Area's sub-genre

Cesar Inca wrote: andrea wrote: In my opinion a sub-genre is most of all a way to organize information... Keeping together in the same “sub-genre” the bands that “grew up” in the Italian scene of the early seventies and their legacy in my opinion is useful, ISP needs to be re-defined not dismantled...     That's a total bone of contention between us. The reasons why I am against the existence of the ISP label are the same ones why I'm against the hypothetical existence of French SP or Spanish SP, regardless of the idiosincrasies of their style as different from the tytpical British SP. If a band isn't symphonic, then there's no point in putting into a scheme of Italian or Iternational or Interplanetary symphonic prog, or whatever. That goes, of course, for Area, but also for Picchio dal Pozzo, Il Baricentro, Opus Avantra, and even Pierrot Lunaire, whose transition from pastoral prog to avant-prog makes them more eclectic than simply folk-prog. Thank God they're not at ISP.  If a band is symphonic, then there's nothing else to do but put it in the right label regardless of its country origin.   A Spanish band like Crack is very close to Italian symph, yet it would be out of place to put it in an ISP label, wouldn't it? We can also make clear distinctions between a band from Bahrein that plays neo from another one that plays RIO or fusion, right? Or is there a special kind of neo created in the Near or Middle East?...   The Canterbury label is a particular case, since it was an accidentally conceived word used as a label, but again, we know what we mean with it. But creating and maintaining a label such as ISP is opening door to arbitrary things. If ISP has to exist, please, let it be the only extra unnecessary label that exists in PA. Now that art-rock has diversified into a couple of more explicit labels, then OK.        Kind regards.

Edited by andrea - October 16 2007 at 15:42

andrea wrote: In my opinion a sub-genre is most of all a way to organize information... Keeping together in the same “sub-genre” the bands that “grew up” in the Italian scene of the early seventies and their legacy in my opinion is useful, ISP needs to be re-defined not dismantled...

Edited by Cesar Inca - October 16 2007 at 09:44

  nice job you two....  I really  enjoyed reading that. 

Andrea was right Cesar, it was a mistake to move them without properly redefining the subgenre first, that has been corrected, and the matter of setting the parameters of that subgenre is  being worked on. 

I asked Andrea to join the team... I think you can see why We did had our reasons ....which Andrea noted,  for moving Area.  It wasn't handled the best way though.. which Andrea has told me in no uncertain terms   It would have saved a great deal of misunderstanding.

He's the brains.. I was just the muscle hahhahah


Edited by micky - October 15 2007 at 20:48

Point no. 1: Well, then let's write reviews that really go to the core of some needed explanations beside the aesthetical values.

 

Reviews have to be subjective and should express in some way the feelings of the reviewer about an album... According to the guidelines, the reviewer have to say if an album is essential in a prog collection or if it’s simply good or rather poor...  Of course, reviews can be informative but there’s a lot of misleading reviews on PA and information sometimes is inaccurate (depending on the reviewer)... At the moment you can’t really give to much credit to reviews for “objective information”... Furthermore, criticize ferociously reviews with inaccurate information could inhibit some people to express themselves and post new reviews...

 

Point no. 2: That's an example for a piece of information that might be included in a future review.

 

Of course, it could be... But I fear it’s not enough. You can’t simply say that Area supported Terrorism without an explanation... I think you have to describe in some way the movement that generated those feelings, those energies, those sounds ... Sometimes ago I posted a blog about the Italianprog scene, but it probably needs to be updated for the purposes of the site... Any suggestion will be well accepted!

 

Point no. 3: I agree that there's much more to understanding and diffusing music than just facts and formal appreciation. On the other hand, I've always been against that gratuitous ISP label. The jazz-rock thing, on the other hand, doesn't feel too well defined, and the same goes for a couple of sub-genres here. AREA's music should be labelled here in PA accordingly to their defiant, eclectic approach to avant-garde rock. Macan was right on spot, although it takes an analytical approach to critizice the positivist concept of analysis. Even under the wings of a post-positivist approach, a certain distance between the analyzer and their object has to be achieved.

 

In my opinion a sub-genre is most of all a way to organize information... Keeping together in the same “sub-genre” the bands that “grew up” in the Italian scene of the early seventies and their legacy in my opinion is useful, ISP needs to be re-defined not dismantled...

 

You can’t be too rigid when you “label” a band... Area’s music could fit other sub-genres, that’s true... But even if they didn’t want to be “labelled” at all and they always defined themselves just as an “International Pop Group”, in Italy they’ve always be “labelled” by critics just an “Italianprog” band... Nonetheless, when you say that Area should labelled accordingly to their defiant, eclectic approach to avant-garde rock, I can understand your point of view... Recently I’ve read two books about Area (Il Libro degli AREA di Domenico Coduto and AREA - Musica e rivoluzione, by Gianpaolo Chiariacò)... What I can say is that defining and labelling Area’s music is a very difficult task!

Cesar Inca wrote: andrea wrote: Cesar Inca wrote:   After reading the definitions, the term eclectic prog seems to me the one that fits AREA. There should be perfect consistance between the invention of new sub-genres and allocations. The musical essence of AREA goes further the Italian symphonic thing, farther so that it bears no symphonic traits at all.      Kind regards.     I think it's wrong consider Area just in musical terms... What about the meaning of tracks like "Il massacro di Brandeburgo n.3" or "Lobotomia"? They should be considered more as "conceptual or political acts" than as pieces of music... What about lyrics and Area's attitude on stage? If you don't know the Italian musical scene of the early seventies I fear you can't really understand Area's music... Of course, you can like it or dislike it, but you miss essential information...   I am aware of it although my Italian is very poor, and even one of my fave Area songs was sung in Greek, anyway. Nevertheless, as important as the political-philosophical aspect is for Area as a unit, it shouldn't be regarding this particular issue, which is the categorization of Area in PA. For instance, being RIO didn't make SMM a politically-oriented band, and that was one of the desired standards for the aforesaid movement; also, it's possible to be a band full of counterculture thinking musicians without being Zheul or RIO. I think that we should leave these lateral aspects for the reviews, which are supposed to explain (at least some) this kind of things to the reader.        Kind regards.

