SEPE Daniele
Anime Candide (Export edition)

Fy 8066


Dunya Records
Italia

 

Every new DANIELE SEPE CD is certainly an event. There aren't many Italians who are able to shuffle the genre pack so deftly, creating original tracks out of the torn rags of tradition. On Anime Candide these range from a text from Abruzzo to an arberesh song to an old-time serenade to one of Raffaele Viviani's "ten commandments", with learned asides to Neruda and Afonso. Such disparate elements are fused into a molten mixture that wears an ironic grin on its face and, when the occasion demands, funk-rocks like a beast.

As the album moves through its many moods, spliced together with great sensibility, a range of emotions are evoked from laughter to tears, rage to tenderness, hate to love and back again, just as they are in life. Because Anime candide is music built for frequent use and abuse, not just for parties.

A native of Naples, DANIELE SEPE began his career during the late 70s in the Pomigliano D'Arco workers group E Zezi with whom he continued to record and perform for several years. In the meantime, he studied flute at the San Pietro a Majella conservatory in Naples where he received his diploma. But his true passion was for the saxophone, which he played in numerous Parthenopean New Wave groups of the era such as Little Italy, Bisca and Degrado. But though his skill and enthusiasm were great, the pickings were slim, and so SEPE was forced to devote himself to baroque music and to sessioning for a number of famous names from the world of Italian light music (Nino D¹Angelo, Gino Paoli, Eduardo De Crescenzo and Nino Buoncore). Thanks to his session work SEPE was able to self-produce his first solo record, Malamusica which garnered good reviews, as did the follow-up albums L'uscita dei gladiatori and Play standards and more. However, it was only with his subsequent release, Vite Perdute that public as well as critics began to sit up and take notice, and a number of Italian film directors (Martone, Ferrario, Battiato) selected SEPE to score their films.
After these prestigious though highly demanding commissions, which got him further recognition, SEPE recorded Spiritus Mundi followed by Trasmigrazioni, and then hot on its tracks the anthology Viaggi fuori dai paraggi. Official acclaim and awards were to follow with the release of the book-CD, Lavorare stanca which received the Tenco prize as well as a nomination for the Premio Italiano della Musica (PIM). In the late 90s SEPE found himself invited to participate in prestigious European festivals such as Womad, Les Allumees, Beethoven Kunstnhalle, while his album Conosci Victor Jara? entered the Italian indie charts. In 2000 he released Truffe & Other Sturiellett which was followed by the staging of Raffaele Viviani's Dieci comandamenti with Mario Martone. The 20.000 copies sold of his next album Jurnateri was a source of great satisfaction to Sepe who in 2002 put out Senza filtro (Dunya/Felmay fy 8049), an anthology aimed exclusively at the foreign market.