The place of Area in the Itaprog movement is undoubtedly significant. The contributions of this famous group merit inclusion as classic progressive rock, but it must be recognized that Area were also major players in the ‘fusion’ and ‘world’ currents. In addition they were proficient at avant-garde jazz and could even eke out a ‘mean’ blues – plus their Greek vocalist Demetrio Stratos made seminal contributions to scientific analysis of the human voice as a musical instrument: Musicologists currently are still trying to come to grips with Stratos’ solo discs, formalized statements of his extraordinary abilities. And yet the idiom is all present on the Area albums that preceded. Aside from its virtuosity, the most striking feature of Stratos’ vocal style is the integration of Arabian influence. There is a canon of four Area studio records, of which the third, Crac! (1975), presents the least difficulty in terms of assimilation. It is the most positive of the canon with regard to its message, indeed a welcome respite from the mind-numbing seriousness of the preceding Caution, Radiation Area. The key to understanding this music is the realization that it is the best imaginable jazz-rock fusion. Juxtaposed with each other the separate sections mean something emotionally, not just aesthetically.
I am including a review of Diario di Viaggio della Festa Mobile (1973), because it is unclear to me that the classic status of this record – known well enough around the time of the inception of this project (so very long ago) – has remained in the collective memory. It is indeed one of the greats of 70s Itaprog. The band is usually referred to as Festa Mobile, but it may be that this designation is simply extracted from the album title, which translates as ‘Travel Journal of the Movable Feast’. Now, this is an interesting mixed metaphor, given that a movable feast is a religious celebration that ‘moves’ within the calendar from year to year, usually because it falls on a day of the week rather than a specific date. So one ultimately receives an impression of spatial movement emanating from temporal flexibility. I guess it’s really a case of being in the right place at the right time, at least long enough for making some pretty tolerable music.

Corte dei Miracoli is another very interesting one-shot eponymous album. It is late, coming out in 1976 on the short-lived progressive Grog label, and it represents a remarkable situation where through the posthumous release of tapes and acetates one can trace the development of a band over several years up to the production of a marvelous classic. They, or their members, put nothing out previously, but in 1972 a band called Il Giro Strano, which featured one of Corte’s two keyboardists, came close to completing an album, with a more rudimentary rock format than Corte but no lack of refinement or sensibility. From the next two years basement demos and live cassette tapes exist showing a band that is no longer ‘tight’ – where the instrumentalists may have lost their fleeting magic, yet where the overall idiom is magnificently experimental in general rock music terms. The end results of the development may be late in arriving, but for this very reason, perhaps, they attain the pinnacle.
Some have sought to cast doubt on the classic status of the eponymous one-shot album by Alphataurus that came out in 1973. This is a difficult record to come to grips with, although it is unclear why that should be so. It rewards repeated listening, which presumably is the overriding criterion of achievement. It is also a model to serve as an object study for those who wish to construct episodic rock music that maintains a pervasive atmosphere while exploring contrasting themes and sonorities. And for this very reason, it is especially unfortunate that the follow-up album was not released. In fact it was left incomplete, and the posthumous issue (Dietro L’uragano) has only the rhythm track with some basic keyboard parts, but no guitar or voice.
Delirium was no one-shot band. They produced three albums from 1971 to 1974, plus a series of internationally successful singles which are not found on the albums. Yet they remain misunderstood, probably because they never cultivated a progressive identity. The music is basically rock, and it clearly belongs to the progressive movement, for each album is constructed around a concept. Originally, in Dolce Acqua, there was a pronounced jazz sensibility. This would remain a factor, but their vocabulary would become even more comprehensive. By the time of the third, Viaggio negli Arcipelaghi del Tempo, concept albums were the preferred medium of progressive rock, and Delirium were essentially the resident experts. In this concept, a man endowed with the supernatural power to scan the centuries comes to observe that weapons may change but man’s barbarity always remains the same. Yet he asks the gods for a little more time to find a different solution and so attains human dignity: he becomes a man in the moment when he searches for himself even in this bitter reality. The music is actually quite charming, being partially orchestrated, and it runs the gamut from pop to rock to jazz to avantgarde.
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