Massimo Zamboni, guitarist of CCCP Fedeli alla Linea, and his bandmates have resurfaced after nearly two decades with a reunion in 2024. While they haven't released new compositions, they've offered fans the ultimate live experience following an exhibition in Reggio Emilia, albeit at a premium price.
CCCP Fedeli alla Linea, though perhaps not the most innovative post-punk band in Italy (a title arguably belonging to Gaznevada), was undoubtedly the most captivating to audiences. Their references to Cold War-era Communism in the Western world positioned them as the quintessential anti-establishment voice for many young people.
The album under review, "Altro Che Nuovo Nuovo" (Universal, 2024), captures CCCP's first public live performance from 1983 in Reggio Emilia. This release offers several intriguing aspects: it features a live drummer instead of the drum machine that would later become their signature sound, and includes previously unreleased material, such as a cover of D.A.F.'s "Kebab Träume," the unheard tracks "Onde" and "Sexy Soviet," and early versions of songs that would be reworked in later years.
While the live drums occasionally struggle to keep pace with the guitar lines, explaining the band's future shift to electronic percussions, these imperfections don't significantly detract from the listening experience.
CCCP Fedeli alla Linea has faced criticism for prioritizing financial gain over artistic principles, evidenced by high reunion ticket prices and their signing with a multinational label in 1986. This situation draws parallels to Joe Strummer's experience with The Clash, though Italy lacked an alternative like Crass.
Unlike Strummer, CCCP's lead singer Giovanni Lindo Ferretti has, in recent years, embraced Christianity and adopted a stance reminiscent of Morrissey. However, it's important to note that CCCP's early works, particularly their first two EPs ("Ortodossia I" and "II") and debut album ("Affinità/Divergenze"), provide an authentic snapshot of Italy's counterculture during that era.
With CCCP's entire discography now reissued and remastered, "Altro Che Nuovo Nuovo" serves as an excellent entry point for post-punk enthusiasts looking to explore scenes beyond the US and UK. This live album offers a glimpse into a past that continues to resonate, as evidenced by the current resurgence of post-punk bands, underscoring CCCP's enduring influence.
Fontaines D.C.'s fourth album, "Romance," marks a triumphant evolution for the Irish post-punk band. Released under XL Recordings, this record stands as potentially their finest work to date, showcasing them at the peak of their creative powers.
Initially, one might draw parallels to Idles' recent release "Tangk" (Partisan Records, 2024). Both albums explore themes of love—an atypical subject for post-punk groups historically rooted in social critique. However, "Romance" transcends simple comparisons, carving its own distinct path.
What sets "Romance" apart is its ambitious sonic palette. The band ventures beyond their usual instrumentation, incorporating piano, Mellotron, Minimoog and Ring Modulators. These elements, combined with collaborations featuring a string quartet on tracks like "Desire," "In The Modern World," "Starbuster," and "Horseness Is the Whatness," create a rich, textured soundscape.
Producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Blur, Depeche Mode) lends his expertise, resulting in complex arrangements that elevate the album. The influence of classic British pop and even The Beatles can be heard, pushing Fontaines D.C. into new territory while maintaining their core identity.
While love is a central theme, "Romance" offers more than simple ballads. "Starbuster," the lead single, delves into the experience of panic attacks. The album also serves as a tribute to recently departed Irish music icons Sinéad O'Connor and Shane MacGowan, acknowledging artists who embodied punk's spirit of authenticity and defiance.
What's remarkable about "Romance" is how organic this transformation feels. Rather than a calculated move to avoid criticism of stagnation, the album radiates with genuine artistic growth. The band's commitment to their craft is evident in every track, resulting in one of the year's most captivating listening experiences.
"Romance" represents a significant milestone in Fontaines D.C.'s career. It demonstrates their ability to push boundaries while staying true to their ethos. The album's booklet photos capture a band revelling in their artistic journey, mirroring the listener's enjoyment. With this release, Fontaines D.C. have not only created their best work to date but have also laid an exciting foundation for future musical explorations.
A return to spirituality in jazz was clearly tangible since Eric Mingus, Charles’ son, released a record titled "Too Many Bullets, Not Enough Souls” (2002 Some Records, re-released in 2021 by Zoar Records). The collaborator of Elliott Sharp (who also produced this album), Hal Willner, Karen Mantler and many others, was clearly pointing out what we were missing at that point in history.
