Area's sub-genre

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...”

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!