4TH

Italian D.F.A. plays fusion music of the best quality, but stays a little in debt when concerning originality or even producing tunes that really catch. However, fluent and clever arrangements with a little Canterbury sauce and excellent techniques make up a lot. One can compare them to Return to Forever in the mid 70s, however D.F.A. still misses the sheer geniality of RTF compositions and playing.

Two songs with the vocal ? philosophical "The Mirror" (drummer and the band's main composer De Grandis singing) and charming "La Ballata De S'isposa E Mannorri" (with Sardinian female vocal group Andhira) are real jewels. The long "Baltasarus" (over 14 min) and "Mosoq Runa" (almost 19 min) are the very fine examples of symphonic fusion. Pretty pieces on the flute by the keyboardist Bonomi and cello contributions by Zoltan Szabo make the music quite diverse and bearable. It is amazing how this long and intricate epics are arranged and played: they don't even start to bore after quite a few listens.

It is unfortunate, that D.F.A. is not a very productive band. Since their start in 1991 they have recorded only 4 albums. The previous one ? "Duty Free Area" was issued 10 years ago. They also don't play awfully lot on stage. I won't be surprised if all their shows could be counted on the fingers of two hands. I won't go speculating what are they doing while not playing music, but it could actually make funs of fusion music more happy if they shifted their life stile balance to making more music.