Ivan Valentini - Camera Funky (2026) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. Fu-Gu
02. Rabbit in a Bag
03. Overload
04. Acque dense
05. Charnold
06. Bishop's move
07. Orbit Ten
08. Soul Pain, Soul Gain

Since I first devoted myself to music, alongside working to master my instrument and studying improvisation technique and practice, composition found its place right from the start. The pieces that didn't end up in the trash or tucked away in some drawer have found their way onto record across the various albums released under my name — a thirty-year arc — all featuring only original compositions.

If there is a common thread running through these albums, it might be a certain restlessness, a pleasure in mixing genres, styles, and their different expressions: black music, and jazz in particular, is a central reference point, but rock influences and twentieth-century Western art music are equally fundamental.

Camera Funky moves through the same territory, but with a stronger funk imprint, though one that is crossed by numerous hybrid elements: odd time signatures, polymetry, complex formal structures, angular melodic lines, and even a twelve-tone row with its various elaborations.

In some ways this album is the second chapter of Ivan Valentini's Rust & Blue, released about ten years ago. It is no coincidence that here too, in place of the more conventional double bass, I chose electric bass for a heavier, more robust impact.

Among the collaborators, a couple are long-standing, namely Luca Perciballi and Alessio Bruno on guitar and electric bass respectively, while trumpeter Matteo Pontegavelli and drummer Nelide Bandello are more recent acquaintances.

I'll say it and then deny it: the idea for the title came from thinking of the genre as chamber funk.