Here Come The Drums: Charly Antolini

Charly Antolini’s Power Dozen: Uela Uela and Marabuena
From: Atomic Drums [EMI-Columbia, 1972]

April 1st today but the only foolish thing about this site would be if you chose to not check out the couple of tracks from Charly Antolini’s breaktastic album Atomic Drums.

A Swiss jazz drummer, Charly’s albums always offered up some fantastic playing but Atomic Drums stands out from most of his releases by combining this energy with an album’s worth of tunes that fall more on the funkier side of the tracks. As you would expect/hope for an album with such a promising title (but rarely get) the tunes on offer here also have an insane amount of open breaks so any aspiring producers, do your worst.

Uela Uela may be familiar from a variety of mixes/compilations over the years as it’s become a popular number with its call and response vocal and trumpet line and a relentlessly dancefloor orientated beat. As you would expect from Antolini, the percussion is fantastic.

Marabeuna, a track with far less publicity, is a fantastic rolling beast. With what seems to me to be heavy African influences, the tune once again features call and response vocals/horns along with an exceptionally funky organ riff as well. Great stuff indeed.

As is sadly often the case, despite being arguably Antolini’s greatest album, this is a real git to find in the field, particularly if you’re not in Europe. Still, dedication always pays off and if not, I’m sure there are blogs out there sharing the whole thing somewhere.

I would post more but I think the G20 protesters are about to make my afternoon very interesting. More tunes soon if I get out of this in one piece…….