Caliber 35 return to cinematic noir

I Caliber 35 pay homage to American noir on the new album “Ellroy vs. LA” outgoing on October 9thtaken from the soundtrack of the documentary of the same name by Francesco Zippel produced by Federica Paniccia And Francesco Zippel For Quoiat Films. The first single is now available “Riots”. “Ellroy vs. LA”winner of Silver Ribbon as best documentary in the category Cinema Entertainment Culture 2026is an atypical documentary, a dark journey into the mind of the master of noir James Ellroy. Through an in-depth interview and archive footage, the doc intertwines the personal and artistic story of James Ellroy with his original vision of Los Angeles, alternating his voice with the images and sound of Calibro 35, filmed in the studio while they give life to the soundtrack.

The result is a large, very large space for music, which offers the Milanese quartet the opportunity to go beyond the simple comment on the images to directly deal with an imaginary, that of noir, which has always been incredibly close to the atmospheres that distinguish the band. The result is 12 songs identitarians who bring the Caliber 35 back to the territories of cinematic funk after the forays into “genre” soundtracks such as those created by Martellotta, Gabrielli, Rondanini and Colliva for “Sandokan” and “Blanca”. We therefore find the sound palette developed by Calibro 35 in almost twenty years of musical explorations hybridized – also given the “American” topic of the documentary – with jazzwith the blaxploitation and with contemporary urban rhythms. In the first single “Riots”over the practically boom bap rhythm of the drums, the twang of the electric guitars responds to the incessant clavinet ostinato.

It is just an example of the atmospheres contained in “Ellroy vs. LA” whose songs range from the noir master’s tetralogy set in the Californian city (“Black Dahlia”, “The Big Nowhere”, “LA Confidential”, “White Jazz”) to the different facets of a metropolis with great contrasts (“LSD on Sunset Blvd”, “Chalet Manson”, “Vacation and Probation”, “Pacific Safari”), through songs that have Morriconian echoes, but also of the cinematic funk of Isaac Hayes And Lalo Shifrin and even of Kendrik Lamar And Dr Dre (and perhaps it is no coincidence that Calibro were also sampled by the producer for his album “Compton”). With “Ellroy vs LA”, Calibro 35 didn’t limit themselves to composing a soundtrack, they were protagonists of the documentary itself and translated a mythology into rhythm, tension and groove.