The magic of the sound of Piero Umilani, told by the 35 caliber

The 35 caliber recorded an Afrobeat version of “Discomania” in the historic Sound Work Shop, Piero Umiliani’s song, the historic closing theme of “90th minute: it is the second single that anticipates new album” Exploration “, coming out on June 6th.
We asked the 35 caliber to tell the master Piero Umbiliani and the magic of his music.

Who knows if in 1978, when Piero Umbiliani and a handful of musicians recorded a library entrusted with the Sound Workshop with an explanatory title as “Discomusic“, They imagined that”Discomania “ – one of the songs contained in it – would become one of the protagonists of the Italian Sunday afternoon of the years to come, thanks to the insertion as the closing theme in the 90th minute program.
Certainly we, children who grew up in the 80s between the SuperTele, Maradona and Platini, did not imagine that one day we would have found ourselves in the same study with the tools in his arms to register our version, turning the piece like a sock, making Tony Allen pass on to free an unexpected jazz afro soul, without betraying such an iconic theme.

When almost twenty years ago we decided to set up this thing that would then take the name of “35 caliber” the project was clear enough: we take an incredible repertoire that we have in Italy – that of the soundtracks between the 60s and 70s – and bring us back to life not only the music but also the sound, the attitude and how they were done … everything that made them special in short. We embarked on a journey – which still lasts – that led us to discover lots of music, a lot of ways to make it and many stories from which to learn, appropriateing useful tools to make it in turn, for our records and for our soundtracks. Because in the end – using a well -consolidated saying – we too are only dwarfs on the shoulders of giants who came before.

The protagonist of some of the most incredible stories in which we stumbled upon is the figure of Piero Umbiliani. Excelso musician, true sound researcher and three hundred and sixty degrees experimenter. It was he who brought jazz to the big screen for the first time in Italy – in 1959 with “The bold blow of the usual unknown persons” – By refreshing a language that at the time it was renovated more than anything else to orchestral music on the one hand and popular song on the other.

It was he, in the following years, who made himself completely independent by founding his label (Oldo), his publishing house (lute) and opening his recording studio (sound workshop). An independence that gave him the opportunity to devote himself to writing, recording and production of a huge number of soundtracks and infinite Library Music records. Titles who became worship in the decades to come as “To-Days Sound”, “Sweden Paradiso and Inferno” (and the famous “Mah na mah na” contained in it), “Synthi Time”, “rhythmic and dynamic themes”, “psychedelic” just to name a few.

I think that the name that Umiliani chose for his study – sound workshops, sound laboratory – was prophetic because these walls, still intact and operational thanks to the passionate work of the daughters Elizabeth and Alessandra, still exudate from all the experiments that took place inside us, the tools implore to be played and the air particles to be placed once again moving. As if by resting the ear on the wall we could hear the master who plays the piano again. For this we came here, to make ourselves inspired and pay homage. This is why we will return to do what Umiliani has taught us to do like no one else: looking at the world with well -open ears.

After the recording and just before leaving his studio, we note that in a corner the daughters still retain the handwritten notes with which the teacher was appointed the instructions on how to make some sounds that he created with the synthesizers replicate. “Voice” “jazz hammer” “cicale love call” are just some of the names of these sounds, with some indications next to how to play them. Let’s try to recreate someone and for a moment we really hear the “voices”. A spark of contact with a giant, impalpable yet so present.
The sound: a magic.