‘Resurrezione e Metamorfosi’ | ‘Bianco Zero’ | Arpia | Exclusive Stream
Exclusive stream of ‘Resurrezione e Metamorfose’ and ‘Bianco Zero’ demos by Arpia, out today on vinyl via Boomland Records and Unseen Forces.
The year after ‘de lusioni’, the evolution continued with Arpia’s second demo ‘Resurrezione e Metamorfosi’, a suite of more than 40 minutes, in which the lyrical element is stronger and the musical research more articulated. The hermetic and dreamlike text develops a continuous becoming, strengthened by the close relationship with the musical structures.
‘Resurrezione e Metamorfosi’ represents, in the development and evolution of Arpia’s musical path, a real distinction in the process of overcoming the models and canons that were affirming themselves at the end of the eighties. In the band’s own words:
“It is in fact with this work, composed between 1986 and 1987, that a journey of experimentation with forms and languages began for us. It is a long suite divided into movements that in part is linked to the Progressive music of the seventies and, at the same time, manifests a lyrical and harmonic propensity in stark contrast to the song form. In ‘Resurrezione e Metamorfosi’, in fact, the relationships between Classical music and Doom appear deeper and more evident, helping to purify the work of Blues residues still alive in European Rock and Metal of those years. From the point of view of the structure, the form of a long suite still appears current. Evident proof is the album ‘Racconto d’inverno’, from 2009, which follows the same structure in a close symbiosis with the literary dimension of the novel to which it is linked”.
‘Resurrezione e Metamorfosi’, therefore, still represents for us a living source of inspiration, and we try to correspond to this model without pride but with the most total dedication. This is the reason why this restored vinyl reissue, more than thirty years later, seems to us to unequivocally sanction its relevance.
After the second demo ‘Resurrezione e Metamorfose’, the absolute lyricism could not, at this point, have other evolutionary stages, therefore the next phase of transition towards more direct sounds and texts more adherent to reality, develops in a much shorter work entitled ‘Bianco Zero’, which is much more matter of fact- stripping itself of all precursors, insinuations and starting points that would box the band into a specific lineage. A more brooding, heavier ‘Bianco Zero’ doesn’t need an hour to make the point, but resolves the expressions in 20 minutes.
In the band’s own words:
“With ‘Bianco Zero’ Arpia accomplishes a real revolution which, from the heights of the tragic “de lusioni”, passing through the complex transformation of ‘Resurrezione e Metamorfosi’, descends into the horizon of reality, into “bianco” and “zero” of the flesh, of the act and of the choice. Composed and recorded in 1989, the year of discrimination of the Twentieth century, it represents a real act of challenge and opposition to the trends already present from the beginning of the eighties and which will lay the foundations for what we still define as the era of globalization and the commodification of art and culture. In this sense, the reassertion of the Italian language within the classic-progressive structures of Doom, in an attempt to recover the song form in a personal way, lays the foundations of what will be the subsequent developments of the line undertaken with the release of the first official album of the group: ‘Liberazione’, released in the mid-nineties, in a drastically changed cultural and musical context”.
With ‘Bianco Zero’ closes the triad of compositions born in the crucible of the Italian rock and underground movement of the Eighties, recorded independently and captured on the poor original support of the cassette. The restoration and publication on vinyl of these works today has the merit of recovering and bringing to light a world apparently submerged but still extremely alive and fertile in developments in a moment, such as the present one, which appears more and more clearly as the junction of an epoch.
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Arpia | Interview | Reissued and newly mastered, ‘de lusioni’