The duty of a spiritual jazz, or of a spiritual crossover between genres, was taken more recently on the shoulder of musicians such the late great Jaimie Branch and of Kamasi Washington, that few months ago released this interesting LP titled “Fearless Movement” (2024, Young). The album opens with an invocation to God both in English and in an ancient Ethiopian language. But it’s the tone of Washington saxophone that sometimes makes you think of a spiritual musician such as Pharoah Sanders.
Clearly Kamasi Washington is not a copycat, his style is evidently his own, but there is something in his attempts to launch ‘that’ cry over the obstacles that in a way reminds us of John Coltrane’s pupil, exactly as the beginning of this record can remind us of many Coltrane’s moments on records such as the beginning of Om, or of Kulu Sé Mama. And even if Washington’s eloquence on saxophone is more linear than Sanders’, nonetheless his approach is similar, being a clear spiritual invocation.
“Lesanu”, the first track on the album, is clearly devoted to the Aethiopian music of Getatchew Mekurya, Mulatu Astatké and similar masters of ethio-jazz. Sometimes featuring horns speaking in tongues, sometimes featuring keyboard passages or tenor solos, the piece is possibly a prayer, an attempt to create a ‘new song’ for God and so it is a manifesto, as if Kamasi Washington were saying is music is ‘new music’, a new mix between jazz, hip hop, soul, and music to dance with, more than an intellectual experience. Anyway, we’ll see.
In an interview Washington recalled his aunt who was babysitting him and his brother making them dance, and if this is the idea underlying all the album, another recollection from the childhood is the second track “Asha The First”, whose melody was created by Washington’s daughter while experimenting at the piano. The little girl is present also on the cover of the album along with his dad. The song is immersed in a 1970s atmosphere but featuring singing and rapping by Thundercat, Taj and Ras Austin, and a beautiful electric bass solo that is an homage possibly to Stanley Clarke.
And if “Computer Love” is a cover of the soul combo The Zapp, from their fourth album “The New Zapp IV U”, “The Visionary” is a less common group improvisation just before “Get Lit”, a mid-tempo featuring the soulful voice of George Clinton and that of a younger but incisive D Smoke. “Dream State”, featuring André 3000 on flutes, has this short psychedelic intro before a small alto saxophone solo who introduces the song with a gentle touch. Washington shows us his expressive ductility at alto before the drums start signing the temperature of this song, calm but decidedly syncopated.
Finally, “Together” and “The Garden Path” close the first LP with an intriguing ballad with BJ The Chicago Kid at the voice and a hymn full of wah-wah guitars, choirs, and horn solos. At this point one might wonder about his own experience as a listener before passing to the second LP, even because the music is full of references to the past decades of the African-American music history, and you can also ask yourself if it all has a value nowadays in this returning. Obviously Kamasi Washington, his octet and entourage are searching for a commercial affirmation but there’s something original in this music or it is only a good summary of the past glories?
I know it is a strange question nowadays that everything of value has a strong tie with the past, but obviously we want to understand if what we’re listening to is in a way a small step ahead or if it is a mere reproduction of the past. Maybe the second LP can be of help for us? Let’s give it a try. “Interstellar Peace”, with its almost Coltrane-inspired title, is another piano melody with the horns creating a small hymnodic and melancholic choir before some trumpet and saxophone intense solos.
Then it’s time for “Road To Self (KO)”, with his almost minimalistic keyboards intro before a piano melody surrounded by the horns, while the drums depict a circular rhythm, leaving us with the feeling that this is not a record of solos emerging from a given structure, as in (too?) many jazz records, but an attempt to create a sonic landscape full of different meanings. One can appreciate pieces like this more than the others, as it happens to the writer of this review, but that’s it.
“Lines in the Sand” is another ballad where you can appreciate both the foreground and the background, the vocal melody and the horns’ countermelody, in a quiet atmosphere, with only one question in mind: what if these pieces were shorter and less complicated by solos? In a way, if I remember well, Albert Ayler’s “New Grass” was an album containing pieces from 3 to 5 minutes, and it worked well even if it was accused to be a commercial album.
Sometimes longer structures, like pieces of 12 minutes, aren’t paying well if they’re not able to convey tensions and releases in an intriguing way. Being too much redundant is the defect I can find in this music. Things go a little worse with the last “Prologue”, an homage to a beautiful melody by Astor Piazzolla where you can listen to all the weaknesses of the arrangements by Kamasi Washington.
In this piece you can find that ‘Seventies touch’ as something little bit out of time. This effect is propagating during the listening to all the album. But there is a sincerity in the music of Washington that is something I want to save. So in the end, all we can do is waiting for future releases and hope in a more contemporaneity of arrangements and of inspiration.
