BIO

(1997–2000)

The project came to life in October 1997 from the meeting of four friends sharing a passion for music, who began gathering in a garage to play together. 

The early sessions were exercises in total exploration: free, fluid improvisations imbued with psychedelic shades that immediately defined the group's stylistic identity.

The original lineup, christened Flavour, featured Francesco Francia on drums and vocals, Paolo Feliciotti on electric bass, Giovanni Armadoro on keyboards, and Nicola Cruciani on electric guitar and vocals. 

The band alternated brief live appearances with an intense songwriting routine. 

A distinctive feature of this early phase was a radical, experimental approach to improvisation: original tracks and covers were constantly deconstructed and expanded into sweeping instrumental suites where the creative flow developed and renewed itself in real time.

The most faithful testament to this season is the bootleg I Maius MCMXCVIII, a sonic cross-section collecting live recordings, rehearsal sessions, and a studio track. Initially released on cassette under the title Was it a cat I saW?, the tape was digitized in 2001. 

Following a brief series of concerts and a phase of creative stasis marked by internal tensions, Flavour's journey came to a halt around 2000.

(2002–2006)

Between 2002 and 2004, several attempts to reassemble the original lineup proved unsuccessful. Nicola Cruciani therefore decided to continue his path solo, transforming the project's identity into Flavour Sperimentale. 

This new incarnation was born both as a real band and as an open, collaborative laboratory, anticipating the use of early web platforms for artistic sharing.

While re-forming a stable band struggled to take off, the virtual laboratory flourished underground: dozens of drafts and research tracks were born, many destined to remain unreleased or published under the pseudonym Flavour Lab. 

The first official work under the name Flavour Sperimentale was the album ZU, centered on prepared piano studies and loops. Distributed via MySpace, the record received a niche reception due to its heavily experimental nature.

Simultaneously, an unexpected breakthrough occurred on the same platform: the bootleg of the original band's debut concert captured the interest of online listeners, surpassing 80,000 stream plays. In 2006, the second chapter arrived with Elektronische Musik, a work that decisively shifted the focus toward pure electronics, directly recalling the aesthetics and artistic approach of Karlheinz Stockhausen and twentieth-century historical avant-gardes.

Toward the end of 2006, the historical lineup attempted a brief reunion through a series of jam sessions, which nevertheless fizzled out within a couple of months. 

Cruciani's creative engine did not stop: joined by collaborators such as Monos, Pinasv, and Marbot, he released unofficial projects (later temporarily removed from the web), including the experimental electronic album Abstract like an Absence and By Hook or By Loop, a continuous electronic flow created without traditional instruments, relying solely on the overlapping of loops to emphasize the impersonal automation of future music.

(2008–2010)

After contributing tracks to avant-garde music compilations, Flavour Sperimentale charted a new course, returning to its psychedelic roots and drawing heavily from late-1960s Krautrock and the cosmic explorations of early Pink Floyd.

From this fascination took shape the Pink Trilogy (Trilogia Rosa), a discographic triptych that paid homage with clear awareness and a subtle vein of irony to the lisergic imaginary:

A Provision of Mirages (2008): blends raga suggestions and lisergic architectures, evoking the sprawling atmospheres of A Saucerful of Secrets, Indian mantras, and Krautrock free-form.

Madamadama (2009): an even more conceptual work structured as an analytical investigation into the expressive possibilities of individual instruments, ranging from piano scores to bucolic acoustic watercolors, from lap steel and electric guitar experiments to sound collages and rhythmic studies for drums and percussion.

Queen Moo Breakfast (2010): an album framed by two long instrumental suites interspersed with shorter, more intimate, and contemplative musical textures.

Once the trilogy concluded, Cruciani temporarily suspended the Flavour Sperimentale brand to dedicate himself to live performance with various local cover bands. 

Meanwhile, aided by the home-recording revolution, he continued to catalog ideas privately, refine production, and accumulate material for chapters to come.

