Through the years, there’s been a few homages paid to PINK FLOYD’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon” – including so unexpected dub one – but this classic remains open to interpretation. The problem is to find a new angle to approach the record at, but original way never was a hard task for Boris Savoldelli, a multi-voiced Italian singer who masterly dabbles in a variety of genres, jazz being his favorite. That’s why a follow-up to "Electric Bat Conspiracy", the artist’s collaboration with American guitarist Garrison Fewell, is “The Great Jazz Gig In The Sky,” an album by SAVOLDELLI CASARANO BARDOSCIA. Boris’ co-conspirators in this trio are saxophonist Raffaele Casarano and contrabassist Marco Bardoscia, all three adding electronics to their natural sounds, with Indonesian guitar hero Dewa Budjana applying his licks to “Us And Them.”
Giving the background of the project, maestro Savoldelli says:
“Everything happened in a very natural and simple way. I met Marco and Raffaele in Bologna, Italy, thanks to our common friend, the great italian trumpet player Paolo Fresu. We played together in a great italian jazz club called ‘Cantina Bentivoglio’ in Bologna and, after our gig, we felt very good and had another jam session together, with wine and beers… (Laughs.) The day after we said ‘Hello’ and promised to meet soon and seriously think about a project. And so we did.
I took a plane to Puglia – that’s South of Italy, while I live in Lombardia, North of Italy – and, while eating great fish and drinkin amazing white wine, we started to think about the new project. I really wanted to play some ‘jazz psychedelic’ music, a bit like Miles did on ‘Bitches Brew,’ and the idea of PINK FLOYD came out naturally. I’ve always loved to try to rearrange in a strange way some of their material, so I proposed this to Marco and Raffaele and they agreed. I asked them to tell me the title of the songs they remembered, and I did the same writing the titles on a paper. After it I realized the 80% of the songs were from the ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ album, I said, ‘Why don’t we play the whole record in our own jazzy way?’ And this happened….
We worked on the arrangements for a couple of days and then went into my usual studio and played kinda live, with no overdubs, for one day and a half. Then, we realized we’d recorded the entire CD in this short time. The approach to the orginal album was very easy: we simply tried to play it in our own way, with our style and with lots of great respect for the amazing PINK FLOYD. Some super fan of the band, after listening to our live concert, told us they loved it very much and they had a great sensation: it was as if ‘The Dark Side’ was played by Syd Barrett. Kind of interesting and weird opinion, isn’t it?”
The Great Jazz Gig In The Sky
As for the tracklist of the album, out on May 14th, it’s basically the original one (read the review):
1. Speak To Me
2. Breathe
3. On The Run
4. Time
5. The Great Gig In The Sky – Money
6. Us And Them
7. Any Colour You Like
8. Brain Damage
9. Eclipse
