01	Aqua						02:54
	02	Asia						05:10
	03	Macinaaqua, Macinaluna						08:50
	04	...Dal Caos...						03:09
	05	SYN						15:11
	06	Isis						07:46
	07	Cantoantico						11:33
	08	Phaedra						07:01

FINISTERRE Finisterre

1995 Mellow Records MMP 254 CD / 2LP

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LINE UP:

STEFANO MARELLI ( guitars, vocals )
FABIO ZUFFANTI ( bass, vocals )
BORIS VALLE ( keyboards )
SERGIO GRAZIA ( flute, guitar, choirs )
MARCO CAVANI ( drums, percussion )


GUESTS:

EDMONDO ROMANO ( sax , recorders )
OSVALDO LOI ( viola, violin )
CLAUDIO CASTELLINI ( choir )
FRANCESCA BIAGINI ( choir )
PAOLA CARRAFFA ( choir )

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE SONGS:

AQUA (2:54) ( Finisterre)
ASIA (5:10) ( Valle)
MACINAACQUA,MACINALUNA (8:50)( Laricchia/Valle/Marelli)
DAL CAOS (3:09) (Marelli)
SYN (15:11) (Valle)
ISIS (7:46) (Marelli)
CANTOANTICO (11:33) (Zuffanti)
PHAEDRA (7:01) (Valle)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CREDITS:

ARRANGED BY FINISTERRE

PRODUCED BY FINISTERRE & OSVALDO GIORDANO

RECORDED AT " MUSICAL BOX " STUDIO, GENOVA

IN SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 1994

ENGINEER: OSVALDO GIORDANO

MIXED BY OSVALDO GIORDANO, FINISTERRE & EDMONDO ROMANO

COVER PAINT BY BRUNETTO DE BATTE'

PHOTOS BY EGIDIO NICORA

GRAPHIC BY ALBERTO TAGLIATI




First album by this Italian band, on Mellow Records MMP 254, 1994

Finisterre - Finisterre
Artist: Finisterre
Title: Finisterre
Label: Mellow Records MMP 254
Length(s): 61 minutes
Year(s) of release: 1994
Month of review: 04/1996

Line up
Sergio Grazia - flute , eltric guitar
Marco Cavani - drums, percussion
Stefano Marelli - guitar, lead vocals on 3 and 6
Boris Valle - piano, keyboards
Fabio Zuffanti - bass, lead vocals on 7

Tracks
1) Aqua 2.58
2) Asia 5.04
3) Macinaaqua, Macinaluna 8.55
4) ...Dal Caos.. 4.00
5) SYN 15.00
6) Isis 7.42
7) Cantoantico 12.15
8) Phaedra 7.03

Summary
Read on.
The music
Aqua is the intro that seems so necessary on a lot of albums. The melody reminds me of falling waterdrops and is very atmopheric. The next track is rather up-tempo with some flute and a nice build-up. As a whole the track is rather rocking with some quiet interludes and reminds me a little of 12th Night. Very energetic.
The next track I'm less fond of. It begins with some ELP and rather arbitrary keyboard playing and some classical interludes and even some twenties playful stuff in between. The guitar has a psychedelic sound and it all shows that the guys have a sense of humour. The vocal parts are quite strange on this track, changing often of mood and tone. The melody is sort of singalong, but the solo at the end of the track is alright.

After this rather schizophrenic track some Frippian playing in ...Dal Caos.., how unexpected. Well they know how to name there songs. Kind of RIOish as well.

The next track is far more melodic and approaches Pendragon with some sensitive guitarplaying . After some Satie (well not exactly) we get another change, this time into some up-tempo Flairck like stuff with flute and all. Sounds a bit classical. Later on we encounter even more surprises as we meet with the samba and also some Ekspetion like parts. Well, don't know how they get this into one track.

The fifth one is a fragmented track, rather playful and sunny with lots of bass. After a while it's a little slower and some accordeon is used.

