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Born and raised in Naples, Dario Bassolino (also known as Dario Bass) is a pianist, producer, and composer active in the national and international electronic jazz scene (and beyond). He has worked with Nicola Conte, LNDFK, Pellegrino, and many others. He has collaborated with Nu Genea, Kurtis Rosenwinkel, Jason Lindner, Asa Chang, Pink Siifu, Chester Watson, Paolo Fresu, System Olympia, Ghemon, Fitness Forever, Giuseppe Vitale, Stefano Costanzo, Pasquale Mirra, Voodoo Kid, Missey, and many more. Bassolino is his new project.
The soundtrack to an ideal film populated by gangsters, fortune tellers, and “suit-wearing” singers. Animated by voices from bustling squares full of life and a sound that stretches toward the stars but remains firmly anchored to a land scorched by the sun. A groove-filled record with a “shady, pulp, grotesque, and romantic” sound that digs its roots into the past to sketch out a new, visionary “future city.”
“Città Futura” (Future City) is the debut album by Bassolino, the new artistic project of Neapolitan pianist, composer, and producer Dario Bassolino, who has been active in the national and international nu-jazz scene (and beyond) and is a prominent figure in the vibrant new music scene of Naples. The album will be released digitally and on 12″ LP by two seminal labels, the Berlin-based Jakarta Records and the Neapolitan Periodica Records, a label dedicated to “Neapolitan electronics and funk music.”
Produced alongside Paolo Petrella, the album is enriched by a group of highly regarded singers and musicians—including Linda Feki (LNDFK) and Andrea De Fazio (Parbleu, Nu Genea)—who communicate with one another while maintaining their unique identities. “The core concept is a strong collective idea: each musician has their own space for expression and timbre, aiming to break certain genre stereotypes and avoid the ‘revival’ trap. That’s the challenge,” says Bassolino.
The six tracks—Napoli Visionaria, ‘E Parole, Oro di Miele, Città Futura, Malavita, and Fuga Finale—interweave mantric percussion, Arabic melodies, urban blues, cinematic atmospheres, sonic hallucinations, Neapolitan pop tributes, and orchestral disco-funk. As Bassolino himself describes it, the album is “enigmatically pop, with prog and jazz-funk roots.” He cites a wide range of influences, from Hermeto Pascoal to Goblin, from Tullio De Piscopo to Franco Califano, as well as Lucio Battisti and Airto Moreira.
Above all, Città Futura is a work that proudly affirms a “southern” sound in its sociological sense, replacing the overused “Mediterranean” style. Through an intricate knot of memory and invention, history and imagination, life and storyboard, the album passionately revisits and reinvents the pop culture of the 1970s in an attempt to interpret the present, with the political belief that the most authentic reflection of a society lies in its most popular expressive forms. “I’m often inspired by philosophy and sociology. For me, music has an explanatory value for a specific historical and social space; it’s a representation of society,” says the artist, a fan of Gilles Deleuze, Alberto Sordi, Mario Bava, Elio Petri, Monicelli, Sciascia, Volonté, Rodolfo Sonego, and the Neapolitan fortune teller Gennaro D’Auria. In short, it’s a “Gramscian” album, inspired by a decade of crisis, created in the midst of our present crisis.
