking Area's first step toward chance, toward randomness as a foundational element of musical material.

But in the colder months, when there was no chance of organizing big outdoor events, Area's activity hit a standstill that kept them from earning a steady, sufficient income to support the musicians. For two of them, the decision became unavoidable: Giulio Capiozzo and Ares Tavolazzi temporarily left the band to pursue more lucrative projects, albeit ones ill-suited to their experimental nature; the others, on the other hand, seized the opportunity to raise the stakes even further with a night that would go down in history.

In August 1976, the University of Milan's main building was occupied by students: invited to take part in the protest, Area showed up with an unprecedented lineup featuring American saxophonist Steve Lacy and English percussionist Paul Lytton, standing in for the vacant rhythm section. This gave rise to "Caos (Parte II)", whose recording – of very poor quality, as usual – would end up on the live album Event '76, released three years later by Cramps.

The lengthy improvisation, inspired by the performances of John Cage and the Fluxus movement, perfectly mirrors the aleatory, unrepeatable nature of his musical thinking: a set number of tickets, also photographed on the album cover, bore five different “behavior” instructions (silence, hypnosis, violence, irony, sex) to be alternated every 90 seconds, timed on this occasion by Patrizio Fariselli's brother; staying true to the concept of indeterminacy, each musician had to act in complete autonomy, avoiding listening to what the others were doing and refraining from any dialogue between parts. The result is a collective soliloquy, somewhere between AMM and a Braxton-esque ensemble – and perhaps, with that specific lineup, Area would have had nothing to envy in either.

Confounding all audience expectations, who found themselves somewhat bewildered in front of “another” Area (in every sense), our heroes seem perfectly at ease in a dimension that is, at last, entirely free from preset schemes and ideologies. So we find Fariselli wrestling with a prepared piano – something of a dress rehearsal for his first solo album, “Antropofagia” (1977) – while Tofani launches into dissonant digressions aided by the synthesizer; the free-form sax solos, oscillating between raw melody and noise, are perhaps the ones best received by the audience, which indeed includes several jazz critics; and then there's Stratos, more histrionic than ever, obsessively emitting onomatopoeic, grotesque sounds in the throes of a Dada-esque onanistic delirium. As the minutes pass, perhaps for lack of inspiration, the beginnings of an interplay emerge, with the musicians unable to resist chasing one another (Stratos imitates Lacy's lines vocally, as the latter switches to clarinet), and the closing title track has the flavor of a slightly more conventional improvisation; for the rest, the semi-aleatory experiment was, at least conceptually, a success.

From winning unity to the most complete disunity among its elements: it's the polar opposite of the Area we'd always known, and many were left disappointed by such an exploit; the musicians themselves, however, claim to have been amused and satisfied by the mixed reactions, by the boos but also by the audience's contributions, from the jingling of bunches of keys to the rhythmic opening-and-closing of umbrellas, collective gestures that arose almost by chance. For the first time, the whole group's stated intention is to “abolish the differences between music and life,” a motto Stratos loved to repeat to define the Area experience but which almost certainly is a legacy of Cage's thinking, who had used the very same words in his seminal 1961 critical text “Silence.” Their mentor Gianni Sassi, a Communist by background but with an anti-dogmatic approach, had already embraced the philosophy of the Fluxus movement and had been active in Milan's cultural circles with neo-Dadaist shows, exhibitions and lectures. It would be he and Stratos who brought Cage to Milan in 1977, raising expectations that instead led to a disastrous evening, with a huge crowd booing the American guru after just a few minutes and interrupting his performance of “Empty Words” – which he nonetheless completed, lasting a total of two and a half hours; confused and bewitched, the audience never left the hall regardless, just as had happened at the Area concert at the Statale.

It's in this atmosphere of inventive flair, but also uncertainty over the group's fate, that Cramps released the first solo albums by Stratos (“Metrodora,” 1976), Tofani (credited as Electric Frankenstein, 1977) and Fariselli on the new DIVerso imprint, through which Sassi would introduce Italian audiences to other rising stars of the contemporary scene such as Derek Bailey, Jesús Villa-Rojo, Christina Kubisch and Fabrizio Plessi.

Ladies and gentlemen, abbiamo perso il XV secolo!

