La mia Recensione: Black Rose Moves - Summer Of Sorrow

Black Rose Moves - Summer Of Sorrow

Si possono ballare sentimenti e pensieri che sono avvolti tra le nuvole, tra disagi, nella sabbia che rende la pelle una polveriera, tra la claustrofobia e i sogni pieni di ansia e la voglia di sciogliersi in una resa nascosta dai riflettori?

Se si ascolta Summer Of Sorrow, del duo di Birmingham, ci si rende conto di poterlo fare, con certezza e fermezza, e di ritrovarsi a contatto con la coscienza che suggerisce devozione e fedeltà. Un riverbero, un'eco evidente di un passato glorioso, la celebrazione di due generi musicali congiunti sembrano gli elementi per definire ciò che si ascolta, ma il brano è uno stupore che appare interamente solo dopo uno studio attento, in quanto al suo interno vivono particelle di novità, un atteggiamento che pare nascondersi, come una nebulosa in una tempesta spaziale, dove tutto può anche non essere notato. E le preghiere del testo diventano stalagmiti per raggiungere la volta celeste. Per quanto riguarda la struttura musicale ci troviamo con il Post-Punk vestito di mistero e con il vapore acqueo di una Dark-Wave vellutata mentre affoga i suoi petali nel disagio, per un risultato che galvanizza la tristezza e la rende lucida. Il synth e il basso, dritti e rigidi, bilanciano il vuoto con cui tutto si sviluppa, in una magnitudine evidente e trascendentale, mentre la voce asserisce verità e comanda le emozioni congiungendole alla danza che le ha precedute.

Nell’apparente semplicità della sua struttura, la canzone procede come imbalsamata da quei tocchi nevrotici acuti della chitarra e dalle poderose sferzate del basso, ma poi si libera di tutto questo con quel synth che sembra riassumere le parole e la metodica del cantato, per togliere ossigeno e immobilizzare i nostri arti. È una prigionia che ha le stigmate di una favola grigia, per adulti, in un giorno in cui lo tsunami dei pensieri invade i margini delle nostre difese. 

Si ha l’impressione che il senso di perdita sia rilevato in queste note, che si distribuisca un sorriso tetro e non esistano svincoli, vie di fuga, che sia celebrata una verità che si cerca di negare, per sottolineare che la libertà assomiglia spesso a una forma stupida che nega la realtà delle nostre esistenze. Un esordio che sublima l’intelligenza, che abbraccia le menti che vivono con il senso di abbandono riportando in auge gli albori di un’arte (quella musicale) che non solo fotografa le cose, ma le rende percepibili al tatto…

Gli idioti, la maggioranza, noteranno solo ciò che paiono i rimasugli della gloria di alcune band note e usate spesso nel modo sbagliato: il Vecchio Scriba vi invita a non cadere nella trappola e ad acconsentire, invece, alla gioia di vibrazioni misteriose che non hanno petali che giungono dal passato. Il mondo è andato a peggiorare e questa canzone stabilisce il contatto con la coscienza e l’antica connessione al ballo, forse l’unico modo che abbiamo per non fustigare le nostre anime ripetutamente.

Le ombre, il buio, la pazzia data da una frustrazione evidente, vengono qui messe in comunicazione costante, con il loop della chitarra che guida verso i territori dove il nostro pensiero può trovare ristoro e benedizione, in una romantica e mefistofelica espressione che raggela il respiro. Tutto appare come un vestito pieno di ragnatele, di strappi, che scivolano nei minuti con la grazia moderna di due magneti che si preoccupano di generare un ritornello atipico, anomalo, seducente, incastonato nella strofa divinamente, in un paesaggio umorale che non è incline a mutare.

Mark Neat e Grant Leon catechizzano le nuove leve gotiche insegnando loro a prestare attenzione, distribuendo minuti solo apparentemente conformi con la storia di una costola musicale troppe volte esaltata dal suo popolo, fatto di seguaci quasi indemoniati. Il duo si rivolge, invece, agli individui, in una scena solitaria e per nulla propensa alla santificazione: c’è da lavorare su se stessi e i due riescono nell’intento. Che sia allora questo strepitoso singolo motivo di riflessione, con ceri spenti e zone buie finalmente acclamate con rispetto, per poter delineare una prospettiva diversa. La canzone merita tutto questo e anche di più: si dia all’estate un nuovo abito, possibilmente privo di stupide fluorescenze e si consegni l’equilibrio della realtà alla danza che unisce…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

9 Giugno 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbLAm61ep38

My Review: Black Rose Moves - Summer Of Sorrow

  Black Rose Moves - Summer Of Sorrow

Can you dance feelings and thoughts that are shrouded in clouds, in discomfort, in the sand that makes your skin a powder keg, between claustrophobia and anxiety-filled dreams and the desire to melt into a surrender hidden from the spotlight?