(2015–2016)

The year 2015 marked a new phase of creative ferment. 

Under yet another pseudonym, Bar Psichedelico Cruciani, the artist gave life to Exalogia Colorum, an ambitious sonic fresco articulated in six albums, suspended on the boundary between ambient, electronic, and psychedelic music. 

Although also published under the Flavour Sperimentale name, the Exalogia ultimately remains a release exclusively credited to Bar Psichedelico.

The six chapters composing the work initially experienced an open and fluid genesis. 

Some works were made available in provisional versions, with alternative titles later withdrawn or subjected to a long revision process, finding a definitive setup only years later (now available on Bar Psichedelico's Bandcamp page). 

This discographic dynamism explains the inconsistencies or "ghost" titles present in many archives and databases dedicated to Flavour Sperimentale, Bar Psichedelico, and Flavour Lab.

Continuing the Bar Psichedelico output, 2016 saw the birth of the Trilogy of Absence (Quadrilogia dell'Assenza), a cycle of four albums entirely centered on the exploration of ambient and minimalist landscapes. 

Like the Exalogia, this project also went through an adjustment phase before crystallizing into its official sequence, published under the Bar Psichedelico name despite some versions bearing the Flavour Sperimentale moniker.

(2017–2019)

While Cruciani's path pushed deeper into ambient territory with his Bar Psichedelico projects, his journey crossed paths with Salerno-born artist Vincenzo Lardo (alias 240bpm). 

Having accidentally discovered 240bpm's album Welcome—itself an indirect tribute to Pink Floyd—and admiring its technical skill and polished sound, the collaboration 240bpm & Flavour (subsequently also 240bpm / Flavour Sperimentale) was born around mid-2016.

Cruciani's initial footprint was to create a monumental ambient suite of nearly fifty minutes, divided into four broad soundscapes dedicated to the primordial elements: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. 

Lardo, however, sensed and pushed for a different direction, reinterpreting the raw material and steering production toward more pop, airy, and melodic structures. 

This intuition, though reached through a long process and a compromise between the parties, marked a point of no return, establishing a clear turning point in Flavour Sperimentale's compositional style.

In October 2017, 240bpm & Flavour — In No Man's Land saw the light: an imposing 53-minute concept album. 

Alongside a broad journey through pop-rock, psychedelic, and ambient sounds, the album represented a decidedly larger format than previous works, which rarely exceeded half an hour. 

The record thrived on the fertile tension between two worlds: while preserving the narrative nature of a concept album with rich instrumental inserts, the work developed around immediate, pop-styled tracks. For the first time, vocal lines abandoned their role as simple transitions between instrumental textures to become the driving engine of the sound architecture.

The album's impact went beyond discographic boundaries: in 2018, Lardo directed a collective of students from the Liceo Severi in Salerno for the staging of a musical show freely adapted from the themes and scores of the record.

Meanwhile, the album's complex gestation and the ongoing "mutation" toward the song form pushed Cruciani to reopen a parenthesis of pure experimental research. 

Thus was born Эхо Космоса , a tribute album to the atmospheres of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, built upon synthetic, hypnotic, and extended soundscapes. 

This work represented the final chapter of Flavour Sperimentale's purely avant-garde phase: as early as 2019, Cruciani began laying the groundwork for a new compositional season, ready to unite past complexity with rock-pop energy.

(2019–2023)

At the beginning of 2019, the new pop-rock route was temporarily frozen by the return to the studio of Flavour's historical lineup. 

Although the band's reunion lasted only a few months, the renewed and brief synergy was enough to produce the material for a new music and a video.

After a few versions that included material from rehearsals with the band, Cruciani opted for an album centered on a long psychedelic suite. This new album, released in 2019 is titled Say Goodbye to Winter. 

Once the band chapter closed and the idea of bringing the historical lineup back live was shelved, Cruciani returned in autumn 2019 to focus on his compositions. 

This phase integrated Armadoro's contribution: the original band's keyboardist sent Cruciani a body of piano studies and sonatas. 

