Wearing his fez hat and mask, a member of the Mambo Jambo Arkestra happily drinks a cocktail while a cyclone devastates the tropical environment in which he is located. It is the cover of El gran cyclone, the second album that the powerful 16-member formation led by Dani Nel·lo released to the market to continue the party started four years ago.
This time there are ten new instrumental songs with the characteristic jambophonic sound, a mix of rock, r
Dani Nel·lo waits punctually for his appointment at the Negresco hotel, where he arrives accompanied by his 1933 Conn saxophone, one of the three he owns. With the force of a cyclone, he details all the details of his umpteenth project, concentrated on the cover designed by Adrián Bago: “The world is in a very complicated moment with wars, pandemics, energy crisis, climate crisis. The record industry has been repositioning itself for 20 years with the digital eruption, and we can't think of anything else other than to toast a group of hundreds of musicians who are making instrumental rock and roll,” explains the former sax player of Los Rebeldes.
If the origin of the Arkestra was the celebration of the 10-year history of the Mambo Jambo quartet, the second album of this big band formation began to take shape after the publication of Exotic Rendezvous, the band's latest work. “For us it was a before and after, an album for which we had a lot of time because of the pandemic, and we refined it a lot in every detail, in all the arrangements.” After so much effort and such good results, the quartet did not want to continue in the same direction, so they considered resurrecting the Arkestra.
In their second album as a big band, the quartet formed by Ivan Kovacevic, Anton Jarl, Dani Baraldés and Dani Nel·lo himself repeats the formula of taking songs from their own harvest and arranging them to perform them with an expanded lineup with five saxophones, three trombones, three trumpets and a guitar. A work that has benefited from Kovacevic's experience as director of the Barcelona Big Blues Band. “As for the architecture of what big band arrangements should be harmonically, he is an expert.”
The result is what they call jambophonic sound, a particular style that they have maintained in this second Arkestra work. “When people do rock'n'roll with a big band they always go for swing. Not us, we wanted to continue with the jambophonic sound, that mix of surf, rock'n'roll, r
Beyond the exotic American jazz musician who gives the Arkestra its name, Nel·lo refuses to name references for the music the quartet makes, highlighting that their influences are very broad thanks to their separate projects. “Iván has the Barcelona Big Blues band, and plays Balkan music with the Barcelona Gipsy Balkan Orchestra. I have the Organ Trio and Los Saxofonistas Salvajes. Dani Baraldés plays with pop groups, and Anton Jarl has just released Rambalaya's second album. We have a stylistic range that goes from r
“What makes us especially excited is having connected with people,” highlights Dani Nel·lo, recalling the preview of the album last July, before 4,000 people at the Bilbao Blues Festival, a success that reinforces the proposal born in 2019 as specific event. “We thought we would do 10 or 12 gigs with just one record, but magically performances and performances were outstanding, and in two seasons we did a lot and connected with people,” a success that, together with the sales of the record, encouraged them to continue with a proposal that “if you look at it coldly, on a practical level it is more difficult, more convoluted at all levels.”