Despite the misunderstandings and the prolonged absence of two members, ideas were not in short supply within Area's core, and material soon took shape for an elaborate and daring “fanta-sociopolitical” concept. Alongside the longtime members came Walter Calloni on drums and Hugh Bullen on electric bass, together with the already-recruited Paul Lytton and Steve Lacy, plus additional special guests such as brothers Anton and José Arze (txalaparta, a percussion instrument from the Basque tradition), Eugenio Colombo (kazumba) and the string quartet of Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, nephew of the great piano maestro; with such a wealth of talent deployed, the valuable contributions of Capiozzo and Tavolazzi are limited to just a few tracks.

The founding idea and narrative arc of Damned (Maudits) are laid out clearly in the liner notes: “A liquid plasma is the consciousness of the world, held in a bank's computer. A malfunction causes the progressive dispersion of the liquid: total loss of human consciousness.” In the theatrical incipit of “Evaporazione,” Stratos announces, in various forms, the loss of historical memory, paving the way for the instrumental “Diforisma urbano,” from which three possible future scenarios then emerge: a world that remains anchored to its roots, to the awareness and knowledge of the past (“Gerontocrazia”); the rise to power of women, whose vindication after centuries of subjugation would bring new energy to the present (“Scum”); and finally, a “revolution from below” that draws its vital force from the freedom and imagination of children, rewriting history from scratch (“Giro, giro, tondo”).

Clearly, the lyrics once again take on a central role in driving the narrative. In “Gerontocrazia” there's an effective contrast between a reassuring Greek lullaby and the aggressive roughness of the double bass riff, a symbol of old age protesting to safeguard the echo of history by suppressing the new that advances (Se tu guardi nel passato/ troverai tutto quanto stabilito/ e si chiama verità/ Senza storia né memoria/ lascia che io scriva i passi tuoi).

In the jagged “Scum,” by contrast, we hear the caustic words of Valerie Solanas and her 1967 manifesto (“Society for Cutting Up Men”): a pamphlet bordering on neo-fascism that rails against male hegemony and its capitalist machinations, calling for a radical awakening and seizure of power by women. Here the dominant element is unquestionably Fariselli's classical piano, launched into dizzying runs of clusters and atonal scales, alongside Stratos's over-the-top reading, once again possessed by the ghost of Artaud.

By way of interlude, “Il Massacro di Brandeburgo Numero Tre in Sol maggiore” is the pretext for making J. S. Bach pay for the sins of conservative music: a reworking that progressively erases the main elements of the counterpoint, thereby dismantling the structure of the classical piece and performing its string-quartet arrangement in a crude, almost noise-like manner.

There's something synesthetic about the melody of “Giro, giro, tondo,” a nursery rhyme that mimics an actual dance in which rhythm perhaps matters more than the meaning of the words. A grimace in the name of freedom, which finds its true manifesto in the subsequent studio version of “Caos”: a collage that is, if anything, even more radical and uncompromising than the Milan concert, a “musical disorder” that listeners can only take in as a single, uninterrupted flow of suggestions; a track that today can provoke smiles as much as unease, astonishment, or indignation, but never indifference.

The same can be said of the whole concept, a triple dystopian vision that deliberately ends without definitive answers: it's the reflection of a growing uncertainty about the fate of society, which would soon lead to a crisis both within the youth Movement and among those who had become its leading representatives on the music scene. If nothing else, Damned is perhaps Area's most ambitious album, the last truly significant milestone in their increasingly troubled artistic journey. The record received good critical response, bolstered also by the attention it garnered among international audiences, and in 1977 a comic book inspired by it, “Viaggio per immagini nel diforisma urbano,” was also published.

In 2004 the Akarma label released the double album Live In Torino 1977, an amateur recording made in support of the release of Damned, whose key tracks are all present in the setlist; but the audience's comments end up overwhelming the recording, in which the band is already barely audible. Among the archival releases that have surfaced over the years, this is certainly the poorest in audio quality and hardly exceptional in terms of performance.

Twilight of the gods

In 1977 the return of the original lineup's scattered members was the occasion to take stock of five years' work. Unlike the posthumous “Gioia e rivoluzione” (1996), the compilation Anto/Logicamente is a curious, provocative retrospective: the record also includes a goose game made up of words, images and characters from the Area universe and their output up to that point. The tracklist would seem to be yet another veiled jab at “you who don't want to understand me,” featuring seven tracks from the recent past among the most innovative and representative of the various mutations that had occurred over the years. From “L'Abbattimento Dello Zeppelin” and “Arbeit Macht Frei” we move to the raw gem “ZYG (Crescita Zero)” and the rare “Citazione Da George L. Jackson,” a b-side originally included on the “L'Internazionale” 45rpm single; followed by two instrumentals from Crac! (“Nervi Scoperti,” “Area 5”) and, representing Damned, only – though highly worthy – “Gerontocrazia.”

