01	Cometa Rossa						03:58
	02	Zyg (Crescita Zero)						05:29
	03	Brujo						08:01
	04	Mirage						10:27
	05	Lobotomia						03:57

Cramps Records, Milano
Art direction: Gianni Sassi
Produzione: Cooperativa Nuova Intrapresa

Area
CAUTION: RADIATION AREA
1974
Studio
IT Cramps CRSLP 5102
Edel (2002)

performed by:
Ares Tavolazzi (bass, trombone)
Demetrio Stratos (vocals, keyboards)
Giulio Capiozzo (drums, percussion)
Paolo Tofani (guitar)
Patrizio Fariselli (keyboards)

side A:
1/ Cometa Rossa
2/ ZYG (Crescita Zero)
3/ Brujo
side B:
4/ Mirage
5/ Lobotomia






AREA

CAUTION RADIATION AREA (1974)

Links:
1) to amazon.com for Caution Radiation Area
2) The Area Homepage

In the 1970s, Area emerged as one of the most indomitable musical spirits of Italy. Into the rock code, the band effortlessly injected searing jazz, funk, and all manner of extraordinary weirdness into a series of vivid albums. If one had to choose only two words to describe Area, they would most likely be bold and singular.

CAUTION RADIATION AREA, the band's second album, was released in 1974. Somewhat contrary to the album cover's familiar ominous "tread lightly" warning board, seal to many European disasters, this album shows the band stretching their wings like few bands before or since. CAUTION continued the accessible Mediterranean hooks highlighting their first promising work (the previous year's ARBEIT MACHT FREI), adding increasing levels of fringe experimentation to this already hot recipe.

Indisputably at the center of Area's quicksilver sound were the unique vocals of lead singer Demetrios Stratos. When one first hears Stratos' voice, which often seemed to be capable of just about anything, what is immediately striking is its sense of openness and intensity. This is a voice simply unafraid. Stratos' trademark, a distinctly quivering vocal trill, now ascending now descending, lies somewhere between a cry and a yodel. And with four furiously talented horsemen (drummer Giulio Capiozzo, keyboardist Patrizio Fariselli, bassist Ares Tavolazzi and guitarist Giampaolo Tofani) to whip the apocalypse up around Stratos, all fell into place.

CAUTION opens with the aptly titled "Cometa Rossa" ("Red Comet"), an A-B-A composition that is both the most concise and most accessible track on the album. Fariselli's ARP synthesizer springs forth like a buzzing, wavering Middle Eastern hummingbird. The other band members then roar into the song, locking perfectly into the Fariselli's intricate melody and driving it ferociously. After this thunderous opening, a soft guitar fades in, at times augmented by Tavolazzi's brooding bowed lines, contrasting the previous mood. Stratos' hot-blooded voice enters, severed from any and all pretense. His vocal swims in Middle Eastern modes, creating an almost hypnotic effect on the listener. The cryptic lyrics of "Cometa," sung in Stratos' native Greek, seem almost like an ancient Delphic incantation, at once both sweet hymnal and earthy supplication. As this unsettling middle fades out, the opening of the song returns with a vengeance, building toward a closing crescendo that knocks the listener in the stomach like a land mine. One might also note the rising, whirring noise that enters the final crescendo, an early harbinger of the non-traditional effects which will later storm the rest of the album.

"ZYG (Crescita Zero)" is pure roller-coaster-rock. It starts off somewhat innocuously (though with a foreboding edge), not with a synthesizer fanfare, but with a celebration of mechanical bursts of steam and radio static. A deep-registered, treated Stratos voice appears, pronouncing the only lyrical passage of this otherwise instrumental in sinister, robotic tones. "ZYG"'s main descending riff menacingly fuels the continued freight-train musicianship previously found on "Cometa" and even turns it up a notch or two. The riff is interrupted periodically by brief, clunking improvs guided by the electric piano, but proves difficult to suppress. Tofani's guitar, supported by Capiozzo's drumming, soon explodes into a free jazz solo like an out-of-control firehose, and from there, Fariselli's acoustic piano corrals the song down an entirely new path with a low register Lalo Schifrin-ish "spy" riff. This riff forms the basis for the remainder of the song, intertwined with a gloriously bizarre promenade of sound: Fariselli's ARP synths, flusters of brass and woodwind instruments, computer noises chattering away like insects, and Stratos' voice sliding from foreground to background and back again like a demented seagull.

With the opening next track, "Brujo," the band truly casts off the launching gear and heads kamikaze-like straight into the void. In stark contrast to the previous tracks, there appears an all-encompassing frigid landscape of soft ticks, barren reverb, minimalist electric piano, and frequency waves. Slowly ascending bass and ARP fills uneasily pry their way into this landscape, at first seemingly randomly. However, as the track picks up momentum, it is soon revealed that these fills are very planned; driving forces breaking through the inertia. Sooner than we can realize it, Fariselli bursts forward with an astonishing Fender Rhodes solo that rivals Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock's work during the early Miles Davis fusion albums. This solo and accompaniment momentarily dissolves, and then just as the listener expects it to be gasping its last breaths, it starts off yet again. It's almost as if the band were trying to pull against the gravitational force of a musical black hole with all its might. Each attempt proves ultimately futile, however, and the listener is once again relegated to the emptiness. Stratos' vocal comes off throughout as one-third Pavarotti, one-third haunted house, and one-third Diamanda Galas' long-lost brother, as it disconcertingly blends and separates from the band's minimal accompaniments.

"MIRage? Mirage" opens by bringing the listener further into the void introduced in "Brujo." By now, there is such unpredictability to the album, a strict collapsing of what had begun with "Cometa Rossa" and "ZYG," it seems like anything might be encountered in the composition. Each idea shoots by as quickly as it came: primitive drums and electronics, intense dustbowl jams, a blizzard of speaking voices, ghostly voices morphing into tortured cries:you name it, it's here.

How else to close an album like this? In true Area fashion, unexpectedly. That is to say, with "Lobotomia," an aptly-titled four and a half minutes of ear-numbing synth-squealing which ultimately dissolves into white noise and static. As all traces of musicality represented in even the loosest sectors of free jazz of "Brujo" and "MIRage? Mirage" are themselves shed, maybe this is meant to represent the very center of the void, where the gravity is the strongest and escape impossible. The noise glares back at the listener like a glass eye, an embrace by an ocean of the purely hollow. Like finally meeting Kurtz at the end of the river

As CAUTION RADIATION AREA shows, Area drew their listeners like a Venus fly trap draws flies, but for all those interested in hearing one of the most largely over-looked and most challenging bands of the 70s, you might just enjoy the jaws clamping down upon you!