The next track is rather good. After some quiet vocals , the flute and guitar start a build up after which the guitar continues alone and the vocals join in. Then we get more rock, but the melody is good and it's also rather emotionally done.

Starts out like Aque, but a little contrary. Then we get into a majestic guitar solo. Then we get typically melodic Italian vocals, accompanied by flute. Not very passionate, but more subdued. The song gains more power along the way with some nice flutework and some more guitar. The track ends with some beautiful harmonies and moves into a great guitar solo and a climactic end.

The closr starts with some up-tempo guitarriffs and some organ Conclusion. beneath. The guitarriff reminds me a little of Rush. Then we get a slower synth part, but it isn't very good. After a short silence, the song picks up with a nice melody on piano and a great organ/guitar solo. The songs ends with a lot of jamming.

Conclusion
In two minds with this one. On the one hand the variety is large on this album, but if you ask me what I really did like on this album, than Cantoantico is an easy winner. Other good tracks are 2 and 9. Still, on the whole, the album is too fragmented and it's nice to put everything in that you like, but it doesn't always work out that well.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Jurriaan Hage



Finisterre [Italy]

Discography
Finisterre (95)
In Limene (96)
Hostsonaten (97, as Finisterre Project)
Live - AI Margini Della Terra Fertile (98, Live)
In Ogni Luogo (99)
Live at Progday 1997 (00, Live)
Storybook (01, Repackaged re-release of Live at Progday, Live) (Progressive World review) (ProgressoR review)


Reviews
Finisterre - Fabio Zuffanti (bass, acoustic guitar, vocals), Andrea Orlando (drums, percussion), Agostino Macor (keyboards, guitars, mandolin), Rafaella Callea (lead vocals, flute), Sergio Caputo (violin, percussion), Stefano Marelli (guitar, vocals)

Finisterre is an impressive debut for this group. Basic instruments include guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, flute and few vocals (in Italian) but saxophone, violin and a choir can also be heard. Faithful to their national tradition, the group blends rock, jazz and classical elements to produce a music that stays fresh through repeated listening. The compositions show originality and offer a certain variety of arrangements that transit smoothly from intense electric guitar solos to quiet piano-flute melodies. An ambitious production that's surprisingly solid for a first release. -- Paul Charbonneau








stefano marelli. guitars & vocals

boris valle. keyboards

fabio zuffanti. bass & vocals

agostino macor. keyboards

andrea monetti. flute & sax

marco cavani. drums



1994 - FINISTERRE

1996 - IN LIMINE

1998 - LIVE - AI MARGINI DELLA TERRA FERTILE

1999 - IN OGNI LUOGO

2000 - LIVE AT PROGDAY 1997 ( LIMITED EDITION )

2001 - STORYBOOK ( LIVE AT PROGDAY 97 )

2002 - HARMONY OF THE SPHERES





"Finisterre"
Mellow Records (MMP 254)
Italy, 1995



Fabio Zuffanti bass guitar, vocals
Stefano Marelli electric & acoustic guitars, vocals
Boris Valle keyboards
Marco Cavani drums, percussion
Sergio Grazia flute, additional guitars, choirs
Aqua (2:54) (Finisterre)
Asia (5:10) (Valle)
Macinaaqua, Macinaluna (8:50) (Laricchia/Valle/Marelli)
Caos (3:09) (Marelli)
SYN (15:11) (Valle)
Isis (7:46) (Marelli)
Cantoantico (11:33) (Zuffanti)
Phaedra (7:01) (Valle)
with guest musicians:
Claudio Castellini choirs
Edmondo Romano saxes, recorders
Osvaldo Loi violin, violoncello
Francesca Biagini choirs
Paolo Carraffa choirs

Produced by Finisterre and Osvaldo Giordano
Recorded at New Musical Box, Genoa, Italy September/October 1994
Engineered by Osvaldo Giordano
Mixed by Osvaldo Giordano, Edmondo Romano and Finisterre
Cover art by Brunetto De Batte






