duty free area
| Format | CD |
| Country | Italy |
| Recorded | 1999 |
| Issued | 1999 |
| Label | Mellow |
| Cat no. | MMP 373 |
| Playing time | 50:16 |
| Reviewer | Rikard A Toftesund |
| DFA duty free area |
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With their outstanding debut album "Lavri in Corso" in 1996, DFA entered the position as the most original and virtuous Italian band alongside Deus Ex Machina (whose front man Alberto Piras issued "Lavori…" on his small label Scolopendra). This quartet here showed an exceptional mature continuation of the styles of, among others, Gentle Giant, Arti e Mestieri, the underrated prog-fusion band Etna, and PFM in the period around L'Isola di Niente.
On Duty Free Area, the quartet (guitar/bass/percussion/keyboards) takes a giant leap forwards. DFA has an immediately recognisable sound based on a kind of "inner" dynamics between instrument and passages, a phenomenon comparable to both National Health and with Gong in their You-album period. The underlying textures of the music is driven by an almost insatiable variation and richness, while simultaneously every separate part of the compositions and constructions is exposed to constant refining, solos interweave in synchronized parallel runs between several instruments, they apparently fall together in abysses which suddenly appear to be the embryo of masked variations on previous themes, and so on. This may sound confusing, but the fact is that Duty Free Area is one of the very few collections of compositions wherein every daring deed succeeds, you find sensitiveness and authority, tradition and innovation, adventure and self-irony hand in hand without any conflicts.
The best thing about the CD is anyway the way the band elegantly steers away from the "pretentious" mark. With a similar ideal as to intensity and arrangements, most other artists would easily have ended up in self-indulgence. DFA delivers a demonstration of both instrumental and compositional cleverness which, in pure enthusiasm, overwhelms the listener, a quality I consider almost extinct in todays prog world.
Examples are Caleidoscopo and Esperanto, the former is a 9:30 minutes linear composition with numerous instrumental detours, fictive constructions and dynamic waves. You are fooled to anticipate a modulation, where infact it is only an interval, and the like, these kinds of inventions are, in the case of DFA, integrated natural compositional froms, not pyrotechnical tricks. Esperanto introduces Alberto Piras as guest vocalist, and he contributes neckbreaking dissonants and counterpoint before you are finally introduced to the basis of the song. This record contains a large number of levels, and there is a multitude of variations within each of these.
Duty Free Area is a demanding, but at the same time a seductive album. It contains practically everything you could dream of from a really advanced 90s band, and on top of that, it is extremely well produced, probably one of the few issues which will appeal to fans of any thinkable sub-genre within progressive music. Heartily recommended.
© 2001 Tarkus Magazine