What's Up With Calibro 35 ?
An email interview with Calibro 35
We left our favourite Italian funksters last year with their superb 'Any Ressemblance...' album, and have asked them a few questions about their recent releases, new album and single, and upcoming video...
What's Up With Calibro 35 - September 2013
01. November 2012 - What's up with the 10 inch on Tannen Records, "Dalla Bovisa A Brooklyn" ? Never seen this one in any store in Paris…
"Well we had 3 songs from our very first NYC recording experience at Mission Sound Studios in 2009 and 3 other songs that we recorded for 'Any Resemblance…' two years later at Brooklyn Recording Studios and we loved but that didn't make it to the album because we couldn't find a place for them into the tracklist. Meanwhile a quite important Italian magazine (Repubblica XL) asked a punk novel writer (Marco Philopat) to write a half truth / half fiction kind of story about Calibro's US tour and a Comic Artist friend (Gianfranco Enrietto, mainly famous worldwide for his Gormiti action figures) decided to make a small comic book based on the story."
02. April 2013 - What's up with that original soundtrack on Tannen Records, "Said" ?
"That is quite a long story. 'Said' (to be pronounced Saìd as the north arabic name) is a pulp movie by italian director (of French name though) Joseph Lefevre. It's a pretty classic drug dealing story with a very well done blood and violence esthetic. We've been asked to write the music back in 2008 as soon as our first record was released in Italy. After few months we had this incredible three days long session at Forum Music Village, Morricone's studio in Rome, where we recorded the whole 80 minutes of music during the movie projection. Massimo (guitar player) wrote most of the music in advance and did an amazing job. We used a lot of unusual instruments for us ranging from celesta to hapsychord to tubular bells. After we completed the soundtrack the movie get swamped for a very long time in a looking-for-international-distribution situation. Last year we asked movie producers to release the soundtrack album anyway and to distribute the movie via youtube. Incredibly they accepted our offer and we were finally able to have this released! We're very proud and it still sound up to date (if you can say that of a retro band)."
03. September 2013 - What's up with this new 45 on Record Kicks, "Giulia Mon Amour" ? It's not your first 45 release, right ? Is that a format you like for your music ?
"We love 7s and it sure is not our first one. Before this we had our version of Herbie Hancock's 'Deathwish' (on transparent blue vinyl) and a split 7" with another italian band covering two obscure and pretty funny italian '60s pop songs ('Il Beat Cos'e' italian version of 'The beat goes oni and 'Precipitevolissimevolmente'). though is the very first single anticipating an album and it also is our first release with our new label Record Kicks that is a 7" specialist label since Nick is a hardcore northern soul fanatic."
04. September 2013 - What's up with the "Giulia Mon Amour" video ?
"We just shot it the other day and it has been so fun to make it! Don't want to ruin the surprise if you didn't see it yet but we did a remake of 'Milan Caliber 9', the best Italian noir movie ever in Tarantino's words. We shot the whole intro of the movie trying to be as close to original scenes at the very beginning to make the reference very clear. As musicians - and not actors - we were pretty anxious about acting but director Lorenzo Del Bianco and his production team (Dude Productions) were incredibly good making this happen."
05. October 2013 - What's up with this new album on Record Kicks, "Traditori Di Tutti" ?
"It's done and ready to hit the road! I actually have vinyl copies at home and cannot believe we made it in time. The album is inspired by a pretty famous Italian noir book by Giorgio Scerbanenco that also won French Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere back in 1968. The album is a proper soundtrack for a '60s noir book that ranges through all the atmospheres of the novel: fear, passion, violence, sex, fun. It includes 12 tracks and it's very dynamic; it contains shake songs as the first single 'Giulia Mon Amour', very rough and tuff funk bits such as 'Stainless Steel' and 'Vendetta', Morricone inspired tunes like 'Miss Livia Ussaro'. To deal with this very wide spectrum of emotions we incorporated few new (to us) instruments such as a dulcitone (some kind of old school celesta), mellotron strings and a super groovy Philipps Philicorda all tube german organ. We tried to have a little more raw sound, recording in a small studio instead of the big ones we used before and we're very happy with the sonic fingerprint of it."
06. From listening to your records, "Italian Soundtracks Funkateers" fits you quite well, but what about the "worldwide touring instrumental crime funk project out from Italy", any plans to come and play in France soon ?
"We really want to make it to France. We're going to concentrate on Italy right after the record release but we're already planning an early 2014 european tour and we don't want to miss Paris and france this time."
CALIBRO 35 TOUR DATES 2013 :
October
01 Novi Sad
02 Beograd
03 Sibenik
04 Ljubljiana
05 Murska Sobota
06 Trieste
17 Basel
24 Modena
25 Sommacampagna (VR)
26 Vigonovo (VE)
27 Mosciano (TE)
31 Messina
November
01 Catania
02 Palermo
03 Avellino
07 Arezzo
08 Roma
09 London
15 Livorno
16 Ravenna
21 Mariano Comense
22 Torino
28 Milano
29 Brescia
30 Firenze
December
06 Bologna
07 Perugia
We left our favourite Italian funksters last year with their superb 'Any Ressemblance...' album, and have asked them a few questions about their recent releases, new album and single, and upcoming video...
