OK Planet Earth, I appear to be orbiting the moon again and deep in my ongoing psychosis is the music of Magnifico. I have no idea how his album “Charlatan De Balkan” even got inside my head but there it is and it is making me crazy.
How do you categorise an album like this? Lounge jazz seasoned with eastern European style? Cheese flavoured musical theatre from the Balkans? It could be either or neither or both but one thing is for certain and that is the fact that Magnifico is cooler than a cold one on a hot summer day. Perhaps even cooler than Marcello Mastroianni and that, my friends, is polar ice cap cool.
You can’t just pigeonhole Magnifico. You might think that he is one big prank but nobody puts that much musical magic into a mere prank and you should listen, mere mortals, to how Magnifico the Magnificent bounces between languages as lesser mortals would bounce between the choices in a pizza shop menu. Would not Dean Martin have wished, at the height of his career, to have thrown down a song like “Tivoli”? Of course he would. “Goodbye Devushka” maintains the tuxedo standard with Magnifico taking the twisty route across the continent in his Mercedes grosser pullman before ending up on stage in a Paris cabaret bar.
Don’t stop, don’t stop now. Duly Magnifico keeps on going throwing us, with casual indifference, “Cici Mici” and, from the back row, I hear the ghost of demi-god Serge Gainsbourg applaud his endeavours before the entire room – all closet euro disco fans – spontaneously invades the dancefloor to the beat of “Kuku Lele”.
I don’t know if Magnifico can walk on water but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he could.