What's going on in the head of Federico Pipia, aka Pipya? It's a bit like the million-dollar puzzle that emerges when listening to “And The GangBand Vol.1”, a record that the producer, composer and musician from Palermo, who lives in Bologna, released after “Dungeon Clash Tournament” last year, giving life for the occasion to the quartet Pipya And The Gangband, a name that says it all. An album that is the extravagant continuation, or rereading, or defragmentation, or many other things of the previous one released only as Pipya.
These are therefore two equivalent works within which instrumental reflections of a precise sound spectrum stand out, with the second acting as a live variant then recalibrated in the studio and in jazz, prog and electronic sauce, in a sort of double mirror in which Pipia has decided to observe himself and above all observe his own music, which is to all intents and purposes a pastiche of instrumental variations and crescendos that alter the aforementioned genres depending on the moments.
“And The GangBand Vol.1” thus presents itself as a contaminated work, where echoes of Shabaka Hutchings can either pop up, as in “Daemons (Background)”, or immediately disappear (“Danny Is A Two Face Window”) in a cascade of notes on the piano that anticipates a small orchestra in riot gear complete with an avant-rock score on full display.
Instrumental and electronic quartet set up with the mere intention of rearranging and playing live the songs published by Pipia as a soloist, Pipya And The Gangband is composed, in addition obviously to Federico Pipia (guitar and live electronics), by Biagio Cavallo (sax, live electronics ), Dario Boschi (drums, vibraphone, percussion) and Antonio Freno (piano, keyboards, synth), who were then joined from time to time in the recording studio by Giuseppe Franchellucci (cello), Simone Faraci (synth) and Marco Porcelluzzi (sax). It is an expanded formation free to create, in a group or solo, forward escapes of jazz-rock and elsewhere electro-fusion origin, for an album that contains three unreleased songs and five arrangements of scores already published and very different from the original ones like Okey (from “BANG”), two alternative versions of “Danny Is A Good Boy”, one of “Dark Room” and finally one of “Cigarette Break”.
“And The GangBand Vol.1” is a record of exquisite downstream improvisation, net of very specific upstream research. An ultimately emotional and choral investigation that returns moments of soft jazz perdition (“Edible Things”), as well as unexpected ambient glosses (“Backdoor Hidden”) that blend reminiscences of the 12k catalog and post-rock solutions (!). Yet another suggestion that you don't expect in a surprising project, which confirms the improvisational potential of Federico Pipia and his amiable partners.
10/17/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM