Art Block - Stones and Fire
A flight over the city that lies to the south of this dream, a walk in the shoes of an unhurried need, a caress from a young man on his recording debut, a story in the midst of the running water of fragility in constant disuse, in London defeated by young lives with no more ambition.
Art, a beautiful creature with a sticky glass voice, takes us to the banks of a river intoxicated by corpses, by souls lost in the surrounds of the thought of an ongoing struggle. He chose Amy Winehouse's guitarist, put him behind the bench of wisdom and left him free to listen with ears full of dreams.
Because that's what the young Londoner does: he sings within the dreamy band, sows sighs and endless arpeggios, whispers and lets go of his pain, relentlessly. Various fragments of his childhood, small vessels of travel, enter like ants, inhabit the frenzy that he manages to educate, to make it all become a sound, a song, a sonorous breath that, by seducing him first, allows him to extricate the infinite sense of bewilderment.
Like a therapy, like an outing of the senses, these compositions bear the responsibility of a pastime with hands on hips. Poignant, bewitching, with continuous sweat on the chills, all in these ten nostalgia-coloured, bow-tie-scented butterflies: they celebrate existence and its damnable ending...
He chooses art folk as his guide, the instinct of a man who matures with ballads, slowness, the identity of a country that invented this genre so as not to forget the storytellers. What does Art do but be a hand on a feather, dipped in ink?
Hot tears, they rise up north, in our hearts, then higher, up to our brains, to define the contact that bewitches and frightens at the same time: if there is an escape route, if you ever want to run away from this album, you will agree with its instinct, its bitterness, as certain silences are the children of notes with a magnet.
Finding a place, a meaning, heading towards the future for Art is not a gamble or even a need: it is a precipitate without brakes, because the sky pushes him towards that knowledge that allows him to grasp the breath of every grain of sadness that inhabits his heart.
To approach.
Embracing.
Curling up every fear.
This makes Art and there is no more beautiful tear than an authenticity that does not renounce itself.
The moment of the visit has come, we will be with each of these sparks, with the light off, with the desire, lit, to be a dream within the listening...
Song by Song
1 The Basement
Fingers that pinch, the voice that stimulates weeping, the fire of ignorance that ignites every triviality: Art sets off on his journey, with Trip Hop fragments, the atmosphere of a synth tuned to tenderness and a killer guitar arpeggio that takes us to the confines of Tom McRae. One loses a piece of oneself on the ground, and receives, gratuitously, the first poem. The track has a psychedelic coda, a whisper as his soul struggles....
2 Infinity
Wings of a smile glide over a piano that take us back to the city of soft blues, Houston, as one is inside the blackness of a fratricidal America, and the guitar seems to accompany those keys towards an afternoon of tears. The rhythm bends, stops, Art asks for an abandonment, the house becomes the tragedy that can soothe, and the courage of those strings makes the melody mutate the skin, like the protagonist...
3 Saviour
The winter of the heart arrives, the rain enters the snowflakes, and life becomes a tree with broken branches, unopposed. The voice, here an army scratched by TNT, picks up the acoustic guitar and goes to chat with an artist who has been his Everest...
Depression can have a smile, and every failure, when told by Art, can become a sequence of hugs.
4 Brother
A track as a diviner, looking for night angels to extinguish the light of fear: once upon a time there was the New Acoustic Movement, and a lot of confusion. The Londoner doesn't, he doesn't get lost, and he looks far back in time for this slapstick with strings: it's early 1950s Paris he's renting, you only have to hear the string arrangement and the continuous sleight of hand of the guitar and piano to understand that. If there is a quiver, it certainly comes out of these minutes to die on your shoulders...
5 Seagulls
For the first and only time, Art tells the love story of two souls in search of a visual plane from which to admire the seagulls and sea animals looking for a smile. Bacharach would be proud of the solutions adopted, the rhythmic slide guitar indulging in romance is a masterpiece, the intimacy becoming a slow flock.
6 White Horses (Alt version)
Put on an evening dinner with Joseph Arthur, a scene that looks intriguing. And away they go, words leaving the table and riding on music that comes from the stage of an early 1970s Stones concert. But in these notes there is a share of awareness, an experiencing of the ambiguity of time that Jagger and co. have never experienced. And it is the rainbow that takes Art's voice, pushes it to the highest register, convincing him to deposit all contrariety within a melody that is baroque in intention and pop in reality.
7 Pilgrim
God help us: if there is an emptiness we have created, we will surely understand it in these words and notes, there is no escaping the truth. The voice works as if afraid to disturb the string quartet, perhaps suddenly descended from a 1920s silent film. When it is absent, the music seems to have the intention of opening the curtains of heaven and it is pure emotion, a continuous lesson in how well Art knows certain dynamics, managing to colour his breathing. Vortex, apex, this song is complicit with magnificence...
8 The Sea
Once upon a time there was Jeff Buckley. Just the first few seconds and there is no doubt about it: the mind will ignite love for that American flower not yet ready to wither. The Londoner keeps his light on, on the bedside table words full of dreams and darkness, quick fingers pluck the melody and everything becomes light, while Jeff smiles from his river...
9 Hollow
A change of scenery, the first notes warn us that this guy's talent may lead him to experiment with an Art Folk that takes a dip into American Alternative, to be a timeless dance. Noises recorded on the street and then sampled make art and reality experience a compromise, until the voice disappears into a path made of flying leaves.
10 Stones and Fire
This magnificent journey could not but end with a tale, setting things right with a story that would collect the friends who have fallen into disuse, the stars of days that have lost their brilliance, because Art is no joke. It all starts as a three-way breath, voice, piano and violin, then the drama of conscious words swell the song and the whole thing stretches out.
The piano recounts the voice, the voice stretches the violin, the violin takes in words that should be killed, while this album grants us the magic of a sigh, and the certainty that we have met a talent that will sit long on the wind's back...
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