My Review: Gaudi - Theremin Homage to The Smiths

 

Gaudi - Theremin Homage to The Smiths

In the bubble of time, sudden sparks often arrive to illuminate miracles.

Music lends itself to creating part of this emotional stage with instruments that go from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

The Theremin is the only one that does not need to be touched, but this does not prevent it from taking the soul and elevating it to a dimension capable of shaking.

Just like The Smiths, a sword full of mysterious dust, in continuous repose with perfection, and which finds love and devotion on the part of the Italian musician but who has been living in London for decades once again (the second, though one hopes there will be twenty more...) in the desire to pay homage to this band and bring it into a space, the only one, in which to excel: the solitude of a homage is the precise dimension where the Manchester band can establish contact with eternity.

After the approach that had delivered us five gems, here he is back with a quatern of continuous and painful obsession: there is no happiness on the Smithsian planet, but a sweet, long line of mental tombstones that can provoke sobs and moans. The Theremin is the only instrument that can give Morrissey's voice that depth that cannot be compared, given the absence of singing. In this preamble, Gaudi plays the card of measured experimentation, not wanting to affect the original versions and instead inserting particles of tiny caresses in order to manifest love with a fine, light, respectful touch that is nonetheless skilful in delving into the secrets of pieces that still seem to yearn to not reveal themselves totally.

A cry (the listening), an eternal kiss the continuous play, and the thorn in the side travels in the songs chosen by the Bolognese artist to disinfect the wound on one side and to create new furrows of suffering on the other.

Here is astonishment and alienation, history and images find a new direction: not only the theremin, but also the other instruments come down from their usual zone and bow down, declaring their obstinate propensity for sound care, for a homage that marks in manifest will the distance from a cover. And they all succeed, sowing emotion and allowing the beauty of these poignant approaches to become, suddenly, new poems on Manchester sky...

One finds oneself in a huge hall, inside one's own thoughts, with poetic lanes to raise the beats, to touch miracles and make tears kneel: this homage is a smile from the sky on a rainy day, and the 1980s, so pregnant with rubbish and mediocrity, have found with the Mancunian group a revenge, a question and an answer that travels in silence. What happens is that those songs here retain a sound stuffed with dust and thorns, to scatter fears and direct them as new opportunities. 

Mr Lev Sergeevic Termen has found a way to give the instrument the possibility of becoming a vision, a sound film not forced to touch but to become a jolt that, starting from the temples, quickly reaches the heart and, without a doubt, those are the territories of the Smithsian planet.

There are electromagnetic fields even in a thank you, in a homage that makes the past shine inside the bubble I mentioned at the beginning. The details come out shy, almost hidden, yet never stuttering: Gaudi's respect is a powerful tidal wave that does not seek to glide over our territories but, rather, wants to define a private space that can have a unique access.

Obstacles create a patina of challenge that Gaudi brings to rest with the careful study of dynamics, harmonisation, all, of course, mixed with a devotion that becomes a complex floral zone of the soul. 

The project also consists of a special dedication: recognising the importance of Andy Rourke who tragically took his bass guitar to walk the heavenly paths. 

Moreover: the tribute comes out on 14 May, forty years after the Smiths' only Italian concert, which saw the Italian artist in the front row immersed in the joy that is still unscratched

Time becomes a bridge made of books, of walks, of descents into the refined desolation of the choice of an almost obligatory solitude to cleanse, in places, one's own existence.

Nine defeats, nine rebellions, nine instances within the rooms of the chest, to make the infinite a daily resource.

Morrissey's voice, with the Theremin, becomes a more musically polite stream, closer to perfection, and the real outrageous act is that, when the instrument decides to make only partial reference, a truly astonishing interpretative lane opens up.

The primitive state of emotion is reached, the disturbance appearing as therapy and escape, to create emotional craters capable of protecting enchantment and miracle.

Breathlessness in search of a light, aggression that finds ecstasy, and the voice of a divinity ends up in Gaudi's sensual and precise movements, to hurl helplessness into the basin of ultimate wholeness.

Remaining breathless leads us to a conscious coma, the most lethal of all, without however taking away the vision of a world, the Smithsian one, still able, more than forty years later, to unleash originality and magnificence: to be a precise and capable homage, the study was not only on the songs but on the history of this band, the only one that pushed the man Gaudi to begin his artistic existence

Let us delve and lose ourselves for good in the melancholy that makes us perfect ...

Song by Song

1 - Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

First rose.

