Calibro 35
Calibro 35

Italians do it better: part 1

Hands up, this (if not) is a robbery (almost there).

How I invent the supergroup without supernames, how I create the supermusic without a supercomposition (or a superpromotion?). Work coordinated by producer Tommaso Colliva, it all starts from Enrico Gabrielli, an excessive passion for winds and a brief stint with Afterhours, from which he left in April 2009. Then the others arrive, one by one: Massimo Martellotta to shake the six strings, Luca Cavina behind the drums, Enrico Rondanini on the bass. Here comes the passion for the Italian crime films of the '70s, with the threatening titles and Tomas Milian high out of his mind beating up the cops. Got it, right? Don't think of it as a Tarantino-style thing, at least not on this occasion, where it's not needed. They are musicians and remain musicians, beyond personal passions.

So, the flame: a sincere and passionate tribute to the great masters and composers of the time, who shaped the sound of those films. Not-just-Morricone, but also the De Angelis brothers, Umiliani, Ortolani, Bacalov, Osanna, you name it. A mine of nuggets that the average stupid Italian looks at with contempt: they, who are not average stupid Italians, thanks to Calibro, dive into it headfirst.

What to say? The treatment these themes undergo makes you grab the back of the CD and check its origin one, two, three, ten times. Revitalized, for what they might have lost in energy, made even more beautiful by a series of calculated adjustments - an intense use of keyboards, rampant bass and guitar, rhythms that deconstruct on multiple levels -, cleaned from the anachronistic patina they might (but not necessarily) have been covered with, the thirteen tracks (plus bonus track) of "Calibro 35" chase each other frantically on prog-funk tracks that shine in the dark, assaulted by electronic bursts, spun around until they become dizzy like little, big jazz spinning tops. It really doesn't matter (not to me at all) that, reduced to the bare essentials, this is almost entirely a cover album: the approach with which they are tackled and reinterpreted each time makes it by far one of the most exciting, thrilling, and enduring listens of recent years.

Some examples? My favorite is "Summertime Killer": a siren wailing back and forth for over four minutes, with breathless instrumental evolutions clashing, fist closed and knife between teeth, in a suffocating series of violent blows, derailing for Martellotta's absolutely acid touch. But I could make you a very long list, with plenty of good reasons. Only the reinterpretation of the main theme of "Indagine Su Un Cittadino Al Di Sopra Di Ogni Sospetto", very faithful to the original, sounds a bit static and unresolved. As for the rest? Driving funk cuts, bitten by choruses and handclapping, rolling down a slope ("Gangster Story", hilarious!), jam restoring maximum freedom ("Bouchet Funk"), bombastic slivers diluted in wah-wah ("Shake Balera", from "La ragazza con la pistola"), long psychedelic hallucinations for lysergic keyboards ("Spiralys"), even the historic "Milano Calibro 9", rendered with hallucinatory philological expertise, in a prog-noise ascent.

I bet something important that, whatever happens, you're still not convinced. So let's go, another round, another run, with no time to stop: the very rare "La Mala Ordina", with almost Motown spices, whose original was lost in a warehouse fire over thirty years ago, flattens the surrounding area with strokes of pure suburban noir. The nudity of "Una Stanza Vuota", entrusted practically to the guitar alone, or the turbulent jazz rock of "Trafelato", a Morricone memento with more than one reminiscence of the experiences in Argento's "Il gatto a nove code", are almost impressive if compared. The excavating bass of "Italia A Mano Armata" provides deep dynamism to a very tense, nervous music. And why remain silent about the two overexposed originals, "Notte In Bovisa" (another, very dirty funk number with a biting riff) or "La Polizia S'Incazza", with its essential free apparatus?

Here we catch our breath, and we stop. A special thank you at the end to Roberto Dell'Era, for confirming to us once again that "dulcis in fundo" really is the best part of the whole...

P.S. The new album, out for a couple of weeks, is, in some ways, even better. To the wall!