Luca Curcio is an Italian-born bassist, composer, and producer based between Berlin and Copenhagen, whose music blends improvisation, sampling, and post-production into a rhythm-forward, urgent sound world. Curcio’s vision of contemporary jazz sees improvisation and production as equals, and the studio is as vital a space as the stage.
La BOMBA is Curcio’s debut album as a bandleader, featuring a Copenhagen-based, international ensemble with Norwegian trumpeter Erik Kimestad and drummer Simon Olderskog Albertsen, Italian tenor sax player Francesco Bigoni, and Icelandic alto sax player Sölvi Kolbeinsson.
Curcio recorded this ensemble playing a set of his energetic compositions and some spontaneous improvisations at the MillFactory in Copenhagen. These performances were only the starting point. Once recorded, they become raw material for Curcio to reimagine in Berlin, where the studio serves him as a creative sonic laboratory. He edited, sampled, dismantled, and rebuilt these pieces anew, with additional recordings in a process he calls circular sampling. Horn lines became looping fragments, rhythmic layers splintered and collided, acoustic textures mutated into unexpected, dense sonic forms, and electronic production complemented acoustic interplay, transforming live improvisation into something entirely new.
La BOMBA offers an accessible, but unpredictable bass-driven sonic universe where grooves fracture and reform, horn lines twist and dissolve, micro-rhythms drive the pulse, and forms remain fluid and unpredictable. Curcio wishes to bring his raw, energy-tinged, and beat-charged modern jazz back to the dance floors, making it a driving, physical, sexy force that flirts and hybridizes with hip-hop, dub, and drum n’ bass, letting it move bodies in constant, restless, and elastic motion.
It sounds urgent, seductive, and organic, suggesting a true unity between the live playing and the post-production.
Eyal Hareuveni
Luca Curcio (double bass, electric bass, percussion, vocals, sampler), Erik Kimestad (trumpet), Sölvi Kolbeinsson (alto saxophone), Francesco Bigoni (tenor saxophone), Simon Olderskog Albertsen (drums), Mariana Zwarg (flutes), Mette Nadja Hansen (vocals)
