Roll out the red carpet, because we've got another blockbuster on our hands! Calibro 35's sound is so iconic it feels like they've always existed. It's hard to imagine that the group is kind of a fluke. As legend has it, the group of Italian musicians convened for a five-day stint to rerecord some obscure exploitation film scores, and the one-off project ended up being such a success that they stuck with it. That was over TEN years ago, and now they've dropped their eighth LP, Momentum. Calibro 35 have cultivated just about every breed of retro-funk there is in the menagerie of mean sucker-free film scores, from the greasy and homespun, to the nimble and flashy. Surprisingly, the band have never really courted hip-hop, despite the genres seemingly inexhaustible and compatible love for exploitation cinema. That hasn't stop devious, rhyme masterminds like Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, and others, from pilfering Calibro's stockpiles for ammunitions, though. With how many hits they've helped others make, it's about time that Calibro pulled the trigger on some hip-hop bangers of their own. "Stan Lee" is a clean bulls-eye, hitting a sweet spot between scintillating, spy-thriller intrigue and lavish psychedelic blues, with Detroit's Illa J helping to cool the smoking barrel with a combination of clean singing and revolving flow raps. Later, British MC MEI confidently drops dry, lashing rhymes over a rubber, bounding bass and a timbery beat on "Black Moon." The heat really gets turned up on the ion charged future funk of the sharp and bright "Fail It Till You Make It," while "Thunderstorms and Data" sets its sights on the stars and doesn't care how much jet fuel it has to burn to reach its final destination in the great unknown. On Momentum, Calibro 35 have penned another great soundtrack to a film that was yet to be made, but which is more cinematic tone and execution than many films that have.
Grab it from Record Kicks, here.
