N.A.D.M.A.

A masterpiece of Italian ’70s free-jazz, N.A.D.M.A.’s Uno Zingaro Di Atlante Con Un Fiore A New York is, by any measure, a super rare and sought-after record (2nd hand copies trade for over £170) which makes this first ever vinyl repress fairly invaluable to free-jazz nuts and investigators of this prime period of Italian music.

In five parts, Franco Pardi (Alto saxophone, Bugle), Otto Davis Corrado (Baritone and Soprano Sax), Mino Ceretti (Contrabass), Ines Klok (Harp, Tmbura, Violin), Davide Mosconi (Piano), Gustavo Bonora (Viola, Violin), and Marino Vismara (Violoncello) democratically hinge around percussionist and band-leader Marco Cristofolini, falling well off-centre of jazz convention in head-melting variations of Afro-American and Indian lines of thought that sprang from the well of ‘60s jazz.

“Within the history of the Italian avant-garde, N.A.D.M.A is as obscure as they come. Mosconi later came to note as a solo artist and photographer, and Pardi and Vismara within the worlds of visual arts, but beyond a scattering of releases, Uno Zingaro Di Atlante Con Un Fiore A New York is the lone document to have surfaced from most of its contributors. Details surrounding the band and the record are incredible scarce.

Despite the mystery, with hindsight, they rise as a definitive gesture of the movement to which they belonged. The Italian avant-garde is among the most rigorously democratic of any of the movements within 20th century sound. Like their more well know peers in Aktuala, N.A.D.M.A grew from this spirit, but realized it in far more radical forms. They are among the wildest of those connected to the movements of free-improvisation and jazz. The group's lone 1973 release is unlike anything else of its day. Soulful as hell, it blends a remarkable range of instrumentation and cross-cultural reference -- a wild imagining of the potentialities of modal folk traditions, gathered in the writhing aggressive form of free-jazz. It is an album so remarkable and striking -- among the greatest and most accomplished European efforts within the form -- that there is no explanation for why it has remained so unacknowledged through the years. It is a towering, bubbling, brilliant achievement in sound.

Uno Zingaro Di Atlante Con Un Fiore A New York is among the greatest documents of Italian music, and among the most important within the canon of European free-jazz. As seminal as they come. Not to be missed on any count.”