Italian Experimental Progressive
Il Grande Gioco
"Il grande gioco", the only LP released by the Rome-based band Albero Motore in 1974, already issued by AMS Records on CD papersleeve format, is now also reissued on vinyl with a cover that faithfully reproduces the original one, including the inner LP envelope with photos, credits and lyrics. The group's brief career lasted about three years, from 1972 to the breakup that occurred shortly after the release of the 7-inch "Messico Lontano / Mandrake". "Il grande gioco" was published in the same y…
Fetus
"Fetus is an album beyond all definition. It's a masterpiece of daring and wild risks that work every single time. Battiato takes us through eight uniquely super-detailed songs that tug at the heart strings as no other experimental record ever could." Jim O' Rourke. Franco Battiato is often heralded as Italy's answer to Brian Eno. A quizzical composer/lyricist, Battiato turned pop music upside down in the early '70s with three classic LPs – Fetus, Pollution and Sulle Corde Di Aries – that for…
Suspiria - 40th anniversary box
** 300 copies only, sold out at source ** Goblin, Dario Argento, Suspiria. Never as in this case any possible noun or adjective is superfluous, in an effort to describe with words what can be simply addressed to, in the end, with just a single essential term: Masterpiece. Even more than with the previous "Profondo Rosso" (1975), it is with "Suspiria" (1977) that the legendary bound between the Argento and Goblin reached its peak, to a level that has never been reached before to date.Four d…
Mauro Pagani
Lp reissue: we're talking about his eponymous debut LP, originally released in 1978 by Ascolto record label: a magnificent and surprising album, where Mauro Pagani could finally show his love for popular/ethnic music, something difficult to put into PFM's compositions. Almost every of his former bandmates, anyway, plays in this record, together with other great guests such as Area - first of all, their incredibl singer Demetrio Stratos - and the female vocalist Teresa De Sio. This album s…
1978 Gli Dei Se Ne Vanno, Gli Arrabbiati Restano
1978 Gli dei se ne vanno, gli arrabbiati restano! ("The gods depart, the angry remain!") is the sixth album of the Jazz fusion band Area and was released in 1978, as the title says. It is the first album without guitarist Paolo Tofani, and it is also the first album whose lyrics were not written by Gianni Sassi. Also, noticeably it is the only album in which Demetrio Stratos is credited as a composer.Area has stripped their sound a bit. Not drastically, but the experimental, avant-garde and fusi…
Frammenti da Antico Adagio
Antico Adagio was originally intended to be a double album, but was eventually scaled back to a single disc, and this is the unreleased album from the 1978 session. Before an aberrant idea of progress and workaholic ethic ludicrously sped up our daily lives, even in the hectic city of Milan it was possible to “play slowly” – with no pressure, simply following the path your art was showing you. After a classic artistic journey and an experimental stint with Aktuala and other brilliant fel…
Vision's Fugitives
Franco Falsini's Sensations' Fix are one of the most mysterious and enthralling entities to come out of the rich italian 70's prog rock scene. Unless many of their contemporaries such as PFM, Le Orme or Osanna, which leaned heavily on the British sound of prog giants Emerson Lake & Palmer, Genesis or Soft Machine, Sensations'Fix music was always more akin to the experimental tendencies of German krautrock bands like Neu!, Can, Amon Duul II or the more adventurous directions those musicians took …
Quinta Dimensione
Superb and obscure Italian soundtrack featuring psychedelic mood music from the obscure RAI television program "... Con Un Colpo Di Bacchetta." centered around the 'Extra Sensory perception' phenomenon, released by an equally obscure group from Genoa, formed by students in 1978 and released this album and a single for the Eleven label (Franco Leprino) the same year. A trully bizzare effort of Avant Garde weirdness, Classical education, acoustic mysticism and deep experimentation, which breaks an…
Mirage
Truly obscure electronic/cosmic LP from the late 70's, Mirage is a rather unknown but now cult album released by Francesco Cabiati back in the 1979. It's a sci-fi cinematic electronic trip for long synthezised srings, melodic flavored sequences. It features some prog tinged arrengements but the general atmopshere tends to be relaxed if not goofy and kitschy (by moments). The self title track is an efficient spacey electronic improv but it could be perceived as a disappointed piece for fans of ce…
Prati Bagnati del Monte Analogo
Limited repress LP edition. Originally published in 1979 by the legendary Gianni Sassi's Cramps Records label, as part of a series curated by Franco Battiato, the long-awaited "Prati Bagnati del Monte Analogo" has finally made available by Die Schachtel in a repackaged deluxe edition (both LP and CD), fully remastered (by Giuseppe Ielasi) from the original Cramps tapes, and complete with 3 extra tracks (in the CD edition) dug from Francesco Messina's archives.