If you listen to Summer Of Sorrow, by the Birmingham duo, you realise you can do it, with certainty and firmness, and find yourself in touch with a conscience that suggests devotion and loyalty. A reverberation, an evident echo of a glorious past, the celebration of two conjoined musical genres seem to be the elements to define what one listens to, but the song is an astonishment that only appears entirely after careful study, as particles of novelty live within it, an attitude that seems to be hiding, like a nebula in a space storm, where everything may as well go unnoticed.  And the prayers of the lyrics become stalagmites to reach the vault of heaven. As for the musical structure, we find ourselves with Post-Punk dressed in mystery and the water vapour of a velvety Dark-Wave as it drowns its petals in unease, for a result that galvanises sadness and makes it lucid. The synth and bass, straight and rigid, balance the emptiness with which everything unfolds, in an evident and transcendental magnitude, while the voice asserts truth and commands the emotions, joining them to the dance that preceded them.

In the apparent simplicity of its structure, the song proceeds as if embalmed by those neurotic sharp touches of the guitar and the mighty lashings of the bass, but then it frees itself of all that with that synth that seems to sum up the words and the method of the singing, to take away oxygen and immobilise our limbs. It is a captivity that has the stigmata of a grey fairy tale, for adults, on a day when the tsunami of thoughts invades the edges of our defences.  One gets the impression that a sense of loss is detected in these notes, that a bleak smile is distributed and that there are no releases, no escape routes, that a truth is celebrated that we try to deny, to emphasise that freedom often resembles a stupid form that denies the reality of our existences. A debut that sublimates intelligence, that embraces minds that live with a sense of abandon by bringing back the beginnings of an art (that of music) that not only photographs things, but makes them perceptible to the touch...

Idiots, the majority, will only notice what appear to be the remnants of the glory of a few well-known and often misused bands: the Old Scribe invites you not to fall into the trap and instead to indulge in the joy of mysterious vibrations that have no petals from the past. The world has taken a turn for the worse and this song establishes contact with consciousness and the ancient connection to dance, perhaps the only way we can avoid flogging our souls repeatedly.  The shadows, the darkness, the madness of evident frustration, are here put in constant communication, with the guitar loop guiding towards the territories where our thoughts can find refreshment and blessing, in a romantic and mephistophelian expression that chills the breath. Everything appears like a dress full of cobwebs, of rips, slipping through the minutes with the modern grace of two magnets that take care to generate an atypical, anomalous, seductive refrain, embedded in the verse divinely, in a mood landscape that is not inclined to change.

Mark Neat and Grant Leon catechise the Gothic newcomers by teaching them to pay attention, doling out minutes that only seemingly conform to the history of a musical ribaldry too often exalted by its people, made up of almost indemonized followers. Instead, the duo turns to individuals, in a lonely scene not at all inclined to sanctification: there is work to be done on oneself and the two succeed. So let this resounding single be a cause for reflection, with extinguished candles and dark areas finally acclaimed with respect, in order to outline a different perspective. The song deserves all this and more: give summer a new dress, possibly without silly fluorescence, and hand over the balance of reality to the dance that unites...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

9th June 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbLAm61ep38

La mia Recensione: The Halo Trees - Where The Deep Ends

 

The Halo Trees - Where The Deep Ends

Esistono luoghi nell’anima che sembrano deserti silenziosi, in attesa di una conversazione che possa veicolare compagnia, scambi, vibrazioni, determinare una possibile ricchezza per annichilire la fiumana di incertezza che quei posti generano. In un contesto del genere The Halo Trees potrebbe essere tutto ciò, un sostegno e una presenza per generare appigli e un senso diverso per la propria esistenza. La band proviene da Berlino e incorpora un ipotetico ponte con l’Inghilterra, l’Australia e gli Stati Uniti, in quanto il loro immaginario visivo e sonoro prevede una valigia costantemente piena di desideri, di curiosità e soprattutto di malinconia, il sentimento che risiede in ogni parte del mondo, e nel caso specifico perché le loro musiche paiono uscire da colonne sonore di film provenienti dai tre paesi citati e rendono il tutto amalgamato e perfetto. 

Il mistero, la penombra, la delicatezza, la potenza accennata e mai devastante, il porre domande facendo della curiosità un punto di partenza, sono elementi che escono come una pioggia autunnale da queste dieci composizioni, che si trasformano in semi nell’atrio del cuore e della testa, per ossigenare con realtà e sapienza le nostre smisurate esagerazioni, visto che la saggezza, l’equilibrio e la poesia sono il marchio di fabbrica del quartetto della capitale tedesca. La duttilità nel visitare diversi generi musicali è sorprendente ma ancora di più lo è il fatto che il loro stile viene confermato, e questa riconoscibilità diventa il loro passaporto, per confermare quella unicità che in questi casi spesso, invece, si perde.