The fog descends, the flight of the seagulls is filled with bitter liquids in the eyes and the devastating piano welcomes the Theremin that, as we note and notice from the beginning, also participates in the musical part. And it is undeniable that this delicate antenna breaks our breath and brings us the same tears as those birds. It is heartbreaking, the child of a free-falling abyss. Gaudi, supported by sublime gift companions, gives the song all the meaning while Morrissey cries with us...

2 - Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want

Second rose.

Where everything seems to lighten up because of Johnny Marr's incredible talent, Gaudi enriches the sinuosity of this rose with small, almost veiled arrangements. The Theremin gives us Morrissey's voice, without vocal cords but with veins full of blood, walking on the dew of a desire that wants to be fulfilled. The oscillations are simply emotional states in fervid exhibition.

3 - I Started Something I Couldn't Finish

Third rose.

The sound of the guitar, the impetus of the bass, the robust fall of the guitar precede the flying notes of a handless voice, to fix a sequence of chords that makes melancholy a smile that fights, nimbly, the awareness of the inconclusiveness of existence...

One remains almost totally faithful to the original, but with the distinct sensation of a palette of colours that fix ancient history with the new sonic propensity of the present...

4 -  I Know It’s Over

Fourth rose.

With this gift, the queen of marginalisation, of incomprehension, of the fiercest solitude, becomes a wave that rises into the sky, a devastating whirlwind. Gaudi has grasped its depth, has by no means diminished its intensity and grants us the beauty of an embrace wet with pain and petals in free fall. The Theremin, which replaces Morrissey's vocals, uses the beating of the wings of those drops in flight to stop our hearts...

5 - Shoplifters Of The World Unite 

Fifth  rose.

Here come the novelties, condensed but not compressed, nimble wings on a layering that operates in a refined context and moves to probe the soul of a song that saw the Manchester quartet's structural framework change. Marr's skill here finds a different power, while Morrissey's singing becomes sly and allusive. The Theremin visits the concept of the song and the musicians show character in making the chord succession more lucid. The attack is a liturgy, a bow in which the bass and violin challenge the guitar, while the driving instrument takes us into the vocal chords of an intuition that sequesters truth...

6 - Well I Wonder

Sixth rose.

Please bring oxygen and the courage to live: Well I Wonder, in the hands of Theremin, is a portable heart attack which crosses the body to paralyse it. It is no longer an antenna, no longer Gaudi's palms and fingers that translate but make real our struggle with the air that abandons us, shatters us, shows us the way out of this existence. 

The talent here becomes uncontrollable and these sound waves go beyond human comprehension: they dilate the steps and it is impossible not to remember this rose that, as we walk, buries our strength since the knees buckle.

And the final act of what we are is listening to a flower which was born on 20 May 1982 and that forty years later is still alive, because its light will never go out…

7 - Girlfriend In A Coma

Seventh rose.

The apparent lightness of sound contrasts with the lyrics, in a murderous bond that terrifies and isolates. Gaudi offers a visionary plan of the song by landing the whole thing in the classical arrangement, where it has always been, but the then modernity of the Smiths did not allow a glimpse of the complexity of the contrasts. The interplay of the strings becomes the perfect strategy to convey, in fullness and fluency, the tragedy of this sublime story…

8 - Asleep

Eighth rose.

The lump in the throat buries any attempt to achieve happiness: Gaudi puts forty years of devotion between his fingers and all this leads us into the night dust of nervous and selfish blinks. The Smiths' song here enhances the lyrics and makes the music a merino wool blanket, careful not to let us feel temperature changes in a heart busy trembling.

9 - What Difference Does It Makes

Ninth rose.

The perfect position of what must not be smudged is always the last track. Here the Bolognese artist surpasses himself, yielding to the courtship of the guitars, to an intriguing and ancient melody, placing the surprise of slightly touching the song's structural framework, giving the Theremin the freedom to carry Morrissey's singing into the angelic space of a despair that can get lost in the clouds. The high register overcomes the falsetto and falls into that whitish cotton in the corridors of the sky to make this splendid song the testament, the colourful fresco of a tribute that here finds the unique and necessary space in which to display both the band's and Gaudi's qualities, to testify to the collectivity of artistic making.

The farewell is a shot: between arpeggios, rolls and whiplash, the delirium comes to establish what really makes the difference…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

13th May 2025

https://lnk.to/homagethesmiths

From midnight the links will be active, for pre-saving (Spotify and Apple Music), and for downloading on Bandcamp

 

My Review: Paris Alexander - Ride to Heartbreak

 

Paris Alexander - Ride to Heartbreak

Planet Earth, in reality, is a mother who gives birth to sadness, loneliness, in an illogical mass of contradictions, where hopes die quickly. Paris Alexander's talent becomes surgical, with an artistic operation in which mutant and different particles compared to the recent past find place in a writing and a vocal expressiveness that leaves you stunned, amazed, with an obligatory anguish for which we are indebted to him because, as an operator of conscience, he paints a picture in which black and gray merge, denying the hope of living uselessly in our dreams, in our breaths and attitudes.

