Track Of The Day Fortunato Durutti Marinetti
I was pleasingly struck, just before the holiday period, by the title track and the first song unveiled, a bonus track actually, from the much-anticipated upcoming sophomore album, “Memory’s Fool”, by the Vancouver denizen artist, albeit Italian native, namely in Turin, coincidentally my hometown as well; the drowsy ambience, those soulful back-up vocals and the evocative brass flourishes are absolutely seductive as don’t often come around.
Not a newcomer, our man has been hanging out in the undercurrents of the underground indie circuit for about two decades, first with indie rockers The Shilohs, a hat-trick of LPs from the start of 2010s via Light Organ Records, and later as the mastermind of the band, gifted with seemingly irresistible ‘killer hooks’, Pinc Lincolns.
A couple of years ago Daniel(e) Colussi, his real name, dropped his solo debut full-length under the Fortunato Durutti Marinetti moniker, the well-received, and self-produced, Baroque-Folk-Rock inflected “Desire”, which unfortunately I missed, not least because with such an intriguing stage name that combines a Spanish anarchist revolutionary and an Italian futurist poet, although it might be easily referred to Vini Reilly and his Durutti Column of Factory Records and Les Disques du Crepuscule recollections, would have instantly grabbed my attention.
Inspired by ‘the restless, explorative spirit of 1970s songwriters like Lou Reed, Robert Wyatt and Joni Mitchell’, Marinetti deftly crafts a modern, moody and heady Art-Rock sonic alchemy, he dubs “poetic jazz rock.”
Yesterday my fellow ‘Türinèis’ invited me to listen to his new and first single, “Feels Like”, curiously the day right before an excellent Italian blog/radio, called Polaroid, regarding indie-pop music and its surroundings, that I often hang out to discover little gems that often escape me, talked about the LP just like a record that he could not wait to listen to.
My first cold impressions went on the Nyman/Kronos Quartet-esque hypnotic lush string arrangement and the warm fretless bass harmonics that reminded me of the prematurely deceased Jaco Pastorious, as far as I’m concerned, inextricably linked to the Weather Report’s sophomore opus “Heavy Weather”, one of the first records I bought from ultra adolescent and to the Joni Mitchell’s “Mingus”, on which the Cohen/Reed-style confessional singing, at the same time fragile but intense, helms.
Although I have followed independent cinema quite deeply, I have no particular memories of the recently restored film in question, from what I can understand “Feels Like” lyric-wise explores the inner mechanism of human perception, meaning, and communication through a lens of awe and fear.
Tight and nimble piano keys along chunky and groovy flowing bass ripples lilt a coruscating and vibrant cushion of urgent, dazzling and buzzing swirls of syncopated violin layers, throbbing and vibrating obsessively in a heady counterpoint with emotional and pensive, almost spoken, vocals, calmly disentangling alienation and melancholy into a lingering compelling reflection of tragedy and hope.
The wait will be longer but I feel like it will be worth it.
Fortunato Durutti Marinetti‘s sophomore album, “Memory’s Fool” is scheduled to be released on March 18th, 2022, through Bobo Integral Records (EU) and Soft Abuse (US).
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