venerdì 16 novembre 2012

Post-punk before punk!

Over the past 40 years, Franco Falsini, a real italian underground legend, has embraced progressive rock, disco, post-punk, acid house and even psychedelic trance etc. His 70s group Sensations' Fix were (un)considered the Florence's answer to Krautrock but they've been too soon forgotten. At the time, and it was more or less 1973/74, here in Italy we had a lot of Cantautori (some kind of Dylan alias 20 year later...), a bunch of Genesis/Crimson/Santana clones but really no original bands!  Falsini's Italian label Polydor was freaked out by this group of longhairs called Sensation's fix. "They thought we were a bunch of drug addicts to be kept at a distance," he told the It's Psychedelic Baby blog earlier this year. "We were kept out of the studios with the excuse that 'the smoke was hurting the machines'." Falsini lightened a little in the early-80s, producing Electra's frisky aerobics anthem Feels Good (Carrots & Beets) – played by everyone from Horse Meat Disco to Aphex Twin – and knocking out a fantastic album of new wave pop in 1983 as the Antennas (check out Just Your Love). Throughout the next decade he produced hours of mind-expanding acid-trance for his Interactive Test label. Now an excellent compilation focusing on the earlier, more ethereal side of Sensations' Fix, called Music Is Painting In The Air (1974-1977), is released by New York's RVNG Intl, home to recent albums by Julia Holter and Sun Araw. And it's not another derivative progressive album, nothing to do with italian prog, nothing to do with jazz rock and floydesque symphonies. In my opinion, this is  an absolute classic masterpiece of italian wave, a sort of Eno-esque album with millions of influences, from classic rock to pop, from ambient to cosmic music. Sensation's fix music is a unique journey through fluid italian version of krautrock, space-age minimal synth work and yes, post punk before punk were created. Please listen to the fantastic Sensations' Fix last album in seventies (it was 1978's and it was called "Flying tapes") and don't forget to discover them once again in their metaphysical meanderings!