 

Just some examples:

 

http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=896

 

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=378

 

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=2290

 

I think that all the reviews above are good ones, well written (although with different styles) by competent people... Nevertheless the only information I can get is if the reviewer does like or not the album and more or less what kind of “musical landscape” you can expect to find... So, I feel there’s something important missing... For instance, “Lobotomia” was conceived not as a piece of music but as a “political act”: it was dedicated to Ulrike Meinhof, a German terrorist of the extreme left wing that some people would have liked to “lobotomize”... Cesar, you’re right when you say that it is “an exercise on electronic experimentalism designed to ultimately lobotomize the captive listener (or even displease the unsatisfied one a bit more for a bit longer) so that they can focus on their own organic reaction: it is not a piece to be enjoyed or hated, it is a piece that seeks to provoke some fireworks in the listener’s flesh”, but you don’t say what the song is exactly about... Many people don’t care about lyrics or ideology behind music, but a “prog ultimate resource” should give such kind of information and I don’t think that the single reviews are the good spot...  What’s the best way to organize information? Just writing reviews or a “retrospective” in the blog space and put a link in the biography of the band? ISP is a subgenre that needs to be re-defined and it was an error to move Area from Jazz/Rock to ISP before a re-defining it,  but in my opinion it’s better keep in mind that, as wrote Edward Macan, “music exists as a form of communication between people of a certain time and, most often, a certain place... Analyzing the sounds should not be an end in itself. The ultimate goal of musicology, in my view, should be to document the relationship between music and society, because people do not exist for music: music exists for people. I felt that only through reconnecting music to real people in specific times and places could musicology connect with society at large, engage it in a symbiotic dialogue, and thus avoid the death by social irrelevance to which a continued reliance on unexamined positivism will surely condemn it...”

 

kool thanks

andrea wrote: Cesar Inca wrote:   After reading the definitions, the term eclectic prog seems to me the one that fits AREA. There should be perfect consistance between the invention of new sub-genres and allocations. The musical essence of AREA goes further the Italian symphonic thing, farther so that it bears no symphonic traits at all.      Kind regards.     I think it's wrong consider Area just in musical terms... What about the meaning of tracks like "Il massacro di Brandeburgo n.3" or "Lobotomia"? They should be considered more as "conceptual or political acts" than as pieces of music... What about lyrics and Area's attitude on stage? If you don't know the Italian musical scene of the early seventies I fear you can't really understand Area's music... Of course, you can like it or dislike it, but you miss essential information...

sorry to go off topic but...

 

After reading the definitions, the term eclectic prog seems to me the one that fits AREA. There should be perfect consistance between the invention of new sub-genres and allocations. The musical essence of AREA goes further the Italian symphonic thing, farther so that it bears no symphonic traits at all.

 

   Kind regards.

 

jimmy_row wrote:  Thanks for posting that article, a very interesting read.  After reading that it seems that Area can be in a category with PFM, Celeste, and QVL and fit at least as well as they would with Retrun to Forever, Weather Reprort, etc.   Going by the perameters in the essay, Area could be anywhere between prog rock and jazz - fusion.  Although their work has an unmistakable jazz sound, composition plays a large role - but I haven't heard many live recordings, so I couldn't say how they went about these compositions in a live setting.  Of course there's also a hefty serving of mediterranean/folk and avant-garde in their sound....really they defy categorization (I believe the members themselves preferred "International Popular Group".  The first album and Crac! are closest to the "crossover" music Covach is talking about, but Caution... and Maledetti are mighty close to experimental jazz.  I'd be interested to hear the opinion of RPI and fusion experts.

that is a great article Andrea posted...  he posted that somewhere else before.. I had read it before.

As far as my opinion...  on Area.. yes they did have a hefty amount of jazz in their sound and music.  However the way they fused arabic and greek musical influences in the sound .. added with a definte slant toward  the avant electronic simply put them out of being considered a J-R group.. they weren't. and were never meerly a J-R..  Going back to what I posted earlier.. the question came to pass... which sub does this band fit best.  The RPI team to a man thought RPI.. and J-R agreed as well.  Instead of trying to think Area being in the same sub as Le Orme or PFM.. think of them being in the same sub as Battiato and Osanna.. who took a wide range of influences.. and made a sound completely unique  to themselves.  That range of influences.. which groups in RPI shared.. though in differing quantities of course. Some had a more symphonic natuare.. some folk, some jazz..Yet all used elments of all of them. That is what binds them together.  The ambiguous musical nature of RPI.. is a perfect fit for Area.. and their ambiguous, and as you say hard to catagorize style of music. What holds it all together.. is the fact that these groups were part of a movement.. within a movement.   The musical differences between them are so slight..  not once since I've been here have I heard complaints for those who have exlored the genre about bands that don't all sound symphonic or whate have you... they simply have a common sound that leads listeners naturally from a group like Banco  to Pholas Dactlylus.. to Area... to the other extreme.. Battiato.

not sure if I make any sense or even what you were looking for . but that is my take. 

a bit wrong perhaps.. my big yapper gets the best of me...sorry about that.   My last post .. pretty much says it all.  They had strong jazz influences.. enough to be put in J-R... but they fit better now in RPI now that ISP is dead.. though it never really lived.  The new definition...when it is finished and posted on the front page will explain why they are.