Mickey Finn
Dudek!

There is a musical Italy that overrates itself and another that underrates itself. There is a country that believes there is no difference between Shakira and Laura Pausini, in fact; a country that believes Le Vibrazioni are a rock band.
Elsewhere in the nation are artists capable of creating works as interesting and important as those overseas, if not more so, and it's almost embarrassing.

Among the many underground languages, not very profitable but of great artistic and "moral" satisfaction (same old story, I know), I was struck by the first work of a band of improvised music that references the courageous community of the independent label El Gallo Rojo Records: Mickey Finn. Mickey Finn was the name of a benefactor-bartender who, in the good old days of Prohibition America, used to drug some patrons to then finish them with complete leisure.

The lineup includes Giorgio Pacorig on keyboards, Danilo Gallo on acoustic bass, Zeno De Rossi on drums and Enrico Terragnoli on guitar.

Recorded during Walpurga's night in the spring of 2005 and then mixed at the blessed Artesuono studios by Stefano Ameri, in Cavalicco (UD), Mickey Finn (you're mickey finn, friend, a saying that means: you're done, friend) with their album Dudek! deliver a work that can also be seen as an homage to past lysergic worlds of a few decades ago, when drugs were effects without consequences except for intense bad trips or ineffective stuff.

The content is a cut-up of a single session collected by sound engineer Blaz Celarek in Ljubljana, and this cut-and-paste is just one of the many affinities with the parallel universe of the more morbid and unsettling electrified Miles, as in Get Up With It, to which Dudek! resembles in some ways. Unlike the Divine's work, Dudek! tends to lose itself without the will to find itself (it already understands the impossibility of that) and thus the "stuff" seems unwilling to take a complete form, organizing the spaces randomly. On the other hand, the drugs circulating today are different from those in the '70s... Here the synthetic effect is obsessive and languid without any programmatic intention unless latent.

Marcello Mastroianni, the rumba dedicated to the tender actor, seems like "I only have eyes for you" sung by a drunk soaked in armagnac.
Dudek! is in the realm of Franco Micalizzi.
Redrum!Redrum!Redrum! heads towards Calypso Freelimo and awaits Tricky's voice to complete the sabbatical trip hop.
The return of the giant squid with its Corman-like title tied to Smile dead smile are roasting in the deserts of Leone's Almeria and Dario Argento's Inferno. They could be the completion of a Canevari-style western with Bill Frisell as the engine of ideas.
Snoid, among the most Davis-like, not only for Kyle Gregory's double trumpet, a welcome and pertinent guest, but also for the apocalyptic stance of Davis in "Tutu".
The Hawaiian atoll of peace, serenity, garlands, and deserved, yearned-for peace and solitude of La centesima volta closes this initiatory journey between hell and paradise that is none other than the entire Dudek!

As can be verified by listening, this time the stuff was dropped "just right".

Terragnoli's guitar wanders like an old junk dealer greedy for treasures in landfills and attics; Danilo Gallo's bass has an obstinate antipathy for notes and dreams of turning into an old creaking and obscene-looking door; Giorgio Pacorig flutters on the keyboards in a sharp and lateral way creating dirt paths and shortcuts to the highway; the soft bass drum and powdery cymbals of Zeno De Rossi, however, are highways.

Have a good trip!!!

Mickey Finn: Dudek! (El Gallo Rojo Records, 2006)