Finisterre

Progressive Rock Band

A Mellow Records Band...
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Finisterre is a progressive-rock oriented band, active in Italy since 1993. It was born in February of the same year from the ashes of Calce & Compasso (literally "lime & compasses", which in Italian sounds close to "sickle and hammer"), already supported by the current guitar player and singer Stefano Marelli and the bass player Fabio Zuffanti. This band played some sort of rhythm & blues mixed up with psychedelic instances.

Just at the begninning of 1993 these two musicians decide to direct their careers towards a new genre: the Calce & Compasso experience, which had already successfully been brought all around the Ligurian underground environment, quietly terminates giving birth to Finisterre. In order to give power to the new deal of the band, some new musicians are enlisted:

• M. Boris Valle, a graduate piano player and a Politcs Science student at the Genoese University, who's currently attending the Musical Composition courses at the Conservatoire of Milan;
• drummer Marco Cavani, who had already collaborated with the former band and is well known in the local jazz environment because of his skill in playing non-standard rhythms;
• guitarist and flute player Sergio Grazia, who was attending the local Conservatoire and is currently getting a degree in Architecture at the University of Genoa.

The new band, after more than a year of rehearsals, records, in January 1994, its first demo-tape, which has now become a collector's curiosity; it contains the embryonic versions of two of the best songs of the group: Asia and Cantoantico (lit. "ancient chant"). Within the bounds of the short time and economical difficulties, this demo-tape, almost twenty minutes long - a clear sign of the wide breath of Finisterre's music - is quite good, and is welcomed by the musical press all over Italy; some critics declare it's the best progressive rock demo-tape in Italy since the last six months.

The band starts receiving official requests; we're in summer 1994. After considering the various possibilities, in July they sign an agreement with Mellow Records, a progressive producer situated in San Remo, near Genoa, in Northern Italy; they engage themselves to create an album before the end of the year. This small House is at that time already known by all European progressive fans because of some important productions and reprints, among which the latest work by Peter Hammill, the renewed singer of Van Der Graaf Generator.

So, the album is recorded between September and December 1994 at the Musical Box recording studio, directed by the former keyboardist and long-experienced sound technician Osvaldo Giordano; the meeting of Finisterre and Giordano doesn't really seem to be fortuitous: Osvaldo's great knowledge of the historical electronic intruments is the key to properly understand the extraordinary mixage between old and new sonorities which characterizes Finisterre's first album. In that record we can hear melodic lines played by Boris Valle on a real original MiniMoog organ, restored to new life for the occasion.

The recording sessions are also a good chance to enlarge the band's musical breath up to usually neglected fields: here Finisterre begin important cooperations with classical musicians like violist Osvaldo Loi, young tenor Claudio Castellini and the Genoese Modern Polyphonic Choir. In this period Mellow Records launches a venture among all its musicians: a great tribute to Genesis, commonly considered one of the greatest progressive bands of all the times; our boys promptly join the venture and create a bizarre cover - a four-voices choral rearrangement - of the famous 1971 song, Harlequin.

At the beginning of 1995 the band's first album, called Finisterre, is out, and immediately collects a series of excellent reviews: it's a real triumph. The Italian progressive magazine Melodie & Dissonanze (lit. "melodies and dissonances") says this is "the best prog record since 1977". Even non-progressive magazines, such as Rockerilla, use hyperbolic words to describe this work. Praises and commendations come from everywhere, and a Canadian distributor comes to the point of asking for the record via Internet, where our friends' name echoes since some months.

The Genesis tribute, called The river of constant change, is out by May of the same year and has immediate success among the progressive fans, urging Mellow Records to call for a new tribute: this time they will have to deal with Peter Hammill's Van Der Graaf Generator. Finisterre precipitously re-enter the recording studio and carry out an interesting revision of Refugees, halfway between the Portuguese fado and the milonga, influenced by the international success achieved at that time by Teresa Salgueiro's Madredeus: the genuine Mediterranean perfume issuing from those musical genres plainly resounds in Stefano Marelli's arrangement. The first cello player of the Genoese Carlo Felice Theather, Stefano Cabrera, plays with our friends.

This is also our first occasion to listen to flute player and singer Francesca Biagini's voice; she replaces the outgoing Sergio Grazia. At the same time Marco Cavani, too, leaves Finisterre to make room for the thundering drummer Marcello Mazzocchi , whose harder way of playing seems to be, if possible, even more suitable for Finisterre's atmosphere.

In November 1995, after having attended the ProgFest in Terni, near Rome, together with the renewed Balletto di Bronzo, Finisterre enter the recording studios to carry out their second work. The CD, entitled In limine ("On the border"), contains nine pieces whose durations range from 12 seconds to eighteen minutes. In this album the band shows a reprise of the musical experimentation begun in the first one; in In limine we find we find the contemporary music experience (mainly Luciano Berio), symphonism, Mediterranean influences and minimalism.

Finisterre give a preview of their new album on May the 3rd at the Albatros theater in Genoa, together with Germinale from Pisa and Egoband from Leghorn. They avail themselves of some striking collaborations such as the former Eris Pluvia Edmondo Romano at the sax, Stefano Cabrera at the cello Alessandro Orlando at the trumpet and the Poliphonic Modern Choir.

During the sessions of In limine, Finisterre record a piece for a tribute-compilation to Camel; the chosen song is the mini-suite Nimrodel, taken from the album Mirage which dates back to 1973. The band plays the piece in a manner which sounds quite close to the original, working mainly about the sounds and trying to make the song more up-to-date. The compilation is out by July, 1996 in the whole world together with In limine which is going to be available in Italy, too, only starting from September 1996