BANDA MAJE - Costa Sud

It's certainly striking to come across bands, like Banda Maje, still capable of living music at a slow pace, without rushing or anxiety, and above all without bowing to the supersonic rules of today's market. "Costa Sud" arrives five years after "Ufo Bar", the album with which the Salerno-based collective led by Giuseppe Maiellano first made its mark, unfurling its nostalgic scores somewhere between Piccioni, Tempera, vintage funk and the warmest soul. A manifesto album for a Campania scene in which bands like Nu Genea and multi-instrumentalists like Bassolino stand as other key names tied to reviving sounds closely related to the atmospheres of the unforgettable soundtracks by masters like Bixio or the aforementioned Tempera and Piccioni. But also the music of the Maghreb as a second guiding light.

"Costa Sud" continues the path laid out from the start, but softens it with more dreamlike moments, suspended somewhere out of time, featuring the equally unforgettable Peppino Di Capri, gracefully covered in "Mo...", and references like Sorrenti or Bongusto popping up slyly between an afro rhythm and a roguish melody, a passionate sax and a keyboard just ecstatic enough to lull the senses and something else besides.
The Costa Sud imagined by Banda Maje is nevertheless an enchanted space, a sort of paved oasis dubbed "Salifornia" for the occasion, across which hundreds of Alfa Suds go speeding by — the car the Salerno band pays tribute to both in the title and in the cover shot. A vehicle that stood for a possible rebirth of southern Italy between the 70s and the early 80s, but at the same time also a symbol of quiet failure, as shown at the time by the rust that would reliably form just a few months after purchase on most of the cars rolling out of the Pomigliano plant.

"But if truth is beauty and beauty is truth, with the right eyes you can catch the beautiful and the poetic even beneath a blanket of moral and material filth," explains Maiellano, echoing a famous line by John Keats. Words that introduce the soul of an album made up of eight tracks weaving together jazz, fusion and soulful sounds ("Jet Lag"), elsewhere samba and juju ("Samba Maje"), while in some passages they head straight for sunset, that romantic embrace on the beach between two lovers that framed so many ads and soap operas of an ever more distant era — almost as if trying to write a new score for "Emmanuelle", the 1974 erotic film directed by Just Jaeckin starring Sylvia Kristel.

"Costa Sud" is a gentle journey through time, aboard a car that shaped the imagination of an era when everything still seemed inexhaustible, and therefore possible. A daydream to live out with a Martini in hand, letting go of the present and drifting on sounds we thought were lost, head naturally "’ncopp ‘e nuvole" (up in the clouds), echoing the closing lines of the last track, "Lovebossa". Which is already, in itself, an excellent tonic.

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03/08/2026