L’incertezza, la confusione, la fatica del vivere, la presenza, la volontà di saper manovrare le parole, l’insicurezza dell’eccessiva informazione che destabilizza, la tridimensionalità delle cose sono alcuni degli argomenti che l’abile Sascha Blach sa affrontare, per un connubio sonoro che ipnotizza per precisione, in una danza mentale più che fisica che conquista definitivamente. Si vivono estasianti paralisi con la voce baritonale, quell’approccio che spesso ci ricorda Stuart A. Staples con i suoi Tindersticks e Liam Mckahey e i Cousteau.

Ma generare un elenco di comparazioni svilisce, non serve: in questo album siamo davanti a una profonda appartenenza alla fierezza volta a presentare unicità e differenze. Si sente spesso il bisogno di abbracciare queste composizioni perché si avverte immediatamente il debito verso la bellezza, la ricchezza e il beneficio che l’ascolto genera, per entrare in favole in cui la fine non giunge per via della loro capacità di permeare il tutto ai piedi del cielo, dove tutto inizia e nulla muore…

Si piange dal momento che in questo cilindro musicale l’atmosfera diventa un rifugio, come anche una deliziosa sporca dolcezza da mantenere segregata nell’intimo delle proprie considerazioni. La produzione riesce a rendere perfetta l’alta cifra stilistica della scrittura, un collante, uno scudo, una protezione nei confronti di queste dieci lacrime col sorriso che fanno di Where The Deep Ends uno schermo per tenere la giusta distanza da ciò che opprime. Brani che liberano l’aria da atomi inquinati e la sospendono, come in una fiaba che passa dallo stile fantasy al noir, per legittimare la loro sete di esposizione. 

Si attraversano i decenni, si bussa alla porta della memoria come a quella di un futuro che loro sanno stuzzicare, per mettere mattoni su mattoni, senza dimenticare l’obiettività dell’inganno del vivere.

La profondità e la saggia decisione di arrangiare le canzoni con una metodologia che richiama la musica classica conferisce al tutto un profumo inebriante. Ogni strumento sembra spalleggiare l’accoglienza di quello che conferisce mistero e una grande espressione evocativa: può essere il violino così come l’utilizzo di synth che stordiscono per qualità e precisione in un notevole gioco di equilibri.

Come suggerito nel testo della canzone finale, siamo ospiti, ma soprattutto testimoni di una qualità fuori dal comune e stupisce il modo in cui il gruppo, con il terzo album, conferisce un senso di continuo bisogno dell’ascolto, di divenire una carta assorbente, per stipulare un contratto con la dipendenza, una droga che non dà assuefazione bensì beneficio.  

Gli ascolti si trasformano in viaggi dove la lentezza genera l’estensione della fantasia, l’interiorizzazione e la proiezione di immagini che escono con eleganza da storie che sono scritte per divenire la nostra occasione di accoppiarci con la magia…

E allora che sia Alt-Pop, Post-Punk, Progressive, Alternative non ci interessa e non è per quello che possiamo amarli: saremo costantemente devoti al loro essere una pellicola cinematografica in bianco e nero, in grado di ridicolizzare i nostri finti colori facendo sì che questo album ci governi e ci disciplini, dando alla loro arte lo scettro del comando…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

5 Giugno 2024

COP International

https://thehalotrees.bandcamp.com/album/where-the-deep-ends-album-2024

My Review: The Halo Trees - Where The Deep Ends

 The Halo Trees - Where The Deep Ends

There are places in the soul that seem like silent deserts, waiting for a conversation that can convey companionship, exchange, vibration, determine a possible richness to annihilate the flood of uncertainty those places generate. In such a context The Halo Trees could be all that, a support and presence to generate footholds and a different meaning for one's existence. The band hails from Berlin and incorporates a hypothetical bridge with England, Australia and the United States, as their visual and sonic imagery involves a suitcase constantly full of longings, curiosity and above all melancholy, the feeling that resides in every part of the world, and in the specific case because their music seems to come out of movie soundtracks from the three aforementioned countries and makes the whole thing amalgamated and perfect.   The mystery, the penumbra, the delicacy, the hinted and never devastating power, the asking of questions by making curiosity a starting point, are elements that come out like an autumn rain from these ten compositions, which turn into seeds in the atrium of the heart and the head, to oxygenate with reality and wisdom our boundless exaggerations, since wisdom, balance and poetry