This is the first Area album without Demetrio Stratos, who died in 1979. It is also almost entirely instrumental, which is the only honest answer to the question of what you do when the most extraordinary voice in Italian music is no longer in the room: you do not replace it. Three men who had been contractually obliged to finish a tour they no longer wanted to play went into a studio, added a saxophonist, and made a jazz record. For the first and last time, that is exactly what Area were.

The short version

Tic & Tac is Area’s eighth album, released in 1980 on Ascolto and produced by the band. Forty-one minutes, ten tracks, instrumental except for the closing Antes de hablar abra la boca, where the words amount to repetitions of the title. Patrizio Fariselli plays piano, electric piano, clavinet and synthesisers; Ares Tavolazzi plays electric bass, double bass and guitar; Giulio Capiozzo plays drums. Larry Nocella is on tenor saxophone, the only Area record he appears on, and Guido Guidoboni and Luciano Biasutti add trumpet. Fariselli wrote most of it; Tavolazzi contributed two pieces. Area toured until 1983 and then stopped.

Senza voce

Nothing could go back to how it was. Contractual obligation forced the surviving members to finish the tour that had started in 1979, which is a bleak sentence to write about a band whose entire subject had been refusing to do what you are told. Tic & Tac was the attempt to find a way out of the impasse — a different road for the three musicians who were left. Some listeners have never accepted the decision, and the argument is straightforward: they should have retired the name, the way Led Zeppelin did the following year, and let the catalogue stand. Instead Fariselli, Tavolazzi and Capiozzo carried on without a singer at all and brought in Nocella. Whether that is courage or a mistake is a question this record cannot settle, and it deserves to be heard before anyone answers it.

The sound

Straight jazz fusion, and it moves — somewhere between Soft Machine and Uzeb, never quite stopping to take a breath. For an album made in 1980 there is remarkably little electronics on it: Fariselli experiments with synthesisers but does it discreetly, never intrusively, always leaving room for everyone else. The most interesting thing he does with them is refuse the decade entirely, using them to recreate the sound of a double bass and a piano rather than to sound futuristic, and it works. Tavolazzi carries an enormous amount here, playing basses, double basses and rhythm guitar, singing a little and writing two of the best pieces. Capiozzo has a groove and a precision that would put him in the argument for the finest drummer Italy has produced. Nocella’s tenor takes the space the voice used to occupy, and the solos are good enough to invite comparison with Michel Petrucciani.

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The songs

La torre dell’alchimista opens at nearly six minutes and is a beautiful instrumental that has never been counted among the band’s masterpieces and probably should be: synth effects, then Capiozzo entering hard, a brilliant keyboard theme and superb solos. Danza ad anello is dominated by Tavolazzi’s double bass, with Guidoboni’s trumpet over the top. A.S.A. follows. Lectric rag is under two minutes of Fariselli on a synthesiser spree with only Capiozzo behind him, and it is the piece where the synths pretend to be acoustic instruments most successfully. La luna nel pozzo and the title track sit in the middle. Quartet is Tavolazzi’s, barely two minutes. Sibarotega has Guidoboni again. Chantée d’amour follows. And Antes de hablar abra la boca closes with Biasutti’s trumpet and the only voices on the album.

Reception and legacy

It has always been the Area album people argue about for reasons that have nothing to do with the music. Judged as a jazz record it is a good one and the playing is beyond dispute; judged as an Area record it is missing the thing that made Area matter, which is not the band’s fault and is nevertheless true. They toured until 1983 and disbanded. Capiozzo formed Area II in 1986 as the only original member. The three of them reformed officially in 1993 with a concert in Rome and did not record anything new until Chernobyl 7991 in 1997, which is also much more a jazz-fusion product than the classic sound — Tic & Tac set the template for what Area became when they came back. Tavolazzi, incidentally, is also one of the authors of the Ufo Robot theme.

The verdict

For people who already know this band, and better than its reputation allows. Crac! is where you begin and Arbeit macht frei is the one that changed things; nothing here is trying to compete with either. La torre dell’alchimista first, which is genuinely excellent and genuinely forgotten. Then Lectric rag, and listen to what the synthesiser is imitating. Then Danza ad anello, for Tavolazzi. Play it as a jazz album by three exceptional musicians who had just lost the reason their band existed, and it holds up. Play it as the ninth chapter of the Area story and it will break your heart, which may be the correct response.

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