Since relocating from his native Italy to New York City in 2004, guitarist Marco Cappelli has been active on the extreme-guitar scene inhabited by such likeminded downtown renegades as Elliott Sharp, Nick Didkovsky and Marc Ribot. While he quickly established himself with his extended techniques for acoustic guitar, Cappelli plays strictly electric, with an array of effects, on this eccentric project. The material ranges from twisted takes on ’60s surf music (“Django,” “Cinque Bambole,” “Tiffany Sequence,” “Secret Agent Man”) to highly impressionistic interpretations of spaghetti-western music by Ennio Morricone (“The Sundown,” “Deep Deep Down,” “Driving Decoy”) to purely avant-garde six-string excursions (“Eva Kant,” “Sesso Matto”). Most affecting, among all the outré fireworks, is the moody, tango-flavored “Blood and Black Lace.”
Originally PublishedMarco Cappelli’s Italian Surf Academy: The American Dream
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