Gatti Mézzi in concert.
The new album – fifteen unreleased songs written and arranged by Francesco Bottai and Tommaso Novi – forcefully embodies that expressive urgency that has always characterized the band’s attitudes and sounds, a mix of songwriting full of self-irony, swing, jazz rhythms and intense crooning full of lyricism and popular stories.
Berve fra le Berve was recorded at Mirco Mencacci’s Sam Studio in Lari, in collaboration with Gabriele Guidi on the mixer, and mastered at the historic Sterling Sound Studios in New York.
In Berve fra le Berve the concept of rawness, understood in the sense of uncooked, unprepared, runs in tune with the communicative urgency of this fourth album, in which any stylistic stereotype gives way to a renewed expressive paste composed of multiple forms and registers.
The sometimes tragicomic stories of the characters and real situations that are told, feed an imaginary of sounds and smells, which confirms on the one hand the popular inclination of the band, on the other the refinement of the stylistic elements adopted.
The expressive basin from which the band has drawn ranges from 20th century impressionism to Mozart, from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Nino Rota, to certain forms of Italian songwriting that are now obsolete. It is enough to scroll through the links of the videos on Youtube with tens of thousands of visits, to demonstrate the great public support that Gatti Mézzi have gained in these five years of journey together. Support that emerges in decidedly significant data, from the victory of the Ciampi Award in 2007 to the 29,000 copies sold of the three previous albums, to the almost three hundred concerts in three years.
A success supported by the irreverent humanity of the stories they have been able to tell, and by an artistic temperament always full of personality and expressive appropriateness. Mirco Capecchi (double bass) and Matteo Consani (drums) played with I Gatti Mézzi, and will accompany them live during the summer tour.
