Banco (Banco del Mutuo Soccorso album)

Around 1975 the band attempted to make inroads outside their native Italy and released this English sung album on Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Manticore Records label. The album was largely a compilation, consisting of re-recordings of songs from their first three albums, with the exception of one track. The material from the second of the band's albums, Darwin! (1972) was completely omitted, however, while the only original track, with Italian lyrics, was "L'albero del pane." All the songs were re-recorded specially, with new arrangements, with the exception of the concluding piece "Traccia II", which was identical to the original recording.

The songs were translated into English by the American musician Marva Jan Marro. To promote the album, the band toured the US and UK with limited success.[2]

In 2010 a new, re-mastered, edition of the album marked its British debut on CD and continued a comprehensive series of releases of the Manticore catalogue.[3] The music was remastered by Ben Wiseman at The Audio Archiving Company.