Opus Avantra

from the release add: An astounding Deluxe Box set which includes five LPs, six CDs, two 7" records, a DVD, a book, a signed poster, a limited print, a peacock feather, and a 50th anniversary pin, dedicated to the output of the legendary project founded in 1973 and led over the decades by Donella Del Monaco and Tisocco himself. It’s a truly revelatory immersion into a world of sound that is mostly known beyond Italy’s borders for the band’s appearance on the legendary Nurse With Wound list, if at all, making it a rare chance to take the full plunge via one of the most beautiful objects we’ve gotten our hands on all year. Unmissable for fans of Franco Battiato, Area, Maria Monti, Slapp Happy, etc., and more broadly the strange and wonderful conjunctions between the contexts of experimentalism and pop, we can’t recommend this one enough. Founded in 1973 by the classically trined singer Donella Del Monaco, the pianist and composer, Alfredo Tisocco, the philosopher, Giorgio Bisotto, and Renato Marengo, joined by a rotating cast of guest musicians, the band Opus Avantra’s output - largely appearing during the 1970s and then sporadically over the decades sine - rests in the uncategorizable, liminal zone between rock, jazz, classical music, and the avant-garde, drawing upon each to culminate as a singular, hybrid of sound that rests within the larger body of Italian Progressive Rock and “Rock in Opposition” of the era. Initially entering the world in a flurry of activity via two full-lengths - 1974's “Opus Avantra Donella Del Monaco”, and 1975's “Lord Cromwell Plays Suite for Seven Vices” - as well as two 7" records, 1974’s “Il Pavone” and 1975’s “Allemanda” - all of which are included in perfect reproduction within the “Opus Avantra Box Collection”, the band’s name offers clues to its core ideology - Opus (opera) Avan (avantgarde) and Tra (tradition) - of being a gesture of an avant-gardism rooted in tradition, culminating as a fusion of symphonic pop, elements of various musical traditions from across the globe, jazz, and experimental music that searched for common ground and a thread that bound them together. The “Opus Avantra Box Collection” gathers the majority of Opus Avantra’s known output, and unquestionably what is their most important body of work, beginning with the already mentioned albums “Opus Avantra Donella Del Monaco” and “Lord Cromwell Plays Suite for Seven Vices”, as well as the two 7" singles, “Il Pavone” and “Allemanda” - all of them released between 1974 and 1975 - as well as 1989's “Strata”, 1995's “Lyrics”, 2021's “Loucus. Nel Luogo Magico”. In addition to this, the set also includes a CD collecting excerpts from various live concerts, a DVD, “Viaggio Immaginario”, capturing the band live in Tokyo in 2008, and a 44-page book, a signed poster, a limited print, a peacock feather, and a 50th anniversary pin. Arguably the best way to frame the band’s debut LP, “Opus Avantra Donella Del Monaco”, and its follow up, “Lord Cromwell Plays Suite for Seven Vices”, is alongside the output of roughly contemporary artists like Scott Walker, Franco Battiato, Maria Monti, Robert Wyatt, and David Axelrod, as well as bands like Henry Cow, Slapp Happy, Area, etc., who operated as a bridge between the pop realm and more adventurous creative explorations. Both of these albums, as well as the two roughly parallel singles, “Il Pavone” and “Allemanda”, firmly sit within what can be recognised as a popular idiom - embracing a slightly expanded notion of song, at times symphonic in scale and make up and others throbbing, elemental prog - before often departing, in moments and movements, into sprawling expanses of dissonance and complex structural arrangements that are wholly bound to the avant-garde and jazz. As might be expected, with the 1970s behind them by the time 1989's “Strata” appeared, Opus Avantra had evolved and refined. The album is a varied black diamond of sonic and creative collisions, ranging from the solo, operatic voice of Donella Del Monaco, to furious explosions of avant-gardism and experimentation, having almost entirely jettisoned the elements of popular music that had roughly located their first time LPs and singles. 1995's “Lyrics” confirms this evolution and refinement in even more developed states, encountering something much more constrained in its focus that feels far more connected to avant-garde classical music - Del Monaco’s voice soaring and dancing amongst Tisocco’s tense arrangements - than anything else they had previously produced. It is this general trajectory that defines their final effort to date, 2021's “Loucus. Nel Luogo Magico”, but here we encounter Del Monaco’s voice flirting within a greater sense of ambience and luxuriating harmonics, while reintroducing elements of popular song that reference the proximity within which the band had begun. ARTIS Records’ “Opus Avantra Box Collection” is a truly monumental feat, drawing our ears and minds into the radical gestures