Delone by Sacri Cuori

The music of Sacri Cuori is a kaleidoscopic road trip through imaginary 60/70’s soundtrack music and post-folk sonics from Italy, Europa and beyond.

Sacri Cuori only half-jokingly calls themselves the bastard children of Fellini.

Hailing from Romagna, Italy, the band is led by guitarist/producer Antonio Gramentieri and plays (mostly) instrumental, topographical music that mirrors the varied terrain of their experiences whether that be a Rimini beach full of nostalgia and desire or the barrens of the Mojave Desert in the dead of winter.

Their sound palette is defined by a moody, Adriatic twang, falling somewhere between the old time dance music of their native Romagna and Lynch’s Mulholland Drive; between vanished innocence and dark dreams of the future; between Santo & Johnny and Ry Cooder (or Brian Eno).

Of course Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota are also present, as are Riz Ortolani, Piero Piccioni, Piero Umiliani, Armando Trovajoli and other maestros of Italian film music’s golden age.

Over their previous three albums Sacri Cuori have created a sensuous cinematic ouevre that has led them towards live and recorded collaborations with an inspired cast of characters: Calexico’s John Convertino, Dan Stuart (Green on Red), Hugo Race (Bad Seeds, Dirtmusic), Robyn Hitchcock, Italian heroes Vinicio Capossela and Il Pan Del Diavolo. David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, James Chance, PJ Harvey producer John Parish and many others…

In 2014, Sacri Cuori composed and performed the original score for “Zoran - il mio nipote scemo”, a cult movie that received several major awards from the Venice Film Festival. The soundtrack itself was awarded “best soundtrack of the year” at the Est Film Festival.

Delone (de-lone-e)

Delone is the new record by Sacri Cuori.
Delone is a man and a journey.
A journey into the geography of what was once.
A man obsessed with all that might have been.

In every sound and feeling on the album, Italy is the heartbeat.

But this is not the tale of a real Italy.
Delone's Italy is the patria seen from afar, from the eyes of an expatriate or castaway, a misty Italy, a dream of an older time that tries to find elegance and pride in the impossible anarchy of the troubled present.

Delone’s story is an Italian story always told with a foreign accent, a story imagined on the remote border between joy and melancholy.

The album was crafted over the last two years in a series of sessions where the band consciously stretched the definition of who they are. While still primarily an instrumental affair, the album introduces the resplendent voice of Carla Lippis, the last Italian diva, who Sacri Cuori met in Australia and brought back to her ancestral homeland (and language). She sings in both English and Italian. Other vocalists include French chanteuse Emmanuelle Sigal and Howe Gelb of the famed American cult band Giant Sand.

As always Sacri Cuori is more like an enlarged family than a fixed ensemble and other guests include Evan Lurie (Lounge Lizards & Roberto Benigni's soundtracks) on keyboards, guitar pioneer Marc Ribot (Tom Waits), Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth on drums and members of the Mexican Cumbia sensations Sonido Gallo Negro.

While certainly beholden throughout to its Italian musical roots, Delone collides in unpredictable ways with a variety of global sound transmissions. The breathless rush of the surf driven opener Bendigo cuts hard to the sultry romanticism of the second song Una Danza, which in turn, slyly gives way to the nostalgic twang of La Marabina. The album flows like this for the rest of its duration, brilliantly touching upon disparate soundworlds that range from the pastoral (Billy Strange) to the cosmopolitan (the Gainsbourg influenced Serge) to the classically pop (Delone).

There is passion and adventure, excitation and sadness. There is a magnificent sense of wonder.

Delone, the man, is in search of his identity, that familiar warmth, a sign that leads him home.

Delone, the album, plays like a treasured notebook full of restless dreams and nostalgic sketches, all of it edited together like a suspenseful, old TV movie.

It's all here, forever now, forever assured: Sacri Cuori - Delone