A meticulous production work (together with the trusted Eirene) guarantees precision in this tightrope walker song: the mission of the drum machine to mark the rhythm is not enough to free oneself because in these minutes we find ourselves inside a slow procession, with heavy crosses on our shoulders to make our path stuttering. The guitar and synths rule the scene, with continuous inserts in this oscillating and dark manifestation of notes that seem like tears willing to settle inside our chest to lock everything up.

The musical backbone is given by a few notes, but all surrounded by a leaden atmosphere capable of giving rigidity and conviction to this modality.

The artist from Brighton creates electronic vortices without forgetting his beloved guitar, but what conquers is the whole, the feeling that the foundations of everything proposed have ancient origins, like the memory of a DNA that demands respect and listening. Music like suffocating words, a text like a darkwave avalanche that wanders in the time of the temple of fragility, for a perfect union and that, inevitably, produces seduction and daily tears…

We perceive a change, forced or not we cannot say, of this gentle and educated soul that probably does not put the search for other people's attention as the main objective of his creativity but, without any doubt, through it defines a malaise that is the true virus of this reality. Decadent, melancholic, unhappy, the composition reigns in truth and it is a gift that we must deserve…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

13th April 2025

https://parisalexander.bandcamp.com/track/ride-to-heartbreak

My Review: David Middle - A Goth, A Piano & Songs of Sorrow

 

David Middle - A Goth, A Piano & Songs of Sorrow

A moody shadow rises from the skies of Cambridge (he has been doing this for so many years), constantly expanding, using different artistic forms, taking courage, work, talent and misfortune under the wing of his splendid and stubborn need not to leave the world without his obsessions, sweetness, integrity, will to make his own cloak the gaze of his purity.

This expression of nature has a name: David Middle, a gothic, cinematic privateer, at times a mime of life, at other times a cabaret performer who defies blackness by transforming himself like the most voracious of colours. To move forward, to stop time, to build coral reefs with his straightforward philosophy, his vocal chords acute, angular, wisely tremendous and implacable, boiling, a powder keg plundering calm and leading it towards an act of agnostic faith.

A solo album, while his soul has never failed to collaborate with bands and parallel projects, is a choice that makes his conscious flow more specific, in a way that allows an unquestionably strong and circumstantial focus to his lyrics that are so powerful and capable of transforming reality, fears, silence and memory like the pilots of a mental palace that he displays flawlessly.

He uses note strategies in an unusual way, colouring the sonic textures with the wind of continuous inspiration, ranging from Klaus Nomi, to the Virgin Prunes, to Rozz Williams, to the darkest Alice Cooper, touching on Genesis P-Orridge's shoulder and Marc Almond's chin. But it is only the beginning, a false trail, as David has prairies of his own, like the seeds of his so autonomous and original thinking.

Life and its pains are not recounted but rather experienced at the same time, as if everything was going on as we listen, and this sensation, divine and massive, leaves black petals on our breath, making us aware of an addiction that we had not hoped to witness...

We can, in this way, reflect on how the paucity of the instruments used actually open the doors of perception, giving our minds the space to expand the need to fluidify this pentagram that instead of being poor is full of great suggestions. Black and white keys and a theatrical sequence of movements that accommodate synthetic strings and handclapping that suggest silence around them: Middle is a magician out of this time, free of conditioning, so baroque in his fertility that he does not accept forcing from the expressive forms of the present.

He builds sentences that, voraciously, dance in his uvula scratching the celestial vault, the only true paradise that sees his workshop be a cascade of thoughts padded with enchanting plays of light, where dusky is only the start of his artistic, powerful and olfactory, sensorial needs as the orchestra of his beats ends up invading everything, calmly and with a desperate intelligence.

An album for souls adept at being enveloped, involved, to suspend the part that refuses to understand the intensity, the duty of conscience, becoming a distributor of rational sparks that embrace the purity of feelings that have fallen into unwanted solitude. The combination of music and words thus turns out to be a perfect mantra with which to fall into the pleasantness of pain.

