Nicola Conte

New forms of ‘club-oriented’ music, contaminated by various genres, characterize the recent history of our globalized world: the overlapping of individual experiences creates new collaborations, as it happened here: DJ, musician and producer Nicola Conte meets again, sixteen years after the release of “New Standards” (2001, Schema, cat# SCEP336), his friend and colleague Gianluca Petrella (Blue Note, ECM), an internationally renowned talent emerged from the Italian jazz scene, an eclectic musician open to new experiences and collaborations.

The collaboration wasn’t limited to the production of these tracks, but involved a collaborative research effort; the two have in fact been diggin’ together, exchanged rare records, sampled and worked with analog vintage gear. This 12” comes from two seasoned Italian jazz men, expressing their idea of a dancefloor; an experiment nodding to the scene of Detroit, with Conte and Petrella filtering and distilling the many impressions and influences coming from jazz to disco, house and beyond.

The A-Side track “African Spirit” is a spiritual mantra, a simple dancefloor groove capable to induce an estatic feel; the flip-side, “New World Shuffle” is built on the same element and is enhanced by Bridgette Amofah’s vocals, adding a tribal vibe.