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D.F.A.

Progressive jazz-rock fusion from Verona, Italy

About Me


AVAILABLE ON MOONJUNE RECORDS
DFA "Kaleidoscope" (2cd-double album!)
TWO CULT STUDIO ALBUMS
"LAVORI IN CORSO" (1997) and "DUTY FREE AREA" (1999)
REMASTERED, PLUS 3 LIVE BONUS TRACKS.
$18 USA/CAN • $21 ELSEWHERE (including shipping)
TO PURCHASE THE CD AND FOR AUDIO CLIPS AND MORE INFO
PLEASE CLICK ON THE CD COVER.
One of the pitfalls of the progressive-rock genre is often denigrated by the facilitation of intricate complexities within viable song-forms. History dictates that prog-icons such as King Crimson, Yes, early Genesis, ELP, Jethro Tull, PFM and Gentle Giant helped set the paradigm for a movement that floundered during the ‘80s, especially after Britain’s fertile Canterbury Scene took its final course. Many prog-rockers and jazz-fusion artists have sacrificed compositional attributes for gyrating technical gymnastics, where melody and structure becomes tainted or perhaps diluted. Fast forward to the 1995 where the Verona, Italy based band “D.F.A. (Duty Free Area),” issues a demo of works accentuating a novel approach to the tried and true. With enviable technical abilities, the band merely touches upon previously applied paradigms set forth by Gentle Giant, King Crimson, National Health and other bands of note. Simply put, they helped refine and replenish the roads frequently traveled while enjoying a cult-like status along the way.
Keen ears and those in the know, assisted with the band’s natural progression, spawning DFA’s critically-acclaimed 1996 debut, Lavori In Corso, followed in 1999 by the equally exciting Duty Free Area. And while the respective band-members do not rely on recurring income to function as a unit (they have day-jobs), the music and group-initiated methodology is an artistic one at that. With less than three dozen live dates under their belt, the musicians are not pressurized into corporate record company antics and demands. D.F.A.’s guitars/keys and synth extrapolations are tightly organized within a richly harmonic mode of attack. Sure, knotty time signatures and airy, over-the-top vocals reside as a prime component. No strikingly new concepts are put across. However, it’s all about focus, camaraderie and the lack of (negative) external influences or dictums. Again, they don’t do this for economic survival. Their plight is steeped within excellence in execution and love for an art-form that has been either elevated to lofty heights or submerged to lowly depths.
Throughout this double cd set, check out keyboardist (and occasional vocalist) Alberto Bonomi’s fluid phrasings that engender multihued tonalities. He also looms as an accelerator when supporting or collaborating with guitarist Silvio Minela’s largely-soaring, jazz-fusion style lines. They combine linear themes, blazing crescendos and sweetly melodic opuses into a sound and scope that morphs red-zone activity with a sense of endearment. Meanwhile bassist Luca Baldassari and drummer/lead vocalist Alberto De Grandis kick matters into overdrive while tempering the variable flows to coincide with the soloists’ vast expressionism and artful improvisational dialogues. More importantly, the group’s compositional fortitude bears an uncanny commingling of Mahavishnu Orchestra type intensity with the softly woven sensibilities of melodic rock.
In 2001 MoonJune Records released Work In Progress Live, signifying a musical statement, recorded June 17th 2000 at the beloved USA NearFest progressive-rock gala. Naturally, the recording of this performance sparked additional interest from the international prog community. Glowing enthusiastic reviews judiciously followed the album’s release. Now, MoonJune has provided a gift of sorts with the remastering (also including bonus tracks) of the unit’s first two studio efforts. Supply, demand and availability necessitate the reasoning behind this release. And while D.F.A.’s musical aura does not communicate a trendsetting revelation, it parallels science – where cerebral disciplines generally attain a fruitful coexistence with creativity and a sense of purpose. Enjoy these wonderful sounds…
– GLENN ASTARITA; Nashville, Tennessee; March 2007
(rock and jazz journalist; contributor to DownBeat Magazine,
AllAboutJazz.com, EJazzNews.com, JazzReview.com and RadioDirectX)
Band’s website: http://digilander.libero.it/dfa
www.myspace.com/dutyfreearea
Worldwide bookings by MoonJune Global Media www.moonjune.com www.myspace.com/moonjunerecords
ALSO !!! DFA "Work In Progress Live"
$14 USA/CAN • $17 ELSEWHERE (including shipping)
TO PURCHASE THE CD AND FOR AUDIO CLIPS AND MORE INFO
PLEASE CLICK ON THE CD COVER.
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Member Since: 5/21/2007
Band Website: moonjune.com
Band Members: AVAILABLE NOW ON MOONJUNE RECORDS
THE LONG AWAITED NEW STUDIO ALBUM
DFA "4TH"
$14 USA/CAN • $17 ELSEWHERE (including shipping)
TO PURCHASE THE CD AND FOR AUDIO CLIPS AND MORE INFO
PLEASE CLICK ON THE CD COVER.

