Costa Sud

Five years on from their radiant debut Ufo Bar, Banda Maje return with Costa Sud, drawing us further into their vision of “Salifornia” — a Southern province of sun-drenched coastlines, fading buildings, and dreams of exotic escapism in full bloom.

Once again, the eight tracks here are shaped by composer and keyboardist Peppe Maiellano, who also takes the wheel of the fiery red Alfasud on the cover. Each piece has been carefully built around his virtuoso partners in crime: a family of exuberant musicians spread between Salerno and Naples, connected by deep roots in the region and a shared commitment to independent artistry.

The Costa Sud imagined by Banda Maje is a shimmering stretch of sun-baked asphalt running between the sea and the ancient pine forests of the Gulf of Salerno. It is a place of beauty and damage in equal measure, where the grace of Ancient Greek civilisation sits in uneasy silence beside the scars of neglect and overbuilding. As Maiellano puts it, inverting Keats’s famous line, “But if truth is beauty and beauty is truth, with the right eyes, you can find beauty and poetry even under a layer of moral and material filth.”

Conceived and recorded entirely in the South, the album still reaches well beyond it. Neapolitan funk and golden-age Italian soundtracks remain the double helix of the band’s DNA, but Costa Sud opens outward too, pulling in sounds from Brazil, Africa, and further afield to weave Italy and the wider global South into one vivid, unmistakable whole.