This proud reaffirmation of the Area myth is bolstered by a series of "canonical" shows with the full band, including the two-night stand in Milan at the end of April, a recording of which Cramps would later salvage in 1996, releasing the double CD Concerto Teatro Uomo. After the shock of the performance at the Statale, our heroes thus find a way to "make peace" with their fans, whose voices are clearly audible on this fortuitous release, itself of less-than-amateur audio quality and riddled with inaccuracies regarding the setlist and the musicians on stage (the back cover even credits Lytton and Lacy). Once you get past the hiss and the worn-out audio, what emerges is a highly charged, musically impeccable performance in which Area, perhaps aware they were nearing the end of the road, throw themselves heart and soul into their most thrilling and uncomfortable classics – between "Cometa Rossa" and "La mela di Odessa", there's no escaping the audiovisual torture of "Lobotomia", complete with live shouts and complaints over the torches pointed at the audience. There's room to recount the origins of individual songs and to showcase each musician's phenomenal solos, but as ever what's truly astonishing is the perfect timing with which each element interacts with the others, still giving us today a clear sense of the stature and concentration of talent that converged in the Area experience. A rare artistic brilliance that, sadly, also marks their swan song.

At the end of 1977, in fact, another departure splits up the lineup: that of Paolo Tofani, who admits he no longer feels aligned with the overly "politicized" image of Area, darlings of a Movement that is once again shifting and heading toward decline; moreover, the guitarist is already decidedly drawn toward a musical and individual pursuit of asceticism, something he'd had to set aside up to that point. The dwindling number of concerts, too, makes the split from Cramps almost inevitable, since its sales could no longer guarantee the musicians' livelihood. Their internationalist ambitions now demand a stronger, more commercially reliable record outlet: so the band signs with Cgd and its new label Ascolto, a deal that lets them lean on a major while safeguarding full artistic freedom, free of market-driven restrictions. It would have been the ideal setting for Area, who—due to the reduced lineup and a shift in the songwriting process—release an album quite unlike anything before it, perhaps their most enigmatic yet, in its own way, also their most accessible: 1978. The gods are leaving, the angry ones remain!

A rather significant anniversary – the tenth anniversary of '68 – gives Stratos and company the spark for a new concept, drawing on the intellectual input of Gianni Emilio Simonetti, another veteran of the Cramps workshop: it is his interest, among other things, in the theme of psychiatry that finds expression in the famous "Hommage à Violette Nozières" and in the spoken-word piece "Acrostico in memoria di Laio".

With the absence of the substantial lyrical contribution once provided by Gianni Sassi, it now falls to Stratos to write all the lyrics, and he even puts his name alone to five tracks. A kind of vindication given his lesser visibility on past records and the obvious skills he's developed in vocal technique, which here finds its fullest outlet within the Area project.

What emerges, then, is a hidden side of the singer: that of a cultured, cunning lyricist, drawing inspiration from great French intellectuals of his time such as Breton and Lacan, as well as genuine innovators of theatrical practice like Antonin Artaud and Carmelo Bene; his ideas are complex but readily unpacked in the thorough liner notes, which spell out the meaning of the whole album: "We are no longer anyone's heirs, we have to start all over again!". Area seize the chance to view history in perspective, to take stock of and better understand the crisis of the youth Movement, which after the revolution finds itself having to face bitter disillusionment. From the note to "Guardati dal mese vicino all'aprile!": "1968: the tragic sunset of all impossible revolutions has dissolved the last embrace of the revolutionaries/lovers, an era is closed forever. So why, then, does everyone insist on claiming the opposite?".

On 1978 a certain tension emerges between the dense conceptualism of the booklet and the accessibility of the pop-jazz format adopted in the compositions. The album embraces very varied, in some ways new sonorities: paradoxically, Tofani's absence is offset precisely by pronounced Middle Eastern and Far Eastern influences – the chanting on "Return From Workuta" is also telling of the vocal abilities Stratos had achieved. The singer's eccentricity finds its fullest expression in "Acrostico in memoria di Laio", a theatrical dissertation on the theme of incest in relation to the family intrigues of Sigmund Freud.

