If a good movie lets you view life and all its
nuances from a variety of shots and new perspectives, then a good soundtrack
lets you hear it, mirroring the range of moods presented on screen. Paolo
Rustichelli's Mystic Man's then is a good soundtrack without a movie.
The first new artist to be released on Carlos Santana's Guts &
Grace label, Paolo
traverses Italian House music, opera, R&B, jazz and Latin guitar rock,
weaving them together with the synthesized melodies that have become his
trademark. The resulting "total music", as the late Miles Davis
termed it, lets us imagine an array of scenes and elicits from us a gamut
of emotions. Strains of Carlos and Miles also resonate throughout
he album.
The concept of mood-shifting atmosphere enhancing "total music"
comes naturally to the Rome-based musician, who spent a good portion of
his career scoring films and TV shows in his native Italy.
"I'm not crucified to one style." Paolo says, a bit
self-conscious about the quality of his English. "When you write music
for movies, you need to be eclectic. So I like to jump from one style to
another."
It's no accident that Paolo wound up making movie music.
With over 600 scores and three Oscar nominations under his belt, Paolo's
father, Carlo Rustichelli ,is perhaps the most prolific movie score
composer in Italy.
  Under his father's auspices, Paolo started studying classical music
at age five. By twelve he was well versed on the piano, bass and B3.
By sixteen, he'd released his Opera Prima on RCA Italy. The album's
futuristic, baroque rock was heavy on the organs and let to experiments
on an ARP 2600 synthesizer. The first artist in Italy to make use o
the new electronic instrument in the 70's, Paolo was soon doing synth
session work for all of Italy's pop superstars.
From there he followed in his dad's footsteps. Doing upwards of 100 soundtracks
for Italy's big and little screens, he scored for such famed directors as
Dino Risi, Nanni Loy, and Mario Monicelli. He also
produced music for the American film Double Exposure. Virtually all
his projects were stamped with both his unmistakable synth and his careful
attention to melody, something he finds "...sorely missing with many
film composers."
In 1990 Paolo schmoozed his way backstage at Italy's Umbria Jazz
Festival, where he met Gordon Meltzer , the road manager for the music icon
legend Miles Davis, who was performing that day.
"I think Miles' playing is very cinematic," Paolo
explains. "there's a freedom to his musical behavior, a mysticism.
He didn't play a lot for movies, but that was a mistake- he can play incredible
melodies, be directed, invoke a mood on command."
The road manager reluctantly agreed to take Paolo's tape- which
included two funky songs and a ballad, all-electronic based- to the reputedly
cantankerous jazz legend. A few days later, Paolo's phone rang.
He recalls the succinct words on the other end of the line, imitating
Miles' slow, scratchy voice: "'Paolo, I like this', he said
to me." Shortly thereafter the two of them spent five hours in Paolo's
studio, cutting three songs together. Snippets and samples from that session
would seep into many of Paolo's future creations.
Some of those creations landed on Mystic Jazz, re-titled Capri
in America. Released on his own Psycomusic label, the collection
of jazz fusion featured the Miles collaboration, "Capri,"
as well as the renowned sax playing of Weather Report's Wayne Shorter.
Wayne was friends with another musical great, Carlos Santana,
and sent him a copy of Paolo's love song, "Full Moon."
Carlos dug the tune; met up with Paolo; and they re-recorded
two versions of it. One landed on Mystic Jazz, the other wound up
on Carlos' Spirits Dancing In The Flash album and became a Santana
staple.
Says Paolo, "Like Miles, Carlos and I speak the same
mystic language. If you give him a melody, he plays it, respects it, lets
it grow up. He makes his mark while respecting your melody. A lot of musicians
won't do that."
Since Mystic Jazz, Paolo has been in Europe doing more
TV and film scores, while also working on his own music. A year and a half
ago, during a visit to San Francisco, he dropped in on his old pal Carlos
who told him about plans to start his own Island-distributed Guts &
Grace label. Their conversation grew into a deal, making Paolo
the first artist on Guts & Grace.
Like the music auteur who created it , Mystic Man defies boundaries of
geography. Capturing goose bump- inducing excitement, seat-squirming edginess,
melancholy-tinted reminiscence, gentle loneliness and soaring hope, the
album is, according to Paolo, a compilation of sonic glimpses.
"Today many musicians are one-man bands, playing whatever they want
to play with samples and drum machines so they are free to create many types
of music- modern dance is something like compilation or soundtrack music.
On this album, I'm a one-man band and I play and produce everything, so
it's really pure- like a series of photographic prints of me."
Bubbling over with spirit-lifting energy, the title song is a house style
club track with a lovely piano melody sweeping through it, while the techno-rap
ditty "Rockman," featuring vocals by Jill Jones
of the New Power Generation, bristles with attitude. Jill
pops up again on the erotic, jazz soaked Italian house cut, "In
Deep."
In contrast, the sentimental textures of "Kyrie," seasoned
with operatic chants and Miles' horn, smack of nostalgia for a missed
old friend. You'll also hear Miles' voice on "Wild Tribes,"
a bright plea for global unity, and catch more of his horn playing on "Get
On" and "Rastafario" and the soulful slow rocker "Vers
Le Soleil" which takes its cue from a famous French pop hit.
On "Paisa'" ( song dedicated to the first Italian Immigrants
in USA) a steadily plodding chiseling drum beat juxtaposed with a wistful
piano and strings conjures a disenfranchised working class foreigner thinking
of home; "Black Isis" and "Love Divine"
both explore the mystic forces of music and life.
While he acknowledges the great classical operatic tradition of his homeland,
Paolo feels most of Italy's recent music has a limited appeal. As
one of the first major label "diplomats" for his country, he hopes
his eclectic package will help to change that.
"We haven't produced anything new and memorable since these (late
19th century). Neapolitan folk songs with these simple but really great
melodies. I love my country, but I do not define myself or my music by it.
I want to make music for a universal audience." | 
