Do Hipsters Love Sun (Ra)? (Schema)
The Dining Rooms
Released November 2015
DownBeat Four-and-a-Half-Star Review
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/5Me9M8rHULa8bPL9AcduMI?si=A_bczl0RQK2x5hndym_jhQ
About:
“Do Hipsters Love Sun (Ra)?” – A title that condenses the almost conceptual nature of this album: on one hand, a tribute to Sun Ra, one of the most profound and revolutionary characters in the history of music, capable of giving a new meaning to the word cosmic, a messenger who came from outer space to bring new spirituality and vision. On the other hand the word hipster – to this day a synonym of naught and superficiality, but with deep socio-political and aesthetical roots: Jack Kerouac, for example, described hipsters as “[people] rising and roaming America, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere [as] characters of a special spirituality”. Hipsters were innovators in the first place, cultural explorers driven by the desire for novelty and experimentation.
All of this finds its place in “Do Hipsters Love Sun (Ra)?”: a soundtrack that condenses cosmic elements, the desire to explore and discover and the ability to imagine and dream. Existentialism, experimentation, spirituality: here’s the homage to Sun Ra, an influence more conceptual than musical on this record.
Abstract jazz, cosmic funk, instrumental hip-hop: “Do Hipsters Love Sun (Ra)?” contains all the features and influences typical of The Dining Rooms’ sound, but also a strong cinematic element that sticks its roots in the world of library music and Italian motion picture soundtracks. The reinterpretation of those atmospheres is the other theme of the album, an undercurrent able to instill those legendary soundtracks charm into this record tracks.
From this fit collaborations: Jessica Lauren, space woman par excellence, and the Italian sound nouvelle vague, bound to that cinematic attitude, Antonio Gramentieri and Francesco Giampaoli’s Sacri Cuori, Bruno Dorella (Ronin’s guitarist among others). Here is an (almost) conceptual album: it’s about radiance, irony, the meaning of life referred to movement and especially to our floating in space. A soundtrack without images, among real and imaginary planets, that meets Sergio Leone on an asteroid and gives us an appointment on Mars, grazes hipsters and beatniks on the devil’s moon – because, as Herman Poole Blount wisely said, “Space is the place”.
Track Listing:
1. Space Is the Place (Stefano Ghittoni) 02:03
2. Do Hipsters Love Sun (Ra)? (Giovanni Ferrario / Stefano Ghittoni) 03:14
3. Appuntamento su Marte (Stefano Ghittoni / Jessica Lauren) 04:00
4. Interstellar (Stefano Ghittoni / Francesco Giampaoli) 03:33
5. Once Were Warriors (Stefano Ghittoni) 02:12
6. Devil’s Moon (Bruno Dorella / Stefano Ghittoni) 02:54
7. Venere (Stefano Ghittoni) 02:22
8. Saturno (Stefano Ghittoni / Francesco Giampaoli / Antonio Gramentieri) 03:08
9. Sergio Leone Asteroid (Stefano Ghittoni / Cesare Malfatti) 03:51
10. Instrumental Hip Hop Is Back (Giovanni Ferrario / Stefano Ghittoni) 02:45
11. Light Time Tales (Stefano Ghittoni / Cesare Malfatti) 02:55
12. Agnone Bagni D’inverno (Stefano Ghittoni) 03:32
13. Marte (Stefano Ghittoni / Cesare Malfatti) 02:21
14. Love Story (Stefano Ghittoni / Cesare Malfatti) 03:27
Personnel:
Stefano Ghittoni: beats, samples, keys, piano
Cesare Malfatti: mellotron, keys, rhodes, micro modular, beats, bass, guitars
Jessica Lauren: multimoog synthesizer, korg cx3 organ, mu-tron bi-phase (3)
Francesco Giampaoli: bass, double bass, moog, guitar, farfisa synthorchestra (4, 8)
Marco Rigamonti: bass (5)
Antonio Gramentieri: guitars (5, 8)
Stefania Mazzotti: fxs (5)
Bruno Dorella: guitar (6)
Diego Sapignoli: drums, percussions (8)
Francesco Valtieri: baritone sax, melodica (8)
Geppi Cuscito: guitar, bass (9, 12)
Luciano Cantone: vibrafone (9)
Giovanni Ferrario; guitar, bass (10)
Produced by Stefano Ghittoni and Cesare Malfatti
Mixed by Francesco Borrelli and Federico Dascola
Photos by Giorgio Possenti
Review:
One of Europe’s most jazz-savvy electro-acoustic groups of the past two decades, The Dining Rooms—the studio duo of Italian multi-instrumentalists/producers Stefano Ghittoni and Cesare Malfatt—has released its most sophisticated record to date, Do Hipsters Like Sun Ra? (Schema; 42:17 ++++½). In referencing the eccentric big-band modernist—and electronics advocate—Sun Ra, the duo pledges allegiance to an ever-imaginative sonic capaciousness. The album is a beautifully atmospheric, hard-grooving blend of beats, loops, samples and live instrumentation (a guitar here, a sax there), with Spaghetti Western sounds, dub-bass spaciousness and hip-hop rhythms part of a mix that feels very human.
Bradley Bambarger (DownBeat)
