Il Volo were assembled in 1974 by Mogol and his label as an evolution of Formula 3, and Mogol wrote the words. On this, their second record, they got rid of him. An Italian critic puts it plainly: the first move was to limit Mogol’s cumbersome presence, turning the sound towards an instrumental prog-fusion and reducing the sung parts to a single track. The second was to stop writing accessible Battisti-shaped songs and open up into something freer. A supergroup built by a lyricist, deciding on album two that it would rather not have a lyricist.

The short version

This is the second and last album by the studio supergroup, released in 1975 on Numero Uno, Lucio Battisti’s label. Alberto Radius plays guitar and sings; Mario Lavezzi plays guitar, mandolin and sings; Vince Tempera and Gabriele Lorenzi both play keyboards; Bob Callero plays bass; Gianni Dall’Aglio plays drums, percussion and sings. It is almost entirely instrumental — the singing is confined to one piece. The band came apart at the end of 1975, after Callero was briefly replaced by Michele Seffer.

Battisti’s band

Read the line-up as a list of previous employers and the point of this group becomes obvious: Radius and Lorenzi from Formula 3, Lavezzi from Camaleonti and Flora Fauna Cemento, Callero from Osage Tribe and Duello Madre, Dall’Aglio from I Ribelli, and Tempera, a composer with his own group. Numero Uno’s intention was to have the band available for other artists’ records too, which is what happened with Loredana Berte’s TIR. They played on Battisti’s Anima Latina in 1974 — Callero and Dall’Aglio particularly — and on his 1975 record. They also played Parco Lambro in Milan and the pop festival at Villa Pamphili in Rome.

The sound

The reason for the change was live work. The band had discovered that their extraordinary power on a stage was far beyond the smoothness of their studio sound, and this album is an attempt to get that energy onto vinyl, at the cost of some bold decisions. What comes out is an original mixture of progressive rock and fusion, played superbly — six musicians who had nothing left to prove technically, finally allowed to interact without a song structure waiting for them. Where the debut pushed prog towards jazz and introduced real research, it also, in one Italian reading, sounded too perfect to move anybody. This one does not have that problem.

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The songs

Essere is the one with a voice on it, and it is the only one. Everything else is the six of them playing — two guitars, two sets of keyboards, bass and drums, with Lavezzi’s mandolin turning up as well. The comparison worth making is with the debut’s Il calore umano and La mia rivoluzione, songs of easy Battisti-shaped appeal that the band deliberately declined to repeat. What replaced them is a freer instrumental dimension, less subservient to the schemes of Italian songwriting, and it is why people who love this record love it specifically rather than generally.

Reception and legacy

Opinions split along a clean line. For its admirers this is a genuine masterpiece, far more so than the debut, and the frustration is audible: one Italian collector calls it incredible that a record of this quality is no longer available on CD, and those who own the reissues report that the sound on them is bad. Against that, a fair observation: the names in this line-up are extraordinary enough that reading them in sequence is exciting, and yet Il Volo are rarely remembered among the best things Italy did in that decade. Both halves are true, and the gap between them is this band’s whole story.

The verdict

Worth it, and better than its reputation. Start with Essere, because it is the anomaly and it tells you what they gave up. Then take the instrumental stretches without waiting for a chorus that is not coming. Then the 1974 debut, which is more of a songwriter’s album and less of a band’s. Six of the best players in Italy, hired to be a vehicle, who used their second and final record to stop being one.

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