PFM

During the opening years of the 1970s, PFM emerged as Italy’s foremost progressive rock ensemble. Their international profile might never have developed beyond national borders without a contract on Manticore, the label founded by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Compared with their German peers, the band’s music drew more explicitly on sources from the pre-classical period. Along with synthesizers and additional electric keyboards, violin and flute—chiefly the recorder—functioned as core instrumental voices. The abbreviation PFM itself stood for Premiata Forneria Marconi, the bakery whose early patronage supplied the group’s original name.