Dutch Falconi – La Amante Del Inquisidor (Spotify)

Composer Dutch Falconi’s sophomore solo album, Curious Fabrications, out on Aurore Records July 23rd, is a sonic sleight of hand. It’s a film noir-ish adventure set in the big, cold, naked city, with the songs functioning as a roadmap for the intrepid listener to follow. Each track is a puzzle piece in the unfolding of the listener’s personalized narrative, one motivated by the fruitful ambiguity of the music. Is it a crime you’re solving? Probably. Are there clues? Everywhere. Are there dangerous and sexy characters to encounter? You bet. Hang onto your seats.

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“I hope the pieces themselves lead to narratives conjured up in the mind of the listener. I prefer an unfixed perspective with music where the listener participates by bringing their own imagination to the pieces, and that contributes to their perception of the album. They’re part of the ensemble that way,” the Sacramento, California-based artist shares.

In the heyday of the 1990’s swing revival movement, Dutch led The Dutch Falconi Orchestra, a 27-piece swing orchestra juggernaut, replete with go-go dancers. From 1989-2000, he was the band’s benevolent dictator and composer, conductor, mechanic, bank and therapist. The small city of a group made 3 three records and shared stages with the big cats of the day like Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and the Royal Crown Revue. Dutch retired from the bandstand to pursue other creative ventures outside of music, but in 2020 resurfaced with a clutch of singles and a wildly eclectic solo debut, Bloom & Brimstone.

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Curious Fabrications builds upon the success of his first solo bow, and like that album Dutch is the sole writer, player/performer, and producer. The similarities stop there. In keeping with the overarching theme of fruitful ambiguity, Dutch has created a swing album where nearly everything is synthetic and virtual with a tiny tidbit of Dutch’s actual playing. This album is a showcase for Dutch’s original swing era compositions, his flamboyant musicality, and his fearless imagination.

The single, La Amante Del Inquisidor, slinks forth with theatrical flair. The song exudes a hard-to-pin-down ethnic quality, and instead of being an appropriation, it is a melting pot of sounds. The tune boasts a vaguely klezmer melody set into a mildly Spanish flamenco framework performed with 40’s Latin dance band instrumentation. It’s an intriguing mélange of cultures and sounds that could possibly only come to fruition while twiddling one’s thumbs during pandemic downtime. “For me, the lockdown brought the delicious opportunity to stretch out,” Dutch shares. “I had the luxury of time to experiment. I frequently set out to reorder and recombine elements from tangentially related styles. The intention was to hit on some crooked math, like, 1+1+1=4, where the sum of the parts might make something surprising and unexpected. Something beautiful, wild and curious while being charged with passion and mystery.”

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