AREA: International POPular Group

Area has to be one of my favorite discoveries from the Italian scene. I always find these guys a bit hard to describe because they are sort of all over the map musically, melding influences from Mediterranean to experimental, yet they have an instantly recognizable sound. And they somehow also manage to include in that combination two of my favorite genres-- progressive rock and free jazz-- and somehow make it work. They are not your typical Italian prog rock group.

At this point I've got six of their albums: Arbeit Macht Frei, Caution Radiation Area, Are(A)zione (live), Crac!, Maledetti, and Gli Dei Se Ne Vanno, Gli Arrabiati Restano! My personal favorites at the moment are the first one and the last one. My understanding from reading some other articles on the web about them is that that last one (Gli Dei Se Ne Vanno...) is not as highly regarded as the others, but in my opinion it is actually one of their best. Really catchy melodies on that one, but at the same time it also has some of their most avant-garde oriented material and some nice vocal acrobatics to boot. Demetrio Stratos was just a monster of a singer. Stratos also released a couple of solo vocal albums...I've heard one of them and it's pretty unreal. He died in 1979 (age 34!) from aplastic anemia. A true tragedy, and I wonder the same thing that I wonder about Jimi Hendrix or John Coltrane...how much farther would he have gone with the music if he had lived longer? It's hard to imagine.

I don't think any description I give here will really give a sense of the Area sound. So as John Coltrane said "Let the music speak for itself"...



As Stratos seems to be such an integral part of the Area sound, I have not yet had the guts to check out Tic & Tac (1980) or Chernobyl 7991 (1997), which obviously do not include him. But I'd appreciate any comments from anyone who has heard either of these. I'm definitely curious. In fact, if anyone has recommendations or info on any of the material with Stratos that I've missed...any of the live recordings, or Rock Exhibition...and I think there are maybe a couple of others?...I would love to hear from you.