ABOUT THE BAND
SACROMUD
THE OVERGROUND BLUES: ABOVE THE UNDERGROUND, UNDER THE MAINSTREAM
The SACROMUD overground Blues feels that, in the new popular culture, there is still that old wandering spirit in search of lay prayers; therefore it tries to play the sound of their footsteps, the rhythm of new exodus, to give voice to the sensuality of human weaknesses and to the blackening of the trees, with its off-scale blues, in this new Carousel.
SACROMUD (Labilia production) is not just a band that catch into Maurizio Pugno's blues, continuing in some way the trajectory traced with over 35 years of activity around the world, but it is a real factory of suggestions and sounds spread on what we are today, the Sacred Mud of the contemporary.
The SACROMUD Live Show follows this vision and is built as a single musical suite within which the narration itself moves as well as soul, roots music, blues, rock, pop, funk, R&B etc. but blended together with the sounds of contemporary contradictions.
The OVERGROUND BLUES is the answer that Sacromud tries to give to those who allow themselves, sometimes even unwittingly, to be seduced by the tradition that feeds the sound of contemporary sacred mud, that tradition, which belongs to everyone, even to those who do not know the rhetoric that distinguishes its profile.
The overground blues proves to be the sum, in constant evolution, of the values useful to his people and that people must continually renew itself, if it does not want to perish.
But it is also a stroll around Bluesland, the land where everyone has generated the music of the last 150 years: ”the blues was for me the salt with which I seasoned my musical journey – says Pugno himself - not only as a musician but above all as an enthusiast. SACROMUD is what I call an emotional "slingshot" rather than a musical group that has transformed my path into an experimental synthesis at times difficult, with which to deal but from which to draw ideas: means but a burning desire to break objects to give soul to the matter.
Raffo has translated all the contradictions of turning on oneself through, as I often repeat, his sacred mud but Each one of us is dirtying the music that is written with his personal history.
A summary of the society I would like: different languages that enrich a synthesis that seeks another”.
On November 26, 2022, the album and the band were awarded as "Best Italian Album 2022/23" and as "Best Rock-Blues Band of 2022/23" within the "Rock Targato Italia" event organized by ADMR radio and with the collaboration of the specialized magazines Mescalina and Buscadero.
On 9 July 2023, within the Rovigo Delta Blues Festival, after numerous awards and reviews, Sacromud, breaking the veil of the niche rhetoric that envelops every musical genre (blues included), after having passed all the selections, first regional and then national (with dozens of participating bands from all over Italy) wins the final of the Italian Blues Challenge.
And this is why Sacromud have been called to represent Italy at the INTERNATIONAL BLUES CHALLENGE in Memphis from 13 to 22 January 2024.
A revolution in some way in that a band so musically contaminated and "anthropologically" the bearer of transversal flavours, will have to be the Italian representative fulcrum in the land of Mississippi. the REAL home of Blues, Soul and Funk.
From this trip to the Mississippi Delta, a DOCUFILM called "Sacromud, Gubbio to Memphis" was produced and two albums that will be released soon; a live album recorded at the Teatro Comunale Luca Ronconi in Gubbio (Italy) and another taken from the recording sessions that Sacromud played last January 20th at the legendary SUN RECORDS in Memphis!
The awards bring the "sacred mud" throughout Europe thanks also to the narrative formula of the show (atypical for a blues concert and its surroundings) which includes a single suite in which the musical "floating" between one song and another support a elusive "old man" who leads the band through a journey in which the public is invited to come on board.
Resized, (released on 2021), is a readjustment of the dress (like a good tailor would do) to their own sizes: eight re-adapted covers, and three originals composed and recorded for this album.
Resized is the raft that finally ferried the band towards SACROMUD and "Sacromud" (the album out in 2022/23 completely composed by Maurizio Pugno and Raffo Barbi, totally immersed in this suggestion).
Five musicians, five ways of seeing and hearing music all projected to achieve a performance designed as a real musical suite of over one and a half hours!
You catch your breath at the beginning and slowly exhale everything!