RNC Music: FLABBY

COOL TO BE FLABBY!

COOL TO BE FLABBY! The name was found in the English Dictionary, the sound, in the music encyclopaedia. Following the premises, they started mixing up genres and sounds, melting styles and rhythms, cooking something absolutely fresh and charming. FLABBY was the creature of a “menage a trois” , due to the extraordinary musical feeling between Ross Pellecchia, Fab Fiore and Andrea De Sabato, three acclaimed radio and club deejays. The three of them went out for a drink together, on an evening of 1996 in Milan: it was while sipping an unspecified number of Martini cocktails that they discovered an irresistible musical empathy and actually started the Flabby thing! “Diggy Doggy Doo”, the first single by FLABBY, was built around the sample of a famous 70’s commercial for a mattress company and released during the spring of 1997 through Soul Trade Music, a small indie label owned by the young, charming talent scout Mariella Reitano and licensed to EMI Music Italy. The song was greatly successful throughout the acid jazz circuit, suddenly becoming part of the picking up lounge music phenomena. In February ‘98 Flabby released their debut album “Modern Tunes for Everybody”: “les album plus cool d’Europe” , according to a Canadian review ! The first single off the album was “ Mambo Italiano”, a song written in the 50’s by Bob Merrill and known all over the world thanks to performances of Dean Martin and Rosemarie Clooney. In Italy “Mambo Italiano” became a massive hit thanks to the bizarre arrangement , the catchy rhymes and the voice of Carla Boni , the same star that originally interpreted the italian version in the 50’s, accepted to be featured on the FLABBY version and also acted in the amazing videoclip. The song and the video became a cult, reaching the top of the radio and TV charts all over the world. It was also included in the original soundtrack of the very successful Gabriele Muccino’s movie, “Come te nessuno mai”. Jarvis Cocker, leader of the brit pop band Pulp, reviewed it enthusiastically and called himself a “huge FLABBY fan” . “Modern Tunes for Everybody” was released abroad: it collected world-wide success in Eastern Europe, Greece, Turkey, Japan, Canada, Brazil and Asia, especially Indonesia where it became a cult album.. In the summer of 1999 the guys were back in the studio, recording their new album due to release through the Sugar Label the following autumn. In June 1999 the new single “Baluba” was released. It is a surreal song from the Italian 70’s re-arranged in the FLABBY way and included in the original soundtrack of the movie “E Allora Mambo”, the successful debut of the young director Lucio Pellegrini. Once again, the videoclip of this song was in heavy rotation on MTV. At the end of 1999 FLABBY’s second album “Limoncello Experience” gets released.

The second single from this album, “There’s a Better Way”, became very popular in Italy, thanks to a sample taken from a classical football TV program. The same song was used for a big commercial for the main Italian mobile phone company (TIM) with the worldwide football star Gabriel Batistuta. In 2001 cinema fell in love with FLABBY sound again: Flabby’s groove, off the first album, was chosen for the trailer of the blockbuster movie “Ocean’s Eleven”. In 2003 Andrea left the band. After a pause, Fabrizio Fiore and Rosario Pellecchia started to work on new songs for a re-release of “Modern Tunes for everybody”. The idea came to Nico Spinosa who originally signed them at EMI Italy, due to a few requests for synchronization.

In fact, Flabby’s songs have always had great appeal to both cinema and advertising, long before the record industry understood the importance of such exploitation.

In 2006 “Modern tunes for everybody” was re-released and almost immediately withdrawn from the market due to Spinosa leaving EMI.

He and Flabby met again in 2009 and once again they decided to start working on the project, as, meanwhile, Spinosa had launched his new label RNC Music along with talent scout Ros Manica.

The planning for the project is a re-release of both “Modern tunes for everybody” and “Limoncello experience” plus an exclusive selection of remixes for the album Flabby remixed and 2010 will also see the release of a brand new album, still untitled, containing so far 9 brand new tracks.

The reappearance of Flabby on the market have already started to generate interest among the labels that had been working them in the past and have already made new followers among media and record labels.

A great version of Jingle Bell Rock, originally included on their second album “Limoncello experience” has been getting very good response in several territories, but the real step ahead is the new album, “Anything Can Happen” which will be released between the last week of January and mid February 2011.

The album will be launched with a presentation at Milan’s Blue Note.

“Anything Can Happen” is meant to be a proper step ahead. Totally recorded at Paolo Filippi’s Cavò Studio along with some of the finest Italian jazz musicians, and mastered by John Davis at London’s Metropolis, the album has come out as a proper jazzy soul mature album.

It contains 13 tracks, of which “Don’t Break This Heart Of Mine” will be the first single and the relevant video will be shot before the release of the album,

There is just one cover and this is Style Council’s “The Lodgers”

Stay Tuned