Spirituality is good, and since I’m reading Sun Ra biography by John F. Szwed in these days I can say it’s also something that has precious roots, but it must become a personal quest, otherwise the risk is that of following the leaders’ principles instead of becoming truly yourself. And what can be applied to spirituality, can also be applied to music. Washington is a musician coming from a noble tradition and with a personal touch as an instrumentalist, but he needs to rejuvenate some arrangements and/or become less verbose.
For the moment this album is something worth listening, as it is also last year output by Jaimie Branch “Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die (Word War)” (International Anthem, 2023), but everyone has to understand that the sound of music defines an era, and we can’t really take back the past in the present times. We have to move forward, defining this era with music for our times. This is unluckily not what happens with this album, and it’s a pity because the source of inspiration is original, and the musicians involved are great. But being contemporaneous, for an artist, is not optional.
There are albums or pieces of music that must arrive at the right time to touch your heart. That's why, even though I've known about this music for a couple of months, I decided to write about it only today. "Why" is a short but compelling title. It challenges listeners to think beyond conventional boundaries, immersing them in the flux of past and present while transcending societal norms. In essence, it embodies what every piece of improvised music should aspire to achieve.
Joel Futterman, like William Parker, is a veteran of free jazz. Born in Chicago in 1946, Futterman was influenced by Clarence Eugene Shaw, a trumpeter and student of Gurdjieff's Fourth Way. Musically, Futterman was a devoted student of Coltrane, Dolphy, and Monk. One striking aspect of his style is that, while sounding contemporary, his melodic approach—even when pointillistic and abstract—sets him apart from Cecil Taylor and other contemporary piano masters.
It has often been said that Taylor played the piano as if it were a drum set. Futterman, however, plays the piano as if all these techniques, borrowed from Monk, Cage, and others, were honed to fit his own unique vision. After playing in Chicago from 1964 to 1969, the pianist moved to Virginia Beach in 1972. His first album as a leader was released in 1979, and his many collaborators have included Jimmy Lyons and Richard Davis.
Following a period of musical inactivity, Futterman returned to collaborate with various artists, including Kidd Jordan and Alvin Fielder. It's not surprising to see him playing in this set with William Parker, who, after a period of playing with musicians of his own generation in the supergroup The Commitment, began collaborating with veterans like Cecil Taylor and Peter Brötzmann. Listening to the "Why" album, it's clear that Futterman and Parker fit together remarkably well.
I've mentioned pointillism, and indeed, Futterman's style of attacking with short phrases and notes, their effect prolonged through subsequent phrases, matches perfectly with Parker's bass playing, both plucked and bowed. There are moments when their interplay is almost telepathic (as it should always be in this music), and you can sense that the two are playing after dismissing all rational thoughts and practices, relying instead on intuition and more emotional skills.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with Gurdjieff and his 'Fourth Way.' One of his most important statements is that we tend to love as we count, using our rational mind. However, he proposes a new way—the fourth—in which we can learn to be different, more complete human beings. In this sense, love, like art, is both a territory in which to enjoy this new self and a doorway to it.
Even the most skeptical listeners can appreciate this music and be captivated by the beauty and density of this dialogue. While Parker, playing with Taylor and English drummer Tony Oxley in the so-called "Feel Trio," was accustomed to playing independently from the other musicians, here the 'interdependence' between the two musicians is clearly enjoyable.
I've recently listened to many free improvisation albums that have both highlights and lowlights, but this album consists entirely of 'highs.' Therefore, I wholeheartedly advise listeners to experience and enjoy it in its entirety. "Why" is not just an album; it's a journey into the depths of musical intuition and emotional resonance.
It is strange and difficult to present an Italian artist to an English-speaking audience. If the last records of Fabrizio De André can be appealing for those of you who are into ethnic music, as an example, a genre he practiced way before the label has been instituted, his first albums are mostly, even if not exclusively, collections of ballads for voice and acoustic guitar. For those of you that don’t understand his language, such a listening can be challenging.
Anyway, long story short: Sony Music is re-releasing this year the entire catalogue of De André, from his very first songs collected in Vol. 1 (Sony, 2024) until his last masterpiece Anime Salve (still to be re-released). For those who know nothing about Faber – as he was called after his friend and actor Paolo Villaggio – Fabrizio De André is a singer whose work can be compared to that of U.S. songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, without the risk of looking ridiculous.
