Fifty Year Friday: June 1973
AREA: Arbeit macht frei
Making a strong multi-layered political statement with a bleak reference to the slogan, “Arbeit macht frei” (“work brings freedom”) that was gruesomely affixed atop Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, Area puts together an essential progressive rock album, palpably different than anything from even the most adventurous English prog bands. The politics intwined in the lyrics are clearly leaning left, but more notably, the music veers, twists and spins in multiple directions.
The first track starts with a woman’s plaintive recital for peace credited as a pirated recording from a museum in Cairo, and is apparently in Arabic. It’s content is a mystery to me, and there is a translation of what it might be, but whether that is accurate needs to be confirmed by someone else. It, along with a short vocal introduction by their incomparable vocalist and general lead creative force, Demetrio Stratos, nicely sets up the contrasting, frenetic music that follow with its highly accented time shifts and forceful drive. The music undergoes a short stretto before segueing into a free-jazz passage that provides a perfect transition to a slower rendition of the original theme, which then speeds back up to original tempo (and then some) with that kind of abrupt ending that allows the silence to conclusively act as a falling curtain ending a scene. And so we are introduced to Area, a group of multiple talents and styles, which, for this first album, crafted each track to be a complete artistic statement, skillfully shaped and contoured.
Throughout the album, besides excellent work by Patrick Djivas, later bassist for PFM, compelling saxophone work from Eddie Busnello, strong percussion from Giulio Capiozzo, effective electric and acoustic keyboards from Patrizio Fariselli and some solid guitar work and VCS3 (synthesizer) effects from Giampaolo Tofani, it is Stratos’s vocals that dominate and electrify the listener, and ensures that an extraordinarily good album is unquestionably in the realm of indispensable. This album has a permanent place in my heart as does Demetrio Stratos, one of the greatest vocalists of the 1970s and of my lifetime.
zumpoems 