French four-piece Crimi return today with Quetzalcoatl, the second single lifted from their forthcoming Luci e Guai LP - an eight-song serving stitching together Algerian raï, hard New Orleans funk and Sicilian folk balladry.
Drifting over a slowed down, funk groove, Quetzalcoatl is one the album’s five original compositions that are the result of band leader Julien Lesuisse 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.
Formed in 2018, Crimi finds Julien, a musician with over 20 years experience, collaborating with a brand new trio of players. 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 the forthcoming album Luci E Guai.
lyrics
'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
credits
from Luci e Guai,
track released February 5, 2021
Written and composed by Julien Lesuisse
Lyrics by Julien Lesuisse
Publishing: Airfono records
℗ Julien Lesuisse / Airfono Records
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
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