The band had already broken up. They played a last concert at the Teatro Carignano in Turin in June 1975 and that was the end of it — and then the four musicians decided to go into a studio anyway and record some of their compositions, as a document of what they had done. That is the entire reason this album exists. It was pressed privately in 1976 in five hundred copies and distributed only locally. It is the only record Errata Corrige ever made.

The short version

Siegfried, il drago e altre storie is a private pressing from 1976 by the Turin quartet: Mike Abate, Gianni Cremona, Guido Giovine and Marco Cimino. Between them they play a long list of instruments and play them well — this is essentially an acoustic record, in a classic line-up with a flute in it. Cimino would go on to Arti e Mestieri. Five hundred copies, sold locally, by a band that no longer existed. Collectors have been hunting it ever since, and Black Widow finally reissued it properly in 2015.

The band

They started in the early seventies as a nameless trio and recorded a cassette called Da mago a musicista. As a quartet they played the Swing in Turin and around Piedmont, and cut a second private demo tape, Saturday il cavaliere, in English — where the sound starts to define itself, strongly marked by Genesis but already with enough stylistic independence of its own. The name arrived in the winter of 1974, when Mike Abate was called in to replace the guitarist known as Cardellino and the line-up settled for good. Then a run of concerts, all in and around Turin, and then it was over.

The sound

Fantasy-inspired words and dreaming atmospheres in a soft-prog register, not far from the first Celeste album or from Pierrot Lunaire. There is jazz shading in it, and passages that recall Genesis in their pastoral phase. What lifts it above pastiche is the arranging: the changes are more complex than the surface suggests, and one Italian critic makes the observation that matters — many of the breaks use intelligent, well-balanced scales, and no soloist ever overrides the general harmony. Nobody in this band is showing off. It has been called, not unfairly, almost a new-age record before the term existed.

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The songs

Viaggio di saggezza opens briefly, under three minutes. Then Del cavaliere Citadel e del drago della foresta di Lucador runs close to ten minutes and is the centrepiece, built in named sections — Il richiamo, Nella foresta, Il drago — which is the shape of a fantasy tale told in music, and the reason the album carries the title it does. The rest continues in the same weather. The honest note is that the singing and the interpretation are the least incisive part of the record; given the economy of the whole thing, most Italians are willing to overlook what is essentially its only technical flaw.

Reception and legacy

It sold to whoever was in Turin. The Italian consensus is measured and worth repeating: not a masterpiece, but an easy and rewarding listen, and a band who were in certain respects well ahead of their time. It also arrived at the worst possible moment — 1976, the year Italian progressive rock began its descent and punk was appearing on the horizon, and one listener calls it a record almost out of time. Against that, it has admirers who put it in their top ten for that year, and one who says he still plays it to get rid of stress and escape the hardness of the day. Cimino later joined Arti e Mestieri, played on their reunion record, and co-founded the Turin jazz label Mu.

The verdict

Worth finding, and easier now than it has been for forty years. Del cavaliere Citadel first, all ten minutes, for the arrangement rather than the drama. Then let the rest run — it is a quiet record and it rewards being left alone. In 2015 Black Widow reissued it on vinyl with a twelve-page book of rare archive photographs, and put out a CD and DVD as well, containing new recordings of the same pieces played by the four original musicians with guests. Forty years after four men taped their own farewell, they went back and played it again.

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