Spirale

The Milan based imprint, Dialogo, returns with the first ever vinyl reissue of Spirale’s lone 1974 self-titled LP. Resting at a fascinating juncture between progressive and free jazz, it was years ahead of its time when it first appeared, rendering it to the shadows for decades, before its ultimate ascent to becoming one of the great holy grails of Italian Jazz prog. This is a release known mostly by Italian progressive rock lovers, since its sound can be easily associated to the jazz-rock delivered by the way more popular Napoli Centrale and Perigeo – but also to the ‘fundamentals’ Dedalus, Arti & Mestieri, Uno, if not Maad, Nadma or Aktuala, or even the lesser known Bauhaus for instance
But playing this kind of music and trying to release an album in the first half of the ’70s in Italy was also incredibly hard and courageous: Spirale, in fact, was one of the many bands that lived a very short life, before splitting up and disappear forever. Spirale were an Italian quintet from Rome, consisting of Gaetano Delfini (wind instruments, vocals, percussion), Giancarlo Maurino (saxophone, flute, percussion), Corrado Nofri (piano, marimba, mbira, siren, Jew’s harp), Giuseppe Caporello (contrabass, guitar, percussion) and Giampaolo Ascolese (drums) who released a single eponymous album in 1974. Spirale was originally released on the International King record label, thanks to Mario Schiano, a free-jazz saxophonist who discovered the band, and producer Toni Cosenza, who included the album in the ‘King Jazz-Line’ series
Consisting of just four tracks, most of which taken by the 13-minute long “Cabral, Anno 1” and the marvellous 17-minute “Peperoncino (Cose vecchie, cose nuove)”, Spirale is an incredibly balanced and flowing record that sounds still fresh and inspired even today, and it’s a shame that it has remained hidden and overlooked for such a long time. Moreover, it is characterized by that undescribable and particular Mediterranean flavour that only Italian musicians were able to obtain. This beautiful album is of course immensely rare in its original edition, and is now finally reissued on Dialogo record label in a faithful restored version that will satisfy any collectors who have waited for years for this beauty to see the light again!