Fortunato Durutti Marinetti

This one’s been marinating in the tank for some time around here, and I’m sorry it took me so long to spread the love. Still an outpost of the unmissable, Soft Abuse slips out another album from Toronto (by way of Turin)’s Fortunato Durutti Marinetti. The applied name of Daniel Colussi encapsulates the kind of strange swagger that’s imparted to the project. Swathed in synths, dipped in the dulcet end of the jazz-rock spectrum, and looking to dissociative pop from the ‘70s for inspiration, the records is sifting through Robert Wyatt hallucinations while picking at the scabs of synth-pop. One moment the record is writhing in the dawn light of silken flutes and strummed strings, the next the crisp comb-over of synths and drum machines stiffen the feeling and brush away any pastel hues.

The feeling of a record at odds with itself can often cause tension, but Coussi somehow stumbles into a symbiosis, a feeling that the softness seeks the snap of the drums and the brittle beats beg to be doused in sun. On either end of the spectrum, Colussi remains draped grandeur. He carries the songs with the afformentioned swagger and confidence, like Hazelwood or Gainsbourg if they were sifting through Business of Dreams singles. It’s a singular mark on the end of 2023, a record that remains idiosyncratic and magnetic. If this one slipped from your grasp last year, don’t hesitate to dip back to nab it.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.