We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Luci e Guai

by Crimi

supported by
Discomoderni
Discomoderni thumbnail
Discomoderni nice groove with a middle east appeal! Sicily roots Favorite track: Mano d’Oro.
señor stef
señor stef thumbnail
señor stef Wow, that blend of styles never existed before & created something completely new. Every tag would need a "post" in front...I feel orientalistic psychedelic, the funk of afrobeat, the jazzy excess, the simplicity of punk, a spiritual trance & what would be our generations opera!

All songs work their own way to the sublime. And when the horns set in halfway through Quetzalcoatl you now that they perform outstandingly!

Favorite track: Conca d’Oro.
craig andrews
craig andrews thumbnail
craig andrews Very good Italo-Rai fusion
sunlightandgreaves
sunlightandgreaves thumbnail
sunlightandgreaves Beautiful perspectives from the Sicilian diaspora. Autochthonous sounds, melodies, and sentiment that is both outward and in-looking. Lovely stuff :) Favorite track: Chi ci Talia ?.
more...
/
  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Luci e Guai via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 45 days
    edition of 200 

      €20 EUR or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Luci e Guai via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    edition of 500 

      €15 EUR or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Crimi is all about the soul that flows, the kind of groove that oozes the sticky funk of New Orleans and the influences of Algerian raï, not forgetting the less upbeat, more melancholic passages.

    Crimi is above all a personal story: that of a kid growing up in Lyon whose Sicilian grandmother hummed tunes from times gone by. This is how the saxophonist and singer Julien Lesuisse fertilises found his groove, which he likes to call Sicilian soul. It is also unsurprising to hear oriental styles here, a lyricism in full bloom that references Lesuissefertilises’ trips to Oran with Mazalda.

    Crimi is a desire to revive tradition through original songs, strong melodies carried by a collective sound that resists the confines of labeling. The result is a trad-modern soundtrack, which is both very structured and very free at the same time.

    Right now, Crimi is Luci e guai, the first album to be released by Airfono in April 2021. The track, ‘Light and confusion’, has a procedural quality and seems to say that nothing is ever as simple as it seems, in language as well as in music. In other words, this song is the perfect way to weave together all the threads that make up the complexity of a personality, from jazz to song, from the day before yesterday to tomorrow, from here to elsewhere.
    ... more
    Purchasable with gift card

      €9 EUR  or more

     

1.
Mano d’Oro 03:09
Ué! Amici ! Ma picchi nun mi viniti a pigghiari ? Amuri amuri quantu si luntanu Cu ti lu cunza lu lettu a la sira Cu ti lu cunza nun lu sa cunzari Malateddu ti levi a la mattina Malateddu ti levi a la mattina O mano mano d'oro Ven'e me pigghia O mano mano d'oro Ven'e me pigghia O puramenti la frebe lu taglia com'u ferru filatu a la tinaglia O mano mano d'oru Ven'e me pigghia O mano mano d'oru Ven'e me pigghia Vuliva jiri unni va la negghia Ti viu lu capeddhu unni travagghia Ti viu se ti bolli lassi o pigghia O puramenti la frebe lo taglia com'u ferru filatu a la tinaglia O mano mano d'oru Ven'e me pigghia O mano mano d'oru Ven'e me pigghia O puramenti la frebe lo taglia com'u ferru filatu a la tinaglia O mano mano d'oru Ven'e me pigghia O mano mano d'oru Ven'e me pigghia O mano O mano d'oro o mano d'oro Mano mano mano d'oro mano mano mano d'oro O mano O mano d'oro O mano O mano d'oro O mano O mano d'oro O mano O mano d'oro O mano O mano d'oro O mano O mano d'oro O mano d'oro O mano mano d'oro Amuri mio si luntano O mano mano d'oro Cyril O mano mano d'oro Bruno O mano mano d'oro Mathieu O mano mano d'oro O mano mano d'oro Ven'e me pigghia O mano mano d'oro Ven'e me pigghia O mano mano mano d'oro Ven'e me pigghia O mano mano mano d'oro Ven'e me pigghia O mano mano mano d'oro amuri O mano mano d'oro amuri Amici O mano mano mano d'oro ven'e me pigghia
2.
La Vicaria 04:07
3.
4.
Quetzalcoatl 04:57
'Nu vasu chinu di duluri Nun ti vogghiu rarri Nun dovresti avvicinari Chidda vucca senza labbru O no Nun si viddi cosa sugnu ? Orva, pigghia la fugga ! 'Nu vasu chinu di duluri Nent'autru ti pozzu rarri Nent'autru Stu mussu chinu di duluri Stu mussu di velenu No ! nun m'avvicinari No nun m'avvicinari 'Nu vasu chinu di duluri Nun ti vogghiu rarri Nun dovresti avvicinari Chidda vucca senza labbru No no Stu mussu chinu di duluri Stu mussu di velenu No ! nun m'avvicinari No nun m'avvicinari Ué ! aquila mia Nel cielo, cosa ti puo turbare ? Ieri ho visto una figliola Come 'nu pesce si muoveva M'ha sembrato che E andata col'disc jockey
5.
6.
7.
Lo Nilo 03:58
8.
La Virrineda 04:22

about

On their debut album ​Luci E Guai​, French four-piece Crimi dissolve the borders between genres, cultures and nations, with an eight-song serving of diasporic groove. The brainchild of Julien Lesuisse, a saxophonist with some two decades’ grounding in the French music scene, Crimi stitch up a wealth of regional styles: from Algerian raï to hard New Orleans funk, Afrobeat to Sicilian folk balladry, in their hands it all sounds so natural you won’t be able to find the join.