Even if the choices made within individual tracks betray a touch of uncertainty – the doo-wop coda of "Vodka Cola", however ironic, remains wholly foreign to their earlier incarnations – there's no shortage of quirks that in some way still mark them as themselves, alongside an increasingly jazz-inflected style that perhaps makes this their album closest to the classic Weather Report sound. The result is a melting pot not devoid of original ideas but rather loosely organized, in which the Area of this period prove just as "aware" of their own abilities as they are, at times, disoriented in the unfolding of the tracks, which occasionally feel almost like sketches.

Despite everything, 1978 is well received by critics, but it soon becomes clear that Ascolto has no idea how to handle something like Area, so atypical compared to the usual pop productions. The move thus turns into a partial flop, compounded by the fact that the band couldn't convincingly reproduce the same songs live – in this respect, the lack of Tofani's contribution was far from a minor factor.

A brutal epilogue

The move to a major label and the "pop" turn thus fail to meet either side's expectations, and the attempt to break through abroad ends in failure. In a year already heavy with profound change, Area once again find themselves on the road, this time to Portugal and then to Cuba, for the eleventh World Festival of Youth and Students: the latter an almost "Beatles-esque" exotic journey, through which the band comes into contact with cultures and music they'd never encountered before; Stratos in particular will draw on this experience to further fuel his research into vocality. These developments, increasingly advanced and recognized worldwide, also lead the singer to leave the group – under circumstances that were, moreover, far from peaceful – and go on alone with the support of Cramps, the only guarantee of full artistic independence (and yet another source of friction with the rest of the band).

In this final period of his life, Stratos grows even closer to the person and the fervent ideas of John Cage, taking part in performances and happenings by the American master. At the peak of his artistic maturity, the singer releases his second solo album "Cantare la voce" (1978), in which his technique reaches unattainable heights in terms of frequency and the multiplication of vocal channels (diphonic and triphonic singing). Other projects, including the unsettling reading for the theatrical production "Le Milleuna" and several concerts abroad, are cut short in 1979 by a bolt from the blue: in New York he's rushed to hospital for aplastic anemia; just as a new evolution of the Area project seems to be taking shape, his former bandmates receive the grim news and immediately set about organizing a benefit concert for Stratos's family, to help cover the heavy medical costs. Before long, this act of solidarity turns into a moving memorial following the inevitable death of Demetrio Stratos, at just thirty-four years old.

Organized by Gianni Sassi, the concert at the Arena Civica in Milan draws a crowd of around sixty thousand, with the participation of numerous musicians from all over Italy: a gesture of deep affection, but also, sadly, an occasion for some to secure themselves a privileged spot on the big stage; and so Area and their audience experience firsthand the bitter end of a dream, the official epitaph for an unrepeatable historical moment and for its best-loved, most representative lineup.

Time marches on

Nothing can go back to the way it was, but contractual obligations leave the group's veterans with no choice but to complete the tour begun in 1979. The following album, Tic & Tac (Ascolto, 1980), would be a final attempt to break out of the impasse left by Stratos's death and find an alternative path for the three musicians.

Entirely instrumental, the record features Larry Nocella on sax and stands, for the first and only time, as a bona fide jazz album: with solos not unworthy of the graceful genius of Michel Petrucciani, Patrizio Fariselli's keyboards become the backbone of a classic quartet in which everyone gets to show off their skills, even without venturing into the bold experimentation of the Area of old. Besides bass and double bass, Tavolazzi occasionally steps in on guitar in place of Tofani.

The overall mood is rather lively, and the only concessions to nostalgia are those intrinsic to the chosen musical form: this might seem like an insensitive stance, jarring against the atmosphere following Stratos's death, but it would be equally unfair to fault the three musicians' desire to turn the page and make one last bet, including on record – unfortunately undermined by a sound with no depth whatsoever.

Predictably, the last hopes fade away and Tic & Tac finds no real follow-up: after it, the three remaining Area members move towards other experiences in the theatrical field, both as a group and individually, before retiring with dignity into a hiatus that had already been postponed for far too long, and which promises nothing for the future.

Towards the mid-1980s, Giulio Capiozzo, as co-founder of the original project, tries to give it a follow-up together with other musicians, who together take the name Area II and shortly release two jazz-fusion albums (the self-titled one in 1986 and "City Sound" the following year).

But it's only in 1993 that a partial reunion of the group takes place for the first time, due to a circumstance similar to that of the distant '79: the death of Gianni Sassi, a longtime friend and collaborator, brings Fariselli, Tavolazzi and Capiozzo back together for a concert in his memory. It's on that occasion that a new spark of creativity ignites, which takes shape in a work carried out between 1993 and 1996. Together with bassist Paolo Dalla Porta and a handful of occasional instrumentalists, Fariselli and Capiozzo shape a sort of instrumental concept album titled Chernobyl 7991. A truly difficult work to pin down, split between echoes of the last Area – the tracklist even includes a commemorative "Efstratios" – and dark experimentations of unprecedented boldness. Amid disorienting rhythmic shifts and renewed Balkan fascinations, Fariselli finds time to dust off the Cagean lesson (the prepared piano of "Liquiescenza", as well as the 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence preceding the chaotic finale of "Sedimentazioni"), while Capiozzo draws on every technique he has by now mastered, from pure drumming virtuosity to the expressiveness of ethnic percussion.

The new lineup's live activity continues until 1999, until the following year brings the sudden death of Giulio Capiozzo from a heart attack, while he is in Cesenatico together with Fariselli. The latter has no choice but to carry on with his own solo project, perfecting an artistic vision that by now knows no limits.

Old and new horizons

The end of the experience, partly due to the gradual breakup of the lineup and partly to historical circumstances, only confirms the inescapable nature of Area: that of representatives of a very specific hic et nunc, one that cannot be placed in other contexts nor reproduced in that same form, which finds an essential element in the synergy between its core members and which, once that synergy is spent, can no longer guarantee any stable balance.

And yet, from 2009 to the present day, the three remaining "Area" members have returned to Italian stages, with a reunion that renews the partnership with Paolo Tofani and welcomes young Christian Capiozzo, son of the band's longtime drummer. Fittingly named AREA Open Project, the new venture focuses more on the individual musicians' distinctive traits and their respective artistic paths, through which the sound of the original group is also reinvented and celebrated.

The double album Live 2012 sums up this new course well: the first disc is mostly devoted to the classics, revisited where possible in instrumental form – the exceptions being the spoken narrative of "La mela di Odessa" and the female vocal take on "Cometa rossa". Anthems that time hasn't worn down, but whose echo now reaches us far less harsh and provocative, entirely focused on the themes and structures that have always underpinned these landmark tracks.

The second disc, titled "Geometrie", is instead a mirror of what makes today's Area an "open group": unreleased suites, solo or in duet form, in which each member's world influences and experimental paths emerge in complete freedom. Above all, Tofani gets the chance to present to a wider audience the results of his studies on the instrument he himself devised, the Trikanta Veena ("three voices" corresponding to three necks): a kind of sitar guitar that the guitarist runs through the audio packages of a tablet, achieving sounds that range between Eastern tradition and contemporary electronics.

The keyboardist, meanwhile, presents the results of the Patrizio Fariselli Project, nurtured in the years following the death of Giulio Capiozzo, whose memory is honoured here, with passion and great skill, by his son Christian. The three "Encounter" pieces presented here move from mutant synths to a smooth cool jazz reminiscent of Bill Evans, with a double bass that's more passionate than ever – returning also in the placid finale of "Aten". Thus, in under forty minutes, Area once again show off their boldest spirit, from which a certain unease also resurfaces about the condition of modern man, whose psychological and moral integrity continues to be threatened from every side.

So, what remains of Area today? Perhaps the most fitting image is that of a clenched fist slowly loosening, opening up into a warm greeting between old friends, driven by the desire to reread their own history (and, by extension, that of post-'68 Italy) through a lens less politicised and more attuned to the universal language of music, a joyful and revolutionary energy that shows no sign of fading. There's a touch of nostalgia, certainly, but also and above all a rightful pride in having written an unforgettable chapter in the history of Italian music.

Area's story will always remain one of the most genuine cases of "rock in opposition" in Italian music and beyond. An avant-garde experience steeped in political militancy, defending universal values such as freedom of thought and expression rather than those specific to the proletarian Left. In the words of Gianpaolo Chiriacò, "their music was like a powerful source of light, one that did not arrogantly or haughtily point to the right path for revolution, but rather relentlessly urged the freeing of individualities, so as not to suffocate in orthodoxies and closed mindsets" [2005]. In short, a light that warms the mind.

Bibliography

Chiriacò, Gianpaolo, Area. Musica e rivoluzione, 2005, Nuovi Equilibri

Coduto, Domenico, Il libro degli Area, 2005, Auditorium Edizioni

Trambusti, Luca, Consapevolezza. Gli Area, Demetrio Stratos e gli anni Settanta, 2009, Arcana

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