I am a big user and buyer of music. I buy and listen to everything, with an attitude that at times I seem like addict trying to feel like if it was the first time: I remember like it was yesterday the first album I’ve ever bought! I do anything to feel that emotion again, sometimes I find things that I like, sometimes (many more times!) I like less..

Unfortunately we are aware that all modern albums are made to get A single that works on the radio and with that drag the rest to fame. In all effects given the modern age of internet and downloads I fear it doesn’t make much sense to produce a whole album anymore.

Once upon a time albums where produced with a certain number of tracks because they had to physically fit on a specific medium (the LP) and because there was the culture and the intelligence to create a concept album, which is a project that had a coherence and in the end had a clearly defined project

Concept albums are less to come by, but when it happens that I come across and appreciate one its always enjoy it!

Tow recent works have left a strong impression on me.

I will talk little about the first one, also because I presume everyone is aware of it: “marinai, profeti e balene” by Vinicio Capossela. Its a masterpiece. Full stop.

The other one I would like to talk about more in details is a recent discovery. It’s titled “Rome” by Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi.

Danger Mouse is an american musician and producer, great fan of seventies italian  spaghetti western music since he was a child and, just to mention it, will be producing U2’s forthcoming album. Daniele Luppi is an italian musician that lives in America and has, for example, made the soundtrack of the movie “Nine”, a free interpretation of Fellini’s “otto e mezzo”.

With an approach almost archeologically musical (which reminded me of  the one by Ry Cooder) the pair went to Rome, they searched and found in the storage rooms the musical instruments of the period, they then convened the musicians of the spaghetti western in the seventies and they recorded (in the same studios where they recorded thirty and more years ago!) an album which wants to be a beautiful homage to those sounds and atmospheres.

They have basically written a soundtrack to a movie that does not exist.

The whole thing is made modern and contemporary by the vocal participation of two great singers, Jack White (incredible musician, founder of The White Stripes, unfortunately best known for the pa papapa pa footballing chant, and other thousand groups, like the incredible The Raconteurs) and Norah Jones, well refined singer that to simplify thing we’ll define as jazz.

Amongst this decay full of references and talent an extraordinary album came out of it, which has everything inside (Pink Floyd, Ennio Morricone,  Piero Umiliani, Air, Massive Attack,  Calexico, Morcheeba, Portishead, Eagles, Zero 7, Serge Gainsbourg…) but all this is made modern and contemporary.

After all this chit chat you might want to listen to it, don’t you?

Here is a video where the two authors talk about it:

And my two favourite tracks. Here is the one sang by Norah Jones:

And the one sang by Jack White:

Here, this is all.

Actually, almost!

I would end it like this…

This evening on Via Pisacane 16 in Milan a series of photographs will be put on sale at €50 each (exactly, fifty, I haven’t forgotten to add a zero..)

The proceeds will be donated to the victims of the recent earthquake in Japan all the info here

I will participate with this image

You didn’t get the title?!? Neither have I! I don’t have time to eat, nor to sleep, nor to pee or to poo.

So you can understand that I have no time to write something meaningful on the blog…

And it seems to me quite the stroke of luck! In fact I am turning the little homework around by introducing you, in case you didn’t already, to a photographer and an artist that I really enjoy.

His name is  Algis Griškevičius. You can view his work here.

And here are some of his images:

In the current issue (and it will be on the shelves till Saturday) of sportweek dreams dedicated entirely to swimwear, besides the “conventional” images of the swimwear I felt like creating, for each model, a shot that could be used, as in fact it was done, for the model sheet, so that it would tell her story with more freely and (I apologise for the bad word) more artistically.

I also tried to take images that could sum up the ways and styles which I used for each model.

The theme for Maja’s shoot was the sea, so I liked the idea that her symbolic photograph would be under water at night, using the floodlights of a huge yacht moored in the port. We shot it with a G12 in a waterproof case.

Natalia’s “conventional” photographs instead are taken amongst rocks. For her symbolic image I wanted to exaggerate even more that spirit, taking the shot where she somehow would blend and camouflage in the midst of rocks:

Linda was photographed with the swimwear exasperatedly against the sun: the same spirit in her portrait.

Dayane was shot in the same editorial inside a villa, therefore I took her portrait inside the swimming pool:

I would like to add something to this last image, which I do find interesting:

When I finally got home I started looking at it again and again. It reminded me of something. I could not remember what though. And then it strike me!

I pulled out some boxes with my very old prints and I found this image, taken when I was eighteen years old in Imperia, developed, printed and toned by me:

I like the idea of putting them close to each other, if you think that thirty two years have gone by…

… finally after the special “gazzetta dello sport” swimwear insert SPORTWEEK DREAMS is out now!

And as you can see it attracts immediately more attention that the fashion and alternative side of the milanese scene…

😉