CALIBRO 35 - Exploration

Adventurous as ever, Calibro 35 continue their explorative path, showing great personality not only in tracking down and philologically reviving tracks largely unknown to most, but also in tackling very well-known themes that have, over time, become part of the Italian popular imagination. Their technical mastery and the rigor with which they perform these pieces, combined with the creative freedom that lets them make any composition their own — for instance by improvising new solos — are this time put above all at the service of extremely famous TV themes. The new Calibro 35 record is in fact defined by three reinterpretations that will sound familiar to anyone who was a child or teenager in the 1980s. How could anyone forget the closing theme of "90° Minuto"? A Sunday afternoon must for every football fan: "Discomania", the irresistible jazz-funk groove composed by Piero Umiliani, kicked in every Sunday after the goals and highlights from the Serie A pitches had been shown, back when all the matches were played at the same time.

"Jazz Carnival", again jazz-funk, this time stamped with the sound of Brazil's Azymuth, was instead the theme of "Mixer", the Rai current-affairs show hosted in studio by Giovanni Minoli, while "Lunedì Cinema", the result of the meeting between Lucio Dalla and Stadio (recorded here with a spot-on featuring from Marco Castello), introduced the Monday night film on Rai1 every week. Memories of evenings spent with loved ones, back when no one could have imagined the flood of digital platforms that today have endlessly expanded the options for choosing what to watch.

Calibro 35 are children of that era, and they reinterpret these immortal tracks with genuine involvement and passion, grafting their own identity onto them, no longer seeking an educational purpose but paying tribute to authors dear to them, testing themselves on material that is certainly demanding.

Not only drawing on TV flashbacks, but also returning to their old love, cinema, through a second tribute to composer Piero Umiliani, who wrote "Gassman Blues" for Mario Monicelli's "I soliti ignoti", with a reworking of "Mission Impossible", the ultra-famous soundtrack of the action movie series starring Tom Cruise, and with the disco-funk of "Coffy Is The Color", written by Roy Ayers and retrieved from a blaxploitation film.

And just to leave nothing out, here are a couple of covers of all-time classics too: Herbie Hancock's seminal "Chamaleon" and the psych undertones highlighted in Bob James's "Nautilus".

To complete the circle, three original tracks were a must, slotting in perfectly alongside the covers performed. Such is the case with the opener, the sweeping "Reptile Strut", which recalls the poliziottesco themes that marked Calibro 35's early days, the more descriptive "Pied de Poule", and the exquisite "The Twang", which wouldn't look out of place in a Quentin Tarantino film.

Ride the wave of great music

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21/06/2025