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FINISTERRE:

FINISTERRE (Mellow MMP 254) [1995]
IN LIMINE (Mellow MMP 291) [1996]
HOSTSONATEN (Mellow MMP 320) [1997]
LIVE...AI MARGINI DELLA TERRA FERTILE (Mellow MMP 336) [1998]

Finisterre are a group from Genoa who have become one of Italy's brightest lights in contemporary progressive rock. Their music looks forward, but acknowledges and assimilates much that came before. The group is an augmented quartet within which there have been three consistent members: Stefano Marelli on guitars and vocals, Boris Valle on keyboards, and Fabio Zuffanti on bass and vocals. The drummer has been different on each album. In addition, guest musicians play flute, saxes, woodwinds, trumpet, violin and cello on various tracks. While lyrics have been credited individually, the music is credited on the first two albums to the band as a whole, and, on the live album (which draws its material entirely from the first two albums), to Marelli, Valle and Zuffanti. (The back of the jewel box for the live album says "All tracks composed by Fabio Zuffanti," but this is contradicted by the insert notes which credit all three. I suspect this error is Mellow's. Mellow is a label owned by Mauro Moroni, a wealthy attorney, and apparently as much his hobby as anything. Moroni is a fan of progressive rock and has devoted his label to reissuing many of Italy's finest releases of the 1970's, but he does so with a mad abandon that has seen well over three hundred albums issued on CD within the past ten years, usually with skimpy and barely adequate packaging -- in contrast, say, with France's Musea, who extensively annotate their rereleases, usually supplying the band's history and biography in the accompanying booklets...and do so in English or French and English. Although Mellow's sales must extend well beyond Italy, rereleases are never annotated in English, and rarely annotated at all. Mellow puts out so many CDs -- a minority of which are recorded by non-Italian bands -- that new releases can be lost in the shuffle, and get little or no promotion from the label. Finisterre is Mellow's only major new Italian band. This contrasts with Italy's other progressive label, Vinyl Magic, which has also rereleased many classic Italian albums -- and did so before Mellow -- but has also supported more new bands although none of Finisterre's quality, alas. But I digress....)

HOSTSONATEN ("A collection of autumnal dances" -- although that description may apply to "Hostsonaten" the piece and not the album as a whole) is not credited to Finisterre, but rather to "Finisterre Project" -- and then only on the jewel box's spine. The insert claims "All songs written, arranged and produced by Fabio Zuffanti except" three pieces credited to others, and the lyrics to a fourth taken from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Zuffanti is joined by nine other musicians, among them Marelli (all tracks) and Valle (one track), making this a Finisterre-like album. One difference, however, is that while Finisterre's first two albums are sung in Italian, this album's lyrics are entirely in English. (I have no idea why the title alone is German.)

Much of the music on the first two albums is instrumental -- only three of the eight tracks on the first album have vocals, and only four of the nine on the second -- and it covers a lot of territory. Indeed, on some tracks the music may change abruptly for a brief but totally contrasting interlude. My sense when I first heard FINISTERRE was that the band was both demonstrating the breadth of their musical range and honoring the many Italian bands who had preceded them. The music includes both rich melodies -- an Italian staple -- and jazzy free-form atonality. It is ambitious and surprisingly original, building as it does on two prior decades of Italian progressive music There is occasionally a playfulness, a suggestion that the band is having fun with the variety of music it plays.

