Marco Colonna
Noise of Trouble
Niafunken
Here’s an Italian jazz master working in the genre since he was eight. Colonna has done well for himself with 20 albums, sound tracks and other manifestations of musicianship. He operates out of Italy, and Colonna personally remains mysterious with a rather thin web presence. Here his latest effort offers a discordant yet resonant style of music with no vocals to confuse the listener. We open with “Jellyfish,” a free-form exercise in saxophone riffing leaning on a bass line of jangly brass and a casual “Walking in the Park” rhythm. It’s just a fast as you want it to be and holds your interest for the whole journey. After a brief pause, we enter “Luis” with its ominous cymbal rolls and creepy guitar. Now the sax appears from the shadows, slowly picking out a melody that usual introduces the arrival of the “Femme Fatal” in a Film Noir movie. I think I smell her cologne. She sits next to me, uninvited yet welcome. We have drinks. No one dies. You know the rest. I’ll just skip ahead and takes quick peak at “Apocalypse.” Here the rhythm pops along, bouncing over a tirade of what I assume is angry Italian. Eventual the tirade runs out of energy and after a brief pause a much calmer “Arising” sets its jazz sax down in a world where it might just rain any time. You hear a riff of distant thunder, and the air oozes the ozone laden breath of a napping Storm God. He rises, then jogs after the clouds after a long a day at the weather machine. Twelve tracks rumble along, giving you comforting jazz, involving arrangements, and the occasional weird sound effect. As this last track fades, the bartender looks ready to close, the sax loses impetus, and the dawn looms. It’s a weirdly hypnotic experience, and one I enjoyed.
