The very uniquely improvisational contemporary jazz ensemble out of Italy, the Claudio Scolari Project, are back merely a year after Cosmology. Don’t Know is their sixth release overall, their third in as many years, as the familial quartet is on a roll that they don’t seem to want to slow down.
The Claudio Scolari Project has been – and is still – centered on the partnership of Claudio Scolari and Daniele Cavalca. The two compose the songs and produce the recordings, but Scolari’s son Simone (trumpet) and Cavalca’s brother Michele (electric bass) are given wide flexibility to express themselves in their own way, too. It’s this broad freedom that gives rise to their distinct sound.
“Don’t Know,” captured in the video above, illustrates so much of what the Claudio Scolari Project has always been about. You have two drummers present but the song doesn’t move to timekeeping but rather, an organic flow. The younger Scolari takes the lead in setting down the pretty melody, while Daniele comps economically on keys and Michele uses his bass to add harmonic counterpoints for Simone. The elder Scolari uses his kit for tonal colors. All of this comes together as an airy, unfussy pouring out of chords.
Daniele Cavalca brings back to the group some of the growth he showed in synth programming as a solo artist for “Binary Code.” Layered on that structured base, however, is very loose playing from everywhere else, including Cavalca himself on extra drums. This tactic is also deployed for “Wet Sand” and “E-Walzer” is a bigger helping of the double-drummer attack.
Daniele’s preconfigured outer-space synth figure dominate “Goose Bumps” for a while, then the loose, organic components take over; the groove carries over intact, though. Michele and Simone noodle all around the elusive melody of “Underground Wave” but Daniele’s entry on piano rallies the band together. Claudio does a solo presentation all throughout “Fireworks,” showing off his own polyrhythmic approach.
Since Claudio Scolari Project tracks are always recorded live in the studio, it’s something of a marvel to behold the lack of overdubs even when there is so much going on at once. Daniele loops a keyboard figure for “Sentimentale,” doing double duty on drums and other keyboards.
Right at the end, the band plays in a conventionally structured manner, relatively speaking. A motif is introduced at the beginning of “Cold Water,” a hard groove commences and a bridge even pops up. But that slippery shiftiness is all there just the same.
Don’t Know is now available, and you can purchase it from Bandcamp.
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