Storia Di Un Minuto

The debut album from Milan’s Premiata Forneria Marconi, or PFM as they were often known outside of Italy, is perhaps the best gateway into the country’s densely prolific progressive rock scene of the 1970s. In a previous life the group had been pickup musicians for Italian pop singers, but the influence of new UK prog acts King Crimson and Jethro Tull led them to employ their musical talents in more highfalutin pursuits, and after the acquisition of Italy’s first Moog synthesizer they became arguably the key players in the burgeoning Rock Progressivo Italiano movement.

Debut album Storia di un minuto topped the Italian charts in 1972, and to this day it still sounds remarkable. The group’s best-known track, “È festa,” starts like Steely Dan, quickly goes galloping into a Focus-like riff-o-rama, before landing in a trippy collision of spaced-out vocals and lo-fi grooves which suggest Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker was listening to this record a lot while woodshedding his own 21st century psychedelia.

The two-part “Dove…Quando…” moves from gorgeous and pastoral, almost medieval-like orchestral folk into a frantic burst of complex, piano-driven jazz fusion that owes more Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis than to Yes or Genesis, while “Grazie davvero” finds a middle point between Kurt Weill and that year’s The Dark Side Of The Moon. A masterpiece, and in a genre where entire sides of vinyl can be eaten up by indulgent improvisations, the longest track here runs to six minutes forty.