The harmonic research shows integrity, knowledge of expressive methods and a great respect for that part of musical history that today's music does not know or respect. David thus reveals himself to be a fighter with notes like gentle bullets, while the words are sabre-rattling blanks, capable of hitting the space that lies perfectly between the mind and the heart.

The artist turns his attention towards nature, measuring distances and similarities, engaging the road of description by harmonising his own complicit spirit, maturing with music an intense, almost mute bond, in order to freely experience a connection with entities that are surely more good. 

One always gets the impression of a maturity that induces David to cradle the wrinkles of his own mind, pushing him towards an almost secret form in which to be a guardian and diviner, in search of truths, albeit uncomfortable, but handled with authority.

When one gets the impression that he wants to sow neo-folk petals, one senses a perhaps anachronistic pagan sacredness, which nonetheless offers the measure of his cultural extension, and his language can be a sweet poison that turns bitter when overturned: miracles like fixtures in the dark...

It then happens to hear him take leave of life (in the majestic Ode to Jacqueline) one feels shivers, as if a friend is leaving, and it is one of the most touching moments to come to terms with. The skilful willingness to give melodies that stick in the mind means that the words do the same, ending up stretching the inches of our listening.

The orchestrations, minimalist and never pompous, also give the measure of an accurate production, capable of giving us the impression of a tale in music that must be reread and reread again: not a syllable of beauty is lost in this work that deserves the best reception...

Song by Song

1 - No One Hears Me

‘Pull me out from the drowning mud’

A dance appears, in the night, to be a tale between anxiety and missed dreams. The music is a balmy gesture across pounding keys with a soft leaning towards the low register...

2 - Climbing Stairs

‘Every fall is a lesson, every climb is a spell’.

The contrast between the heavy, slow notes of the piano and David's singing create a nocturnal flash into which to fall with dignity. A song that seems to come from the theatrical and cabaret tension of the best Marc Almond. And it is apotheosis in repetition...

3 - Help Me Please

‘I, see faces, but memories still fade’.

Memory finds resounding centrality here, and the bass ride and piano counterpoint tear us to shreds. And then that invocation, which turns into a mantra to be kept in the secret circuit of our guilt. A timeless masterpiece...

4 - The Whispering Wings

‘Underneath the whispering trees

French theatre takes the stage, changes its dress and becomes an English echo of the eighteenth century, with a wingspan of the refrain that seems to be a warning, in which terror grabs dreams and kills them...

5 - Final Witness

‘Scared to last you 

never rest’

There's dancing, and without the drumming it's even better: on your toes, like classical dancers, while the lyrics pan around supported by a voice that becomes a weeping needle...

6 - Ode to Jacqueline

‘My time has come, and now i know I said goodbye’.

The rhythm slows down and the keys sentenced, then open their arms inside a circle of loving lights full of tension, invitations, until the finale with a farewell that perfectly translates a score so willing to be grateful to classical music, which here becomes even more evident and necessary

7 - Gothic Candles (Midnight Mix)

‘Through the darkness, we journey hand in hand’

David takes us steadily into the night, into the darkness, to traverse the illusions of dreams and the more obvious and real forms of pain, with a gothic musical setting, as if Rozz Williams were urging him not to lose the perfect theatricality of his singing... 

8 - Walking with the Dead

‘In my heart, the dead will stay’

A feat, a new thunder in the heart and head, for this overture that becomes a pleasant torture, trying to turn a free flight into a dutiful crash. Everything here smells of finality, as if living with death could really be the only joy. 

9 - Our Broken World

‘Our innocence lost in the hands of fools’.

The opening vocal takes us back to Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, but then everything shifts and we enter into a sunny drama, a playfully reasonable contrast, and the music makes the whole thing perfectly cohesive and intact...

10 - A Hollow Heart

‘But through the tears, I'll find my way’.

Despair is necessarily a slow process. Instead, David makes it almost an upbeat, fast, light-voiced phase, and music that seems to tickle the winter...

11 - Dark Love

The most refined, most tense and dramatic track comes almost at the end of the album, leaving dandy petals in the lyrics and musical cues that cross eras and styles only to make us feel the bitter taste of a love full of darkness...

‘A symphony of lust, makes your heartbeat tight’

12 - Mood Swings

‘I laugh until I cry’

A filtered voice, as never before, leads the way to the last song, which is like a hidden epitaph, buried by angelic music with shades, emblematically, dramatic. And it is a soft breath that extinguishes the candle, which we immediately relight to listen again to this album so delightful and meaningful that it is a great pity to overlook...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

27th March 2025

https://batcaveproductions.bandcamp.com/album/a-goth-a-piano-songs-of-sorrow