Listening to "Unit Five" (Music Center BA112CD) makes you remember those days when you got the latest Blue Note album because you knew that you were going to hear the kind of lines that would make you snap your fingers and enjoy some good blowing that was free of pretension and gimmicks. Well this album happens to have been recorded in May 2006 in Italy by a band led by bassist MASSIMILIANO ROLFF. Rolff, along with Steffano Riggi on tenor sax, Giampiero Lo Bello on trumpet and flugelhorn, Massimo Currò on guitar and Maurizio Borgia on drums, give vibrant life to nine of his compositions. He knows how to write music that makes you want to hear more. It pleases me that an album that sounds so wonderfully retro is entirely a production of European musicians, for so much of what arrives here from over there is in the avant garde camp, and not particularly appealing to my ears. If Rolff and his band mates ever make it to these shores for some gigs, I hope that I hear about it, and can find a way to catch them. (Joe Lang - Jersey Jazz Magazine / www.cdbaby.com) Massimiliano Rolff (1973), graduates at the Jazz Conservatory of Groningen (Holland) in Electric Bass and Music Pedagogy in 1999, where he followed over 40 clinics and workshops with some of the best musicians worldwide. In 1999 with a scolarship of the Dutch government he also follows a master at the Bass Collective in New York City with John Pattitucci and Lincoln Goines. In 2003 he graduates in Jazz Music at the Conservatory "A. Vivaldi" in Alessandria (Italy). He works and live in Genova, Italy. As freelance bassist in the last years he has performed in some of the most important clubs and festivals of Italy, Holland, France, Austria, Switzerland, California, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Missisipi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, with Jasper van't Hof, Andrea Pozza, Mike Campagna, Gianpaolo Casati, Claudio Capurro, Alessio Menconi, Tom Kirkpatrick, Vera Takes the Cake, Latin Connection, Martin Tingvall, Zibba, Stage Big Band and more either in jazz and pop-rock fields. In 2003 he has published with Oleo the album "Next Beat" for Scenario Music, with a worldwide distribution, followed by many other compilations in many different countries. He is full time bassist of rock band Zibba e ALmalibre, with whom has published two acclaimed records. In 2006 Rolff published his first jazz album as bassist, composer and leader "Unit Five" (Music Center/IRD). He is endorser for D'Orazio Strings.