Produced by Franco Battiato…
Cincinnato (1974)
Incredible italian avant/free progressive album from the historic early Seventies finally rediscovered and dusted off the vaults !!! After a very long time, BTF distributes one of the rarest italian progressive albums of all time: Cincinnato, a masterwork recording originally released back in 1974 and never before reissued on LP! Featuring some great progressive and jazz-rock tracks and an incredible 20-minutes long suite. This is a superb release and the ultimate collector's item of the italian…
La Casa Del Lago
"La casa del lago" came out just a year after Saint Just's eponymous debut album; in 1973 the band were a very special trio, consisting of Jenny Sorrenti (voice), Antonio Verde (guitar) and Robert Fix (saxophone). They had a contract with Harvest (as well as Jenny's brother Alan Sorrenti, who debuted with "Aria" the previous year), and managed to stand out in the vast Italian pop scene of the early '70s.Unlike many other musical realities, they had a concrete support from the record label…
Live in Montreux
Founded in the Italy centre town of Ancona, Agorà curiously debuted with a live album instead of a studio one: they played an almost-instrumental typical jazz-rock, and they were invited to play at the famous Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland (a place that is most remembered for the fire that inspired Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water"). That's where "Live in Montreux" was recorded, a four-track LP, one of which has been cut in two parts on the two sides of the album.Music, as specified in t…
Voci
2008 re-release. Finally available in vinyl edition, the debut album of acclaimed keyboarder Luciano Basso, originally from 1976. This is a highly appreciated instrumental effort, being cited by The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music as one of the best-ever examples of classically-influenced progressive rock, comparing it to the work of such renowned bands as Focus, Clearlight and even Pink Floyd. Voci is one of the few (and probably the best) Italian records dealing with electronics, re…
Il Miele Dei Pianeti Le Isole Le Api
After a series of albums that were quite similar in their general style, one can sense something is afoot with this one. This would be a transitional album, however it would be the next one where Claudio Rocchi really started to throw a 'U-turn' at his fans, to use his own words. Here Rocchi, helped by members of the band Aktuala, would begin to pull the mystical, improvisational drone-folk back from the edges of space and reassert a more deliberate song structure here and there. We still have t…
Sonanze
Roberto Cacciapaglia had already gathered attention for his excellent work at the keyboards on Franco Battiato's legendary second LP Pollution before joining forces with krautrock mastermind Rolf Ulrich Kaiser for the release of his 1975 masterpiece Sonanze. Cacciapaglia self-produced the album in Milan for the Cosmic Couriers label, and it certainly brings echoes of some cosmiche kraut experiments like those of Popol Vuh, Klaus Schulze or Tangerine Dream, yet retaining a unique personality of i…
Cogli il giorno
First CD reissue for the ultra-rare second work of acclaimed keyboarder Luciano Basso. As usual a great instrumental work, mostly unknown, underrated and of course very rare in its original form. Musically it is the usual and great blend of classical-influenced progressive music and avant-garde, just as its stunning debut “Voci”. Among the guest musicians on this album, Leonardo Dosso from “Gruppo D’Alternativa”. Cogli il giorno (seize the day) is highly suggested for the lovers of adventurous I…
Per una scultura di Ceschia
For the first time on CD one of the rarest records coming out of Italy!! Nascita della Sfera was a group of session musicians assembled by a composer to record a single LP, in this case composer and keyboardist Carlo Barbiera dedicated a full album to the life and works of sculptor Luciano Ceschia (1926-1991), both coming from near Udine, Friuli Venezia Giulia, in the north-east of Italy. The rare album is a rather original example of experimental electro-acoustic progressive style, mainly based…
Materiali per tre esecutori e nastro magnetico
Hailed in the early seventies as the best Italian group of avant-garde jazz/rock along with Area and Perigeo, in the mid-seventies, with the release of their second album, Dedalus started a much more uncompromisingly experimental approach to music through the use and combination of disparate musical materials: improvisation, electronic music and musique concrète techniques, elements of contemporary classical composition, folk tunes, jazz, use of self-built and modified instruments for timbric re…
I Luoghi del Potere
Art Fleury's “I luoghi del Potere” is another gem that we excavated from the past, which makes us wonder once again on how intense and creative the Italian avant scene of the seventies was, and how much we have forgotten about it. This is timeless music that redefines the borders of our experience and perception, and urges us to reconsider the impact of an Idea, when it functions as the soul and the engine of an artistic work. ... while i can certainly hear nods towards Henry Cow (with whom they…