Formed in 2018, Crimi finds Julien collaborating with a brand new trio of musicians. However it is the singer & sax player’s past ventures that combine to explain how he hit on this sound. Mazalda, from Lyon, have existed since 2002, evolving from jazzy pop oddballs into a drum-heavy live dance party with their own fifty-speaker travelling Soundsystem, the ‘Turbo Clap Station’. In recent years, they branched out into raï – first meeting Algerian singer Cheb Lakhdar and backing him in a series of concerts, and later recording an album, El Ndjoum, with Sofiane Saidi, a star of raï’s new electro-wave who’s also featured with Parisian duo Acid Arab. (Mazalda and Sofiane proved their mettle by playing the Algerian city of Oran, raï’s spiritual home, in early 2020.)

During this period, Julien also performed in La Squadra Zeus – from the Alpine town of Chambéry but dedicated to the traditional folk styles of southern Italy, nearly 2,000 km away. Playing Sicilian flute and Calabrian bagpipes in the trio, Julien learned so much about this music and its relationship to the region’s culture – including, ultimately, the realisation that he wasn’t cut out to play these trad arrangements in straight fashion. No drama: the musician envisaged potential new soundclashes, and the first stirrings of what became Crimi were in his rewirings of three traditional Sicilian songs which appear on Luci e Guai.

Mano D’Oro, the first single from the album and its opening song, is a perfect example of the Crimi worldview. Based on an old standard from
Sicily, Julien added some lyrics but preserved the subject matter: young and poor Sicilians moving to northern Europe seeking work. Two generations of Julien’s family arrived in France this way. In the hands of this quartet – Julien plus Cyril Moulas, Mathieu Felix (since replaced
by Brice Berrerd) and Bruno Duval on guitar, bass and drums respectively – it’s transformed into something electric and slinky, opening with a
bassline plucked from the funkiest bars of the Maghreb.

La Vicaria and La Virrinedda, the other two Sicilian-origin cuts on Luci e Guai, ramp up the folk-funk-raï intermingling, Cyril peeling off a wicked jazz guitar solo on the former and a tender, lyrical sax section lighting up the latter. With its lamentations of jailhouse life, Julien imagined La Vicaria being sung by Cheb Khaled, controversial raï icon from Oran. All three have been recorded by the late Rosa Balistreri, a cult Sicilian folk singer in her 60s/70s heyday and one of Julien’s biggest musical influences on Crimi – alongside the Algerian cheikhates from the mid-20th century on. Female singers like Cheikha Rimitti and Cheikha Djenya sang of sex and desire over languid, hypnotic backing, scandalising establishment figures in the process.

Lyrically speaking, the album’s five original compositions are the result of Julien spending two years learning Sicilian – burying his head in three dictionaries, getting to grips with the nuances of the language (it resembles Italian, but it isn’t Italian!) as a poetic medium. As a child in France, Julien heard the language spoken by his mother and grandparents, and could follow a conversation without being able to converse himself – so Luci E Guai finds him making up for lost time as well as approaching the headspace of the cantastorie vocalists he so admires.

Crimi’s other members, variously based in Chambéry and Geneva, are schooled in jazz, funk and rhythm & blues. Cyril also features in the Ethiopian jazz-styled Imperial Tiger Orchestra, while Duval is a disciple of Afrobeat drum king Tony Allen. And it shows, on an album recorded live in the studio and kept as warm and organic as possible. Be the results loping, woodwind-led psychedelic jazz delicacy on Quetzalcoatl, or the stylistically liquid jazz-punk-folk-funk of Ciatu Di Lu Margiu, these guys make quite a unit.

This is music born to be witnessed live, holding a glass of something potent, and lord willing that can happen soon: Crimi played a streamed show for Lyon’s Festival du Péristyle late last year, but Julien acknowledges that ain’t the real deal. They’ve been making a film about the band in the meantime, with French director Tangui Le Cras – and
writing the next Crimi album. May it be released into a world where movement is as free as the sound these four musicians bring to life.

credits

released April 2, 2021

Written and composed by Julien Lesuisse
Publishing: Airfono records
℗ Julien Lesuisse / Airfono Records

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Airfono Paris, France

Airfono is a label dedicated to original, spectacular, and virtuoso projects with the ambition to
record a mix of live energy, futuristic grooves, and festive spirit. From jazz to techno, Airfono is a
home for experimentation and musical freedom.
Central place of acoustic instrument is one of the constants of this family which goes from hand made techno to raï or from ambient electro to post-punk.
... more

contact / help

Contact Airfono

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Luci e Guai, you may also like: