CALIBRO 35 - Ellroy vs L.A.

It's become a veritable flood of releases from Calibro 35, a project that, when it kicked off back in 2007, seemed like a purely one-off affair, given the many other commitments of the musicians involved and the sheer specificity of the concept. Instead, album after album, tour after tour, Calibro 35 have come of age and keep churning out new material non-stop, often shifting the stylistic center of gravity of their sound, blending heterogeneous influences that range from afrobeat to Morricone, from space-rock to nu-soul. Increasingly involved in scoring soundtracks - and it could hardly be otherwise, given the quartet's natural bent - this time they've focused on writing twelve tracks for Francesco Zippel's documentary "Ellroy vs L.A.", dedicated to American noir writer James Ellroy and the city of Los Angeles.

Already a winner at the 2026 Nastro d'Argento awards in the "Cinema Spettacolo Cultura" category, the documentary sets out to paint an extreme, unfiltered self-portrait of Ellroy's passionate/conflicted relationship with Los Angeles. Calibro 35 engage with the imagery built up by the celebrated writer, repositioning themselves within the territory of a certain cinematic funk, this time letting jazz inflections, blaxploitation suggestions and contemporary urban rhythms filter into their mix. It's yet another display of skill from four musicians who nimbly and with great sensitivity go well beyond simply commenting on the images, turning the soundtrack into a central narrative element, at times conjuring up the most lysergic, hallucinated Los Angeles of the Sixties, the ferment but also the violence that played out along its streets.

There's plenty of funk here, with scorching atmospheres that closely recall the work done for the poliziottesco genre early in the band's career: "Vacation And Probation" deserves applause, but "Riots" also knows what it's doing. There are also several more delicate, nocturnal, enveloping tracks, as in the case of the two parts into which "The Big Nowhere" is split. Calibro 35 partly abandon the sun-drenched brilliance of armed Italian crime soundtracks to immerse themselves in the metropolitan darkness of Ellroy's Los Angeles, a city made of paranoia, hazy neon lights, corruption and unresolved secrets. It's a framework that fuses classic crime-jazz with strands of hypnotic psychedelia, with the way "Pacific Safari" unfolds being particularly outstanding in that regard.

Calibro 35 will be taking the album on tour, a run of shows called "Calibro 35 vs L.A.", which kicked off on September 24th in Turin and will continue with numerous dates both in Italy and in various European countries. The show is built as an ongoing dialogue between the music and the images projected on screen, alternating clips from an interview with James Ellroy, historic footage of the City of Angels and purpose-made visuals, while the band performs the soundtrack pieces interspersed with a selection drawn from their own back catalogue.
Below are the dates confirmed so far: European tour "Calibro 35 vs L.A.":
September 24: Turin, Italy @ Hiroshima Mon Amour
October 16: Mestre, Italy @ Teatro del Parco
October 22: Rome, Italy @ Fusolab / Biennale MArtelive
October 24: Cagliari, Italy @ Teatro delle Saline
November 4: London, United Kingdom @ Jazz Café
November 6: Madrid, Spain @ Babylon Club
November 7: Bergamo, Italy @ Druso
November 8: Milan, Italy @ Triennale Teatro
December 4: Ljubljana, Slovenia @ Gala Hala
December 5: Belgrade, Serbia @ Kc Grad
December 6: Zagreb, Croatia @ Vintage Industrial Bar
December 10: Genoa, Italy @ Teatro Verdi

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15/10/2026