De André himself translated in Italian Desolation Row and Romance in Durango – he was greeted with cheers by Dylan himself for translating the latter – to testify a deep link with the U.S. songwriting tradition. Moreover, he was inspired for his album Storia di un Impiegato (Sony, 2024) by the beat poet Gregory Corso, while for Tutti Morimmo a Stento (Sony, 2024), maybe the first concept album released in my country originally in 1970, his source of inspiration was the album Days of Future Passed (1967) by The Moody Blues.
Tutti Morimmo a Stento, De André first proper album after a collection of singles, deals with topics like death and sorrow: drug addiction – De André himself was an alcoholic, so the song is partially autobiographical - paedophilia, war, are only some of the subjects touched by the songwriter. The album, co-credited to Gianfranco and Gian Piero Reverberi, Riccardo Mannerini and Giuseppe Bentivoglio, is the starting point for future collaborations of De André with other artists.
If, in fact, Dylan wrote by himself all his material, Tom Waits started collaborating with his wife Cathleen Brennan after 1981 and similarly Fabrizio De André always co-created his music with other people. Someone used this habit of him to suggest De André wasn’t a proper creator, needing always other artists to rely on. But in fact, sharing creativity can be a great way not to let yourself stagnate, even because De André always greeted his co-authors openly.
Another album you might want to listen to, in these new editions, is for certainly, between the LPs still reissued, Non al Denaro, Non all’Amore Né al Cielo (Sony, 2024), inspired by Edgard Lee Master’s Anthology of Spoon River, a book translated in Italy by Fernanda Pivano, who was also a Jack Kerouac’s friend, gifted to De André by his first wife Enrica Rignon. The singer was so hit by the collections of poems that he wanted to create an album of songs from the book.
In this album the pivotal figure, between dwarfs who study as to become judges in order to finally get respect, chemists who refuse to die for love and die for strange experiments, musicians who will play for all their entire lives and blasphemers who refuse to get down on their knees for an invented God, is the guy with a sick heart who dies giving his love his first kiss, a symbol of courage and of the importance of love even above the preservation of life.
Co-written with Nicola Piovani, the album is one of the most theatrical in De André’s collection. In between there are the pure collections of songs like Vol. 1, Vol. 3, Canzoni, where the singer, as the above-mentioned Tom Waits, sings of people who lives by the wrong side of the road: prostitutes, little thieves, and all this universe of people De André was going to hang out with during his formative years in Genoa, his hometown, even if he was middle class.
Perfectly remastered – even if the previous 2002 editions were sounding great also, thanks to a 24 bit processing – and packaged in a slightly greater than the usual format if you buy CDs, while the LP have the usual dimensions, the albums are accompanied with a small booklet full of notes from De André diaries and interviews. If you love the U.S. musicians I mentioned in this article before, it would be a shame that these songs don’t touch your sensibility.
Fabrizio de André was an anarchist also, a true one, an intellectual who all of his life tried to be independent – he gave life to a farm in Sardinia in order to write only the songs he really wanted to, instead of commercial successes – but even if far from stardom he was appreciated by most famous musicians like the pop singer Mina, who covered his song La Canzone di Marinella, dedicated to a dead prostitute.
Possibly an anomaly in our cultural panorama, even if perfectly inserted in a small number of ‘songwriters’, Fabrizio De André later will experiment with ethnic instruments and structures, but maybe we will dedicate another article to him at the end of the year, when the planned re-releases will be fully available. For the moment I have given you advice of at least a couple of albums of him to fully enjoy.
I have a deep respect for Johnny Cash. Not only he was one of the greatest songwriters of the American songbook, not only he has been also a collaborator of musicians such as Bob Dylan. He was also an interesting human being, even though controversial for many. For a long period a fervent Christian – “I’d rather know you hooked by heroin than hooked by Curch” told him some of his collaborators and close friends during those years – he, as an example, recorded a live album in the Folsom Prison, bringing some sparkles of truth with his music to the hosts of the prison.
Honest and true to himself, Johnny Cash was able to put everything he encountered – faith, the good and the evil, the ghosts of depression, the joy of love – into his music at a level that is quite impossible for another less empathic and self-centered, in the best sense of the word, artist. After an out of focus period during the 1980s, thanks to Rick Rubin who had the great idea to let him play with basically only his voice and an acoustic guitar for many albums, Cash had another period of splendour during all the 1990s until his death.
