AUDIO

From the beautiful city of Padua in North-Eastern Italy comes this long forgotten band, formed in 1981.Audio suffered from numerous line-up changes throughout their long career,five of the nine founding members though , singer Mario Casellato, guitarists Gabriele Zarzi and Alberto Lazzarin, bassist Massimo Durante and sax/flute player Roberto Milesi, carried the torch almost during the whole career of the act.However Audio did not come up with an official album during their heydays and only in 1993 a Mellow Records self-titled CD saw the light, containing recordings from Audio's live gigs between 1981 and 1984.

Not a good thing to almost immediately notice that the production and sound of these rare recordings is below average.Muddy, with some instruments like the bass almost buried, and pretty annoying in general.The music holds some interest, especially on the later tracks, as the opening ones are in a Melodic Rock vein with occasional bursts into Horn Rock, Soul, Jazz and Blues with some of the guitar and sax work being often captivating, but overall the performance and inspiration are less than even mediocre.By the middle of this release the tracks breathe some nice air.''Sogni di vetro'', ''Spazi'' and ''UF-one'' sound like a mix of Jazz-Rock, light Symphonic and Canterbury Prog with again saxes on the forefront, good background synths, interesting guitars and even some delicate flutes, not particularly exciting but definitely on the right side.Still the production is a problem and the vocals are questionable, depending on the listener whether he likes them or not.The longest composition, the 10-min. ''Fermati se puoi'' finally sees the band in full form.A full-prog arrangement with a strong Canterbury flavor, eventually the band offers tons of great interplays between guitars, saxes and flutes with nice background synths and memorable breaks, somewhere between HATFIELD AND THE NORTH, NATIONAL HEALTH and HAPPY THE MAN.''Stanza chiusa'' is quite a different beast, the most energetic yet melodic composition by far, much based on electric guitars and vocals but with some good inspiration throughout, not far from ATON'S style.The closing short cut ''A sweet sad song'', the only English-sung track of the album, is just an acoustic ballad with supporting saxes, not of any interest.

Two great compositions along with plenty of incohesive material does not complete a trully recommended release.However the obscurity surrounding the band along with the interesting parts of the album make ''Audio'' as good collector's item.For fans of varied Italian Soft Prog with occasional explosions of adventurous music.