Rossana Casale
Incoerente Jazz

Four years after Nuova Napoli, Nu Genea are back with Bar Mediterraneo, a new album and journey, which projects the sounds of the Neapolitan duo formed by Massimo Di Lena and Lucio Aquilina even further.Nu Genea's Bar Mediterraneo is an idea of a shared place where people meet and fuse together; a space that leaves its doors open to travellers and their lives, always exposed to the whims of fate. Some of this can be experienced through the multitude of sounds that come together in the tracks, layers of different acoustic instruments, voices and synthesizers merging in a unique musical blend.Opening up to the voices of many different people, separated by languages but united by the sea and the music, Nu Genea's hometown, Napoli, becomes a true place of encounter.You can hear this all along. In "Gelbi", a gorgeously deep and propulsive Ney flute plunges into murky waters of the melancholic Tunisian dialect sung by Marzouk Mejri. In "Marechia'", unbridled happiness and sun ooze from the delicate vocals of Célia Kameni and create an acrobatic bridge between French and Neapolitan language. In "Straniero", your soul is arrested from the moment the slow spell-binding mandolin ignites the hypnotic patterns recorded by the legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen. In "Bar Mediterraneo", the title track, bittersweet guitar’s riffs, analog waves and choirs are overwhelming the song giving you what you would like to hear on a boat trip along the Amalfi Coast.Nu Genea couldn't afford to overlook their firmly anchored roots into the Neapolitan culture and its dialect with "Tienaté", where the power of neapolitan language (interpreted by Fabiana Martone) supports those quarter-tone strings and the uncessant folk-disco groove that spreads to the entire song. In "Praja Magia", repetitive mandolin riffs lead the song, giving space to a choral yet tight vocal line that speaks of Varcaturo, a village close to Napoli. In "Rire", a volley of poetic, deceptively laidback, lyrical fury interpreted by Sicilian Marco Castello intimately combines with a highly musical, multi-textured instrumental backbone and the swoon of a chanson in its heart. In "La Crisi'', the lyrics of a Raffaele Viviani’s poem from 1930 have been adapted to a laidback jazz-funk groove in full NG style. In "Vesuvio", revaluing the evocative verses and powerful mantra of Vesuvio, Nu Genea re-adapted to the dancefloor a folk song by the working-class band E’ Zezi from Pomigliano D'Arco, combining the voices of a school choir with Jupiter-6 arpeggios and bold percussions.Bar Mediterraneo is the place where people constantly return to transform curiosity into participation, tradition into sharing, unfamiliar into familiar. When travellers come through its “doors”, carrying their treasures of words and emotions, they aren’t strangers any more. They take part in a shared experience, enriching themselves and others by leading to unexpected musical journeys.

Collection of 1980’s music for aerobics and fitness craze in Yugoslavia inspired by Jane Fonda. Composed by famed film music maestro Alfi Kabiljo, the winner of The Camille Lifetime Achievement Award 2022 by European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA). His trip to disco, funk and jazz, exclusively made for gym and aerobics classes by Sylvie Vartan’s dance pupil Vesna Mimica is presented here for the first time in the form of unreleased instrumental versions and dubs from the original studio master tapes. The phenomena of exercise and aerobics albums started officially in Yugoslavia in 1983, when Fonda’s book was heavily promoted and published in local edition. While other releases of the era used cheaply done covers of the disco chart hits, Alfi Kabiljo composed original and fresh new music for the series of cassettes published by Jugoton. The original instrumentals were considered lost, but Fox & His Friends Records label owners Leri Ahel and Zeljko Luketic found it decades later, restored it and decided to release it without instructional voice-over to showcase the sound of the studio band. The musical genius behind was Alfi Kabiljo, already a successful composer (also a conductor, arranger, piano player, lyrics and libretto writer and producer) in the variety of genres in Yugoslavia and all over the world. He has recorded in Barcelona, Vienna, London (Pinewood and Twickenham), Los Angeles (Hollywood), Ljubljana, Madrid, Paris, Tokyo and most of all in Zagreb. He has written the music for more than 30 feature films and over a hundred television episodes. Numerous popular songs and chansons have been recorded worldwide, he has taken part in and won prizes at popular music festivals at home and abroad, including Zagreb, Split and Opatija, then Rio de Janeiro, Tel Aviv, Malta, Seoul, Palma de Mallorca, Cairo, Athens, Caracas, Mexico City and much more. His lesser known passion is for applied and library music. The Vesna Mimica aerobics tapes were a bold and unusual step in his career: that kind of applied music was usually hidden in biographies of other composers. They probably considered it artistically irrelevant due to a predefined use, but Alfi Kabiljo never agreed on that, he treated all of his compositions with the same pride. This rare collection of disco-fitness tunes is published in limited edition vinyl gatefold LP; includes extensive liner notes, full color design and socialist era workout graphics. YU Aerobic (Original Workout Music from Yugoslavia 1981-1984) was cut by renowned vinyl experts at Pauler Acoustics and mastered by Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw Mastering.