The Atipico Trio's
Gone with the Winds could also be called "Three Guys Passing Wind" or "Middle-Aged Farts at Play." No disrespect meant; in fact, quite the opposite. The clarinet, saxophone, and voice trio (each member does everything, sometimes at once) is comprised of
Carlo Actis Dato,
Sandro Cerino, and Stefano Corradi, sly dogs all. They would have you believe by their album cover -- and the fact that they dedicate their works to aunts, pharmacists, dogs, etc. -- that they are just three yobs blowing the hell out of their instruments and having a ball while doing it. Only the latter is true. From the opening absurdist quote from
Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" to a series of growls, howls, and tautly blended harmonic interplay between alto, contrabass, and bass clarinets, the charade is over. From tightly woven rhythmic melodies that evoke everything from American blues to Transylvanian boogies (nah, polkas actually) to Yiddish klezmer and every movement in jazz history,
Atipico Trio is a fakebook unto itself. One of the more stunning cuts is "Affunk," where Tuvan throat singing gives way to iconoclastic jazz singing to deep baritone sax and clarinet funky-chicken squawk. Solos are taken in tandem by shifting rhythm from one register of the baritone to the others. On "Café Coast," French folk songs, Italian café songs, and Brazilian time signatures meet in a breezy, sweet, lazy melody that offers ample room for the restrained solos that have to evoke all three musics in their breaks. Somewhere
Dato slips in quotes from an
Otis Redding song and the other two begin to bar-walk the horns with a tarantella and slip into a howling wind before taking it out with a quote from "Fly Me to the Moon"! And that's how it is with this disc, one surprise after another, totally inspired, only partially insane, and thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. Give me this over "serious" skronk improv any day of the week. Awesome. ~ Thom Jurek