It's been just one year short of a decade since D.F.A.'s second studio album, 1999's critically acclaimed Duty Free Area. Although two additional releases have seen the light of day in the interim - Work In Progress Live, documenting their performance at NEARfest 2000, and Kaleidoscope, an anthology of their first two albums with bonus live material - none contained any new music.

So what happened ? Well, membership of a leading progressive rock band is hardly a full-time job these days, and our lads were simply getting on with their "real" lives - families, jobs and the like... So music took a back seat for a while, gigs became less frequent (which they never really were anyway), and it took much longer than planned for them to get to the point where making a new studio album seemed a realistic prospect.

Listening to the results now, the impressive amount of musical substance on offer speaks for itself, and more than makes up for the seemingly endless wait. Most of the album is D.F.A. as we know and love them, with their sonic and stylistic trademarks fully intact - the warm analog sounds, the impressive interplay, with guitar (Silvio Minella) and keyboards (Alberto Bonomi) trading or sharing leads over an ever-shifting rhythmic foundation (Luca Baldassari and Alberto De Grandis), and the unmistakably "Mediterranean" extroversion and exuberance. Anyone who liked the band's first two albums will welcome 4th as a worthy successor. In several ways it is even superior - there is more subtlety, restraint and nuance in the instrumental performance, which allows the epic, largely instrumental compositions to unfold naturally and organically, as if created on the spur of the moment.

This is saying a lot about D.F.A.'s almost telepathic interplay, as very little of their music is actually improvised. Although it may display strong similarities to 1970s jazz-fusion at times, it ultimately owes more to the (often maligned) tradition of progressive rock, with its heavily structured compositions characterised by a constant turnover of thematic content. It should be noted that D.F.A.'s main composer is drummer De Grandis - ably assisted by Bonomi -, and he is no exception to the rule that drummers usually have an excellent orchestral feel. The way the opening track, "Baltasaurus", slowly but surely builds up to jamming frenzy from its rather minimalist starting point, is a textbook example of how to structure a group performance. Another example of the band's maturity is "Vietato Generalizzare", which balances passages as intricate as the infamous "Trip On Metro" (from DFA's debut Lavori In Corso) with welcome contrasting, quieter sections.

In true "progressive" tradition, there are also moments on the album that depart more radically from the established D.F.A. "formula". The piano- and strings-based intro and outro bookending "Mosoq Runa" mark an unprecedented foray into pure classical music. More importantly, "La Ballata de 's'Isposa e Mannorri", a collaboration with the Sardinian vocal trio Andhira, in an oustanding achievement. If anything, it shows that the human voice can be integrated satisfactorily into the D.F.A.'s music - which has long been a moot point despite the best efforts of Alberto De Grandis and assorted guest vocalists - and suggests exciting new developments for the future.

In any case, D.F.A.'s new album is an unmitigated success which not only re-establishes the Italian quartet as a musical force to be reckoned with, but is also certain to be acclaimed as one of the best progressive rock releases of 2008, quite possibly the best - but the competition remains open, of course.

Aymeric Leroy, Paris May 2008

Influences: For fans of: Gentle Giant, Hatfield & The North, National Health, Gong, Bruford, UK, Allan Holdsworth, Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Return To Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Brand X, PFM, Banco, Nova, Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Focus, mid '70s Soft Machine, Frank Zappa, Goblin, Umphrey's McGee, and many others.
Sounds Like: D.F.A.
Record Label: MoonJune Records
Type of Label: Indie