Atom Sounds Music News

La Sornette first saw the light in Novara in the year 1980. Since then the group has evolved and enriched its production with prestigious artistic collaborations to the point of becoming, by the year 2000, one of the most interesting folk groups on the Italian musical scene. In 1983 the band played at Transitaliana in Cervia in front of thousands of spectators and went on to participate in the concerts held by the Institute of Corona in Livorno. The band has also played several times at the Folkermesse festival. The artistic turning-point came for the group when they won the special prize for ethnic-jazz music at the International Val Tidone Competition in 2000, showing that they had reached complete artistic maturity. In 2002 the label Red Ediz. offered the group national distribution for a 14-track album representing the essence of traditional Piemontese music. The album was received with great enthusiasm by the specialised press and sold well. In the wake of the album the group set out in a more personal direction, broadening their repertoire to include ethnic-folk music from all over northern Italy and a number of original folk compositions by Emanuele Cadario. For two consecutive years, 2003 and 2004, the “Suoni e Voci dell’Altra Musica” tour brought the group’s new sound to the attention of the general public throughout Italy. In 2004 the group was asked to produce some tracks for the German label Dejavu Retro’s “Gold Collection” edition of global ethnic music, giving La Sornette the opportunity to appear alongside numerous well-known international folk groups. Two further tours in 2005 and 2006, “Siamo qui da voi, signori” and “Venti di Musica Etnoacustica” were received with great enthusiasm both by the general public and by the critics. At this point the group had found its distinctive sound and was sufficiently mature to express a certain stylistic autonomy: the genre ‘Etnoacustica’ was born (La Sornette’s official trademark) with the aim of evoking a visual image of the sound. The contribution of musicians coming from other areas such as classical, easy listening and jazz has without doubt given added dignity to the overall sound without repudiating its more humble origins. It is thanks to the mixing and matching of these different genres and styles that every listener is able to find his own interpretation, his own particular tie with the past, a completely new and highly suggestive musical style. The group’s live tour continued in 2007, receiving further accolades both from the general public and from the critics in eighteen Italian cities. The 2007 tour served as a promotion vehicle for the new album “Etnoacustica” in which La Sornette have solidly confirmed their musical identity, moving easily between traditional and original folk compositions. The new album was produced by the “Etnoacustica” and “Re Nudo” labels and has been distributed throughout Italy, Austria and Germany.

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The music of Cantodiscanto is inspired by a gaze towards the South. First and foremost towards the South of Italy whose traditional and classical repertoires the group has studied in depth. This is the South from which the group comes and to which it is attached, the South to which the language of their songs belongs: Neapolitan. South America is a source of inspiration for the group as well, and is present in their music with its rhythms and harmonies. But their gaze is also turned towards another South, a South of the world that brings together all those who live in hardship or in a state of emergency, subject to the will of those few who make the decisions; a South where people continue to sing out their love and their desire to be free and to live in peace. It is towards this South that the group’s lyrics make their references: fragments of stories, journeys, meetings that mix in music the past and the present.

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NUR
folk / folk-rock / blues
NUR is the fruit of an idea shared by Massimo Loriga (sax, clarinet, harmonica) e Daniele Cuccu (guitar, laud, mandola). The two were joined in 1998 by Massimo Perra (accordion, barrel organ), a long-standing musician with a ‘traditional’ musical background, and the group was completed with the arrival of Valter Spada (bass) and Giovannino Scano (drums), both veterans in the blues genre and Vittorio Pitzalis (vocals and guitar), the father-figure of Sardinian blues. The aim of the group is to salvage traditional Sardinian music, reproposing it with ‘modern’ arrangements and instruments, convinced that the survival of tradition also depends on modern interpretations (and that this can also make it more accessible to the younger generations). In February/March 2001 the NUR recorded their debut CD ‘NUR’, eleven tracks characterised primarily by the harmonies and crossovers of Massimo Loriga’s sax and Massimo Perra’s barrel organ and by the sobriety of the arrangements. The release of the CD was followed by an intensive live shedule. During the three years that followed the release of their debut CD, the group changed formation and began to prepare the material that would be used on their next album. Vittorio Pitzalis and Giovannino Scano left the group and were replaced by Alessandro Picciau (drums) and Paolo Berria (vocals). AFter a long gestation, at the end of 2004 the NUR finished recording the album ‘Chentu Colores’ which saw, apart from the new formation, the participation of numerous guests: once again Enrico Frongia; Diego Deiana (violin), Alessio Sanna (hammond and moog), Elio Rinaldi (cello), Sandro Fresi (hurdy-gurdy) and members of the Cordas et Cannas (Francesco Pilu, Gesuino Deiana e Lorenzo Sabattini). The ‘hundred colours’ of the album title allude not only to peace, as underlined by the homonymous opening track, but also to the possibility of bringing together ‘peacefully’ different musical sounds and experiences. In this second album, alongside the acoustic sounds, various rock influences make their entrance felt but without altering the basic compositional structure which remains hinged on traditional Sardinian music and, in particular, on the accordion and barrel organ of Massimo Perra.

listen to “Chentu Colores”