Marcello Melis

The New Village On The Left... is the first album the Sardinian bassist Marcello Melis made for Black Saint, issued in 1977. It sets two recordings made two years and an ocean apart side by side: a traditional vocal quartet from Orgosolo, taped in the village in July 1974, and a New York quartet with trumpeter Enrico Rava, trombonist Roswell Rudd and drummer Famoudou Don Moye, recorded at Downtown Studio in May 1976. The record is laid out as a small village, five pieces by Melis called houses and two traditional pieces called annexes, and it is meant to be heard as a circle: the collective improvisation at the end of the last track continues at the start of the first.

The singers are the Gruppo Rubanu of Orgosolo, with Egidio Muscau as soloist and the other three voices on falsetto, baritone and bass parts. Melis plays bass with the New York group, wrote the five houses and wrote the cover story on the sleeve himself. Giacomo Pellicciotti produced, and Fred Miller engineered the American session. First House opens the record and is its longest piece, close to eleven minutes. The two traditional pieces, Annex A and Annex B, are short, a minute and a half and two and a half minutes, placed between the houses like passages from one building to the next. Fifth House, at seven and a half minutes, closes the sequence and leads back into the opening. The whole album runs a little over 37 minutes.

This is the Black Saint CD 120012-2, which Discogs lists as a reissue of the album first released on LP in 1977 as BSR 0012, with the same seven tracks in the original order.