Featured Artist: Rootless

CD Title: Brian Had a Little Plate

Year: 2005

Record Label: El Gallo Rojo Records

Style: Free Jazz / Avante Garde

Musicians:

Luca Dell'Anna  (piano),  Francesco Bigoni  (tenor sax), Massimiliano Sorrentini (drums), Danilo Gallo (double bass), Simone Guiducci  (guitar)

Review:

Brian Had a Little Plate is one of the greatest recordings released by El Gallo Rojo Records in 2005. Rootless captures our ears and attention for their timbre and psychedelic sound instead of notes or fixed pitches. The band smudges any conventional instrumental expression which simultaneously results in a dilatation of possibilities for creativity using non-standard duty, musicianship, and orchestrations. Danilo Gallo’s endowment is highlighted, but the provocative combination of Gallo with Simone Guiducci’s singular guitar skills, Bigoni's reeds, Luca Dell’Anna’s piano vocabulary and Massimiliano Sorrentini fancy drums are remarkable. Rootless succeeds in working with this fine instrumental combination.

The album contains Gallo, Bigoni and Dell’Anna compositions and features adventurous, imaginative guitarist Simone Guiducci. Rootless explores diverse shades of jazz here.The recording dwells on ten studio performances. The program begins with Bigoni’s  buoyant “Brian's Little Plate”and Dell’Anna’s “Keep The Focus” continues with a smart, yet bluesy discourse that features pulsing rhythms inspired by Gallo’s bass staccatos and Guiducci’s electrically distorted cadences. Throughout the pieces, cryptic shades whisper, including Gallo’s “Brunswick Road”. 

The group switches into agitated spaces where the sparks vamp mightily in “Unhandled Exception”, especially Guiducci who seems to be always on fire, like in “Nice Guys”.  “Lopa Tola” is one of the greatest jewels of the album though.  Gallo’s ostinato sounds totally inspired and connected at every moment, Bigoni inflicts melodic fragments beforehand to free up the light tickles, buzzes and blows gracefully.  By “Preparazioneacca” however, the depiction is mostly filled; filled and completely intriguing as every Gallo collective creation. As a whole, though, Rootless possesses the aforementioned ingredients, such as a sense of free communal engagement as well as spontaneous avant-garde energy and mind.

Tracks: Brian's Little Plate,  Keep the Focus, Brunswick Road, Unhandled Exception, Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, Nice Guys, Song For My Mother, Lose The Focus,  Lopa Tola, Preparazioneacca



Record Label Website: http://www.elgallorojorecords.com

Reviewed by: Dr. Ana Isabel Ordonez

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