Pulciperla

What a find, Pulcinella. Their new album "Tatekieto" overflows with vivid shape-shifting exuberance — and once it’s over, diving into the Tououlse band's ten-plus year catalogue becomes inevitable. No two albums are the same — and not one of them is anything less than electrifying. No two albums are the same — and not one of them is anything less than electrifying.

But perhaps a step back is in order: Pulcinella? Technically, this album is released under the name Pulciperla. Which isn’t quite the same thing. Not exactly, at least — because along with the four Frenchmen, the Bogotá-based trio La Perla joins the ride. Long devoted to dialogue and exchange, Pulcinella’s carnivalesque jazz-rock here bursts open with a whole new palette of colour.
The fusion is explosive: on the European side, you get chamber instrumentation, flights between musette and Balkan flourishes, and a not-so-hidden avant-prog streak. From Colombia, you get a whole arsenal of centrifugal force: hip-hop and tumbao, cumbia and gaïta pipes, unison vocal attacks and percussion with evocative names — tambor alegre and guacharaca (also the name of a local fowl, apparently).

The album opens like a zig-zagging escape. The title track immediately shows just how tight the connection is between the two groups, braiding oblique horns and Caribbean patterns with a restlessness that recalls São Paulo’s Vanguarda Paulista more than the folkloric Bogotá where the polyrhythms originate. The common thread is a hybrid energy, always on the edge of collapse, yet orchestrated with surprising clarity. In "Tabogo", that chaos becomes a choreographed story: whirling keyboards, brass on the chase — a musical pursuit that mimics, in shape and in silences, the flight pattern of a frantic mosquito. It’s all play, yes, but play with shifting rules — and a driving beat.
"Croissant" pushes the mash-up to its peak, cramming askew ska, naïve electronica, sharp-edged rap and fluttering flutes into a tightly wound track. It spins like a centrifuge, full of unexpected turns and tempo shifts that surprise and amuse in equal measure. And "El Gran Godzilla", if anything, goes even further: it takes a merengue, dismantles it, stretches it in every direction, then pulls it back together — only to suddenly slam into pounding reggaeton, kept steady by Marc Serpin’s upright bass and Pierre Pollet’s drumming.

Diana Sanmiguel, Giovanna Mogollón and Karen Forero aren’t guests — their presence redefines the project’s centre of gravity, adding another axis of rotation to a collective already built on diagonal motion.
And for those who want to explore more of this same spirit, the place to start is "Grifone", Pulcinella’s previous album with singer Maria Mazzotta, formerly of Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino. Same vortex energy, different trajectory, and an unchanged hunger for fertile collisions.

(English version created with AI-assisted translation)

21/05/2025