In his American Recordings series Johnny Cash released such beautiful and intense songs as Will Oldham’s I See a Darkness, Trent Reznor’s Hurt, Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus, obtaining great results from the works of the greatest artists of those years, sometimes pairing, sometimes going far beyond the originals in terms of intensity and interpretation. For all those reasons, I was quite curious of hearing the thirty minutes of music conveyed into this new, posthumous, The Songwriter.
To tell the truth, almost everything is in its right place: the voice, the guitar, the hosts, like June Carter Cash or Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys, the many instruments that give shape to the music accompanying the vision of their author. But not everything is all right. To tell the truth, this collection of songs lacks coherence and a proper project. Everyone can hear that songs like Soldier Boy, Drive On – the more emotional, Poor Valley Girl are disposed the one after the other without a vision or a sense of togetherness.
Recorded just a few time before the collaboration with Rick Rubin started giving life to albums where you can feel a narrative sense even if the single songs are different the one from the other, the songs on The Songwriter, that can also be found as charming per se, don’t give life to a proper album to tell you the truth. A nice companion for a proper Lp, as a second disc of outtakes, sold as a ‘new’ proper album of unedited material it doesn’t make a great sense at all.
A similar operation to Montage of Heck, a project dedicated to some demos Kurt Cobain recorded at home and then published for mere exploitation, even if these Cash songs are well produced, refined, and feature many musicians – the list is impressing – cooperating to give life to a vibrant new album, the result is in my opinion similarly scarce. Obviously you’ll find some greatness sparks, but this is not the point …
Nemu is becoming, more and more, an intriguing label, a point of reference for those who are interested in knowing new artists coming from the world of improvisation but willing to listen to stuff less conditioned by the need of an easy listening as more emblazoned artists. In fact, I cannot get why many reviewers are praising some musicians, who are now becoming famous, even if in their music composition and improvisation are not really tied up.
In listening to some albums that are acclaimed In these last months or even years, I can significantly find out a decreasing in that adventurous practice that is improvisation. There are musicians that gain important prizes and that don’t solo for an entire piece or an album. Let’s not call jazz this music. It can be even beautiful music – even if I find it boring for the most part – but it’s not jazz, even if it’s part of the African-American continuum and deserve to be respected – in fact as a critic part of my job is taking act where the music is going.
Now, I finally had the opportunity, instead, to enjoy an album by a quartet of musicians that in 2019 took the stage of the FreeJazzSaar festival in Saarbrucken, Germany, to substitute Charles Gayle, who has unexpectedly fallen ill. The set is very energetic from the first note, and the musicians involved show a mastery as individual players as much as a collective, as a group.
Frank Paul Schubert, who here plays alto and soprano saxophones, started playing as a self-taught musician in 1982 (being born in 1965). Between the many musicians he was involved with, you’ll be probably familiar with Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Johannes Bauer. Active with different projects like duos, quartets, etc., Schubert has a more contemporary style (as an example) on alto than his likewise references.
Seemingly a contemporary musician can be defined Michel Pilz at bass clarinet. Differently from Eric Dolphy, just to name one, Pilz is less ‘cubist’ and anchored to tradition at the same time, as we exposed reviewing Incarnations by Mingus few days ago, but he is a proper virtuoso in his own right and his style fit perfectly with that of his partners. Devotee performer accompanied by the likes of Manfred Schoof and Michel Portal, he sadly passed away in 2023, so this record is also a beautiful occasion to pay him an homage.
Stephan Scheib, first an electric bass player, switched on acoustic bass becoming a well renowned improviser and composer. Founder in 1987 of the Liquid Penguin Ensemble, he is devoted to mixing different forms of art, like dance, theatre, and visual arts with music. Prized with his works for radio, here in this record you can find him texturing all the music with a particular grace but also engaged in a virtuosic solo.
Finally, drummer Klaus Kugel, active with Carl Berger, Charlie Mariano, Thomasz Stanko, Ken Carter, Kenny Wheeler, Sabir Mateen and many others is a drummer whose melodic elements and the percussive one are shared with mastery for all the recording, that features a 43 minutes long group improvisation plus a couple of encores. Hymnodic and dense as we expect this music at his best – I think about the ‘music from the lofts’ – it is one of the albums you can’t miss this year.
I’m happy to listen to music like this, since possibly Germany, as other countries like Portugal, about which we’ll talk in the future, is finally producing some music worth of the brilliant past of this genre. In fact, this album contains timeless compositions and improvisations, the genre I bet we’ll listen to in the future years not thinking about the greater progress in the art of jazz but nonetheless with the desire to look for more or this.
