Pantarei
Radio Buddha

THE REVIEW

A CD that arrived by chance. De-baser is starting to play these kinds of tricks. I don't have much time these days so I convert it to mp3 to listen to it while I'm out and about (a bit skeptical, but who are these Pantarei?).
I'm dozing on the bus... play... percussion, a rhythm that seems like a heartbeat, a melodious almost shamanic voice begins a ballad in Calabrian; however...

I move on to the second track, the rhythm increases, it sounds like taranta, the lyrics (I understand little) seem like a folk song (I'll have to listen to it again with the booklet in front of me), and so from song to song I discover an album where Leon, an excellent Calabrian percussionist, along with his colleague Fabrizio Cesare Allah who handles the lyrics, sing about southern Calabria (and beyond) in the same vein as Almamegretta: foundations that draw from the Bristol sound, but with a definite lean towards Mediterranean and North African sounds.
They claim to have synthesized a new genre, taranta-dub, from the fusion of the two eponymous genres and they provide us with an example in at least a couple of tracks. The lyrics are sometimes light (Fimmini), sometimes serious (Trusciallah, against the bridge over the Strait of Messina), sometimes ironic (Calabrisenglish), but never banal. I believe the real secret of this record lies in a new fragile balance between electronic sounds, percussion, folk melodies with the harshness of the Calabrian dialect.

I believe that live, even though the album has great production, they are even more engaging, and I can already imagine seeing people jump in an endless live version of the title track...