Initially conceived as a double album where Cruciani's tracks would serve as a counterpoint to Armadoro's classical roots, the piano material eventually found an independent dignity in the record Small Songs for a Smile, further expanding the expressive catalog of the Flavour Sperimentale brand.

In 2020, a new and ambitious synergy was born under the acronym M.E.N., which saw Cruciani team up once again with Vincenzo Lardo and progressive musician/composer Marco Grieco. 

The trio worked on the concept album Spillover, a complex work with very rapid realization (recorded during the March–April 2020 lockdown) and a long gestation for publication, finally seeing the light in October 2024 via the prog label Ma.Ra.Cash Records.

Meanwhile, eager to infuse fresh life and a decidedly pop imprint into his solo tracks, Cruciani renewed his collaboration with Lardo/240bpm. After two years of refinement and rethinking, You Were All Here was released in September 2021—a thematic album balanced between pop-rock and psychedelic shades. 

The new album's reception was strong, transcending national borders thanks to distribution via netlabels in France, the United States, Mexico, and Germany.

The year 2022 brought heavy personal bereavement: the passing of Cruciani's father put the very continuity of the project to a severe test. However, in 2023, a series of coincidences reignited the engines. 

Two members of the original band, Francia and Feliciotti, reunited with Cruciani to shoot the music video for a single extracted from You Were All Here; the rediscovered rapport pushed the three—despite Armadoro's absence—to return to the stage for three local concerts, held between August and September 2023. 

But the balance remained precarious: irreconcilable internal differences led to the definitive breakup of the band at the end of the dates. 

The reunion was nevertheless documented by recordings and videos. 

In 2024, Flavour Sperimentale released an additional publication, a work intimately dedicated to memory: The Infinite Horizon.

(2024–2026)

In 2024, Nicola Cruciani opened a new exploratory front, inaugurating a project dedicated to singer-songwriting and Italian pop music in collaboration with the collective Nik & i Patafisici. 

This encounter pushed him to further deepen the more immediate and lyrical component of his writing. 

The fruit of this synergy was the creation of the album La Giduglia, anticipated in July 2026 by the release of its first official single, Clitennestra, published by the Bit Sound label.

Also in 2024, the partnership with Lardo was renewed: invited as a guest to the presentation of the latter's two new solo works (Old Shots and New Shots), Cruciani shared the stage with him for a live set tracing the highlights of their multi-year shared journey.

Creative momentum continued in 2025 with the release of A Fleeting Sense of Perception, a work synthesizing the project's various souls: a fluid alternation of rock hints, psychedelic shades, pop openings, and ambient rarefactions. 

To seal a decade of artistic complicity, Unplugged 0808 (recorded live the previous August) was released between late 2025 and early 2026. Utilizing only acoustic guitars and voice, the album stripped Cruciani and Lardo's tracks of all production trimmings, returning them to their original essence and imparting new intensity and transparency to the lyrics.

Throughout 2026, new conceptual challenges took center stage, with two new Bar Psichedelico projects (one based on poetry readings and another mixing electronic influences with psychedelia). 

It stood as a deliberately open construction site devoid of a definitive finish line—a faithful mirror of the entire parabola of Flavour Sperimentale and the hyper-active Bar Psichedelico: a corpus of works in continuous metamorphosis, cyclically revisited, expanded, and reworked, where the search for the perfect form is not a destination, but a horizon in perpetual motion.

Precisely out of this enormous flow of albums and their difficult catalogization, in September 2026 Flavour Sperimentale's discography of twelve studio albums underwent the Redux project—a complete reworking, both in artwork and contents, designed to give a definitive form to the catalog. Bar Psichedelico's catalog was also finally organized and published on its respective page.

Also in 2026, new publications saw the light, this time under the name Nicola Cruciani. 

These consisted of pop songs in Italian, currently gathered on a SoundCloud profile. The recordings of various band concerts were instead archived on Internet Archive.