What's Up With Calibro 35 - September 2013
01. November 2012 - What's up with the 10 inch on Tannen Records, "Dalla Bovisa A Brooklyn" ? Never seen this one in any store in Paris…
"Well we had 3 songs from our very first NYC recording experience at Mission Sound Studios in 2009 and 3 other songs that we recorded for 'Any Resemblance…' two years later at Brooklyn Recording Studios and we loved but that didn't make it to the album because we couldn't find a place for them into the tracklist. Meanwhile a quite important Italian magazine (Repubblica XL) asked a punk novel writer (Marco Philopat) to write a half truth / half fiction kind of story about Calibro's US tour and a Comic Artist friend (Gianfranco Enrietto, mainly famous worldwide for his Gormiti action figures) decided to make a small comic book based on the story."
02. April 2013 - What's up with that original soundtrack on Tannen Records, "Said" ?
"That is quite a long story. 'Said' (to be pronounced Saìd as the north arabic name) is a pulp movie by italian director (of French name though) Joseph Lefevre. It's a pretty classic drug dealing story with a very well done blood and violence esthetic. We've been asked to write the music back in 2008 as soon as our first record was released in Italy. After few months we had this incredible three days long session at Forum Music Village, Morricone's studio in Rome, where we recorded the whole 80 minutes of music during the movie projection. Massimo (guitar player) wrote most of the music in advance and did an amazing job. We used a lot of unusual instruments for us ranging from celesta to hapsychord to tubular bells. After we completed the soundtrack the movie get swamped for a very long time in a looking-for-international-distribution situation. Last year we asked movie producers to release the soundtrack album anyway and to distribute the movie via youtube. Incredibly they accepted our offer and we were finally able to have this released! We're very proud and it still sound up to date (if you can say that of a retro band)."
03. September 2013 - What's up with this new 45 on Record Kicks, "Giulia Mon Amour" ? It's not your first 45 release, right ? Is that a format you like for your music ?
"We love 7s and it sure is not our first one. Before this we had our version of Herbie Hancock's 'Deathwish' (on transparent blue vinyl) and a split 7" with another italian band covering two obscure and pretty funny italian '60s pop songs ('Il Beat Cos'e' italian version of 'The beat goes oni and 'Precipitevolissimevolmente').
04. September 2013 - What's up with the "Giulia Mon Amour" video ?
"We just shot it the other day and it has been so fun to make it! Don't want to ruin the surprise if you didn't see it yet but we did a remake of 'Milan Caliber 9', the best Italian noir movie ever in Tarantino's words. We shot the whole intro of the movie trying to be as close to original scenes at the very beginning to make the reference very clear. As musicians - and not actors - we were pretty anxious about acting but director Lorenzo Del Bianco and his production team (Dude Productions) were incredibly good making this happen."
05. October 2013 - What's up with this new album on Record Kicks, "Traditori Di Tutti" ?
"It's done and ready to hit the road! I actually have vinyl copies at home and cannot believe we made it in time. The album is inspired by a pretty famous Italian noir book by Giorgio Scerbanenco that also won French Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere back in 1968. The album is a proper soundtrack for a '60s noir book that ranges through all the atmospheres of the novel: fear, passion, violence, sex, fun. It includes 12 tracks and it's very dynamic; it contains shake songs as the first single 'Giulia Mon Amour', very rough and tuff funk bits such as 'Stainless Steel' and 'Vendetta', Morricone inspired tunes like 'Miss Livia Ussaro'. To deal with this very wide spectrum of emotions we incorporated few new (to us) instruments such as a dulcitone (some kind of old school celesta), mellotron strings and a super groovy Philipps Philicorda all tube german organ. We tried to have a little more raw sound, recording in a small studio instead of the big ones we used before and we're very happy with the sonic fingerprint of it."
06. From listening to your records, "Italian Soundtracks Funkateers" fits you quite well, but what about the "worldwide touring instrumental crime funk project out from Italy", any plans to come and play in France soon ?
"We really want to make it to France. We're going to concentrate on Italy right after the record release but we're already planning an early 2014 european tour and we don't want to miss Paris and france this time."
CALIBRO 35 TOUR DATES 2013 :
October
01 Novi Sad
02 Beograd
03 Sibenik
04 Ljubljiana
05 Murska Sobota
06 Trieste
17 Basel
24 Modena
25 Sommacampagna (VR)
26 Vigonovo (VE)
27 Mosciano (TE)
31 Messina
November
01 Catania
02 Palermo
03 Avellino
07 Arezzo
08 Roma
09 London
15 Livorno
16 Ravenna
21 Mariano Comense
22 Torino
28 Milano
29 Brescia
30 Firenze
December
06 Bologna
07 Perugia
Original post on Paris DJs