This is particularly true of the live album. Recorded half in Italy and half in France, it draws upon the material in the previous albums, but makes no attempt to recreate it note for note. Here the basic quartet is joined only by a guest flautist (Sergio Grazia on the French date; Marco Moro on the Italian) and material which required other outside instrumentalists is rearranged. But the music does not suffer. Like King Crimson, Finisterre may never play the same piece in exactly the same way twice, but they remain true to its spirit every time. And they handle music originally realized in a studio setting quite well live, effecting the same surreal polytonal blends and contrasting intercuts. They also drop in a number of sly and affectionate bows to other bands in occasional fractured quotes from those bands blended into their own musical context. There are early allusions to Genesis and Le Orme, but it's in their final (encore?) track, "Phaedra," that they really cut loose. Each member of the band is introduced (in Italian), and takes a solo. These solos salute several bands, among them Pink Floyd and King Crimson (a bar or two of "21st Century Schizoid Man"), but it's after those solos that the entire band segues into a segment of Genesis's "The Firth of Fifth" that builds for several choruses before returning to "Phaedra" (itself no relation to the Tangerine Dream album of that title).

Such allusions and playfulness are absent from HOSTSONATEN, and I find myself subtly disappointed by it. There is the usual musical richness that I associate with Finisterre, but somehow it lacks a dimension. Perhaps it's that "autumnal" quality. Maybe it's the English lyrics. Or is it just Zuffanti? Dolorous is the word I would use for much of the music on this album.

In any event, I highly recommend the first two Finisterre albums, suggest that after you've heard them (and if you've liked them) you should listen next to the live album (you'll appreciate it more that way) -- and finally, a lesser, qualified recommendation for Zuffanti's "Project" album, HOSTSONATEN.

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I welcome feedback on these pages. I can be reached directly at tedwhite@compusnet.com, or through cosmicat@holeintheweb.com.
Let me hear from you. --Dr. P


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------






Return to Dr.Progresso Reviews
FINISTERRE:
IN OGNI LUOGO (irIdea/Musea THX 1138)

HOSTSONATEN:
MIRRORGAMES (Mellow MMP 345)

The second Hostsonaten album slipped past me last year; the new Finisterre is just out. Both are essentially products of the same group of people, as I mentioned in my review elsewhere here of their earlier albums.

I checked out the band's website and found the following explanation of the relationship between Finisterre and the offshoot Hostsonaten, which is Fabio Zuffanti's solo project (the reference is to the first album): "Zuffanti's passion for the symphonic progressive and for some acoustic music is overpoweringly expressed in this first solo project, a work where the artist take the distances from the last Finisterre's compositions, which are oriented to the research and the experimentation of new forms of musical languages." English is not their first language.

"The three Finisterre's musical souls Zuffanti (progressive rock), Marelli (ethnic and rock) and Valle (avant-garde and experimentation) will meet and mix themselves in the future works of the band and, at the same time, will find an autonomous way in the various solos projects (in the next months are expected the new works of Marelli and Valle, while the ex Finisterre's flautist Francesca Biagini is programming an album containing Italian Renaissance's melodies)." This description of the interests and contributions of Finisterre's three main collaborators (who assign all music credits to the band as a whole) goes a long way to explain the unique nature of their recorded music.

And Hostsonaten has become an ongoing name for Zuffanti's solo projects, of which MIRRORGAMES is the second, released in July, 1998. The website, while going on at some length about the first album, offers only the personnel of the second: "The musicians involved in this new Fabio Zuffanti's project are: Fabio Zuffanti (guitars, bass, keyboards and vocals), Stefano Marelli (guitars), Osvaldo Giordano (keyboards), Boris Valle (piano and minimoog), Marco Moro (flute), Edmondo Romano (saxophone, flute), Andrea Orlando (drums), Claudio Castellini, Stefano Marelli, Victoria Heward, Loredana Villanacci, Marilisa Villanacci and Marzia Sidri (voices)." That lineup includes all of the current Finisterre, including Orlando, their current drummer.

This time all of the music and some of the lyrics (as on the first album, all in English) are by Zuffanti. The music has more life and vitality than on the first album, but still betrays more of a conventional "prog" approach than one finds in Finisterre itself. At over 70 minutes in length it has plenty of room to move around, and offers among other treats "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Pt. II," a sequel to a track on the first album - again with lyrics from Coleridge. I do like this album better than Zuffanti's first.

But the kicker is Finisterre's new album, their third, and eagerly awaited, studio album. It is their first self-release, issued in March in Italy on the irIdea label and elsewhere in the world by the French Musea label. Apparently they've said goodbye to Mellow. As their website puts it, "The CD has been recorded at the Roberto Colombo's studios, an Italian producer who has worked with P.F.M. and other great Italian bands from the 70's." (He also made several important albums of his own in Italy in the seventies, none of them as yet re-released on CD.)

I played it for a friend without telling him whose album it was. I didn't ask him to guess the band. I asked him to guess the style or genre of the music. He knows me for a big fan of progressive rock, but knows I'm into a lot of other music as well. He couldn't guess the nationality or genre of the music.

I suspect Finisterre are moving beyond the narrow ghetto of "progressive rock" and are looking for some kind of broader-based breakout into major success. But they haven't sacrificed their musical ambitions at all - only broadened them.

The fifty-minute album opens with what could be a clichй: a looped guitar. But it quickly builds into a more orchestral guitar for a relatively conventional and rather pretty piece. Like every piece on the album, it segues directly into the next, which in this instance is "Snaporaz," and here is where the strangeness begins. A harsh, primitive guitar, squealing with feedback, sounding a grunge-riff that might have been recorded in San Francisco in 1969, builds into a massively orchestral statement of the same riff - and then breaks into a bridge in which a pretty melody that might have come from the soundtrack of an Italian movie is overlaid with TV-set dialogue which begins in Italian but has later interludes in English as well. The two contrasting and alternating musical sections build in intensity. The TV dialogue becomes a sampled repetition. The effect is as if one combined the music of Blur or Oasis with that of Faith No More and threw in some Italian movies on top. It is remarkably effective and surprisingly and powerfully evocative.

Later in the album, the fifth track, "Coro Elettrico," is a suite which uses guest Sergio Caputo's strong violin to build what could be the best music It's A Beautiful Day never played, and here again in the guitar there is a sense of rock history and West Coast psychedelia.

But possibly my favorite track of all is the album's closer, "Wittgenstein Mon Amour 1.12," running just under three minutes. A lazy summer stroll with a bass clarinet, it is a jaunty, jazz-like charmer that delights me and ends the album on a sunny, mellow note.

It appears that Finisterre is still moving forward, while Hostsonaten is filling in behind it, but I recommend both albums and look forward to the next.

Return to Dr.Progresso Back to Top

If you are interested in obtaining any of the music discussed in this site,
click on Ordering Information

I welcome feedback on these pages. I can be reached directly at tedwhite@compusnet.com, or through cosmicat@holeintheweb.com.
Let me hear from you. --Dr. P


Finisterre [Italy]
Updated 4/22/01

Discography
Finisterre (95)
In Limene (96)
Hostsonaten (97, as Finisterre Project)
Live - AI Margini Della Terra Fertile (98, Live)
In Ogni Luogo (99)
Live at Progday 1997 (00, Live)
Storybook (01, Repackaged re-release of Live at Progday, Live) (Progressive World review) (ProgressoR review)


Reviews
Finisterre - Fabio Zuffanti (bass, acoustic guitar, vocals), Andrea Orlando (drums, percussion), Agostino Macor (keyboards, guitars, mandolin), Rafaella Callea (lead vocals, flute), Sergio Caputo (violin, percussion), Stefano Marelli (guitar, vocals)

Finisterre is an impressive debut for this group. Basic instruments include guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, flute and few vocals (in Italian) but saxophone, violin and a choir can also be heard. Faithful to their national tradition, the group blends rock, jazz and classical elements to produce a music that stays fresh through repeated listening. The compositions show originality and offer a certain variety of arrangements that transit smoothly from intense electric guitar solos to quiet piano-flute melodies. An ambitious production that's surprisingly solid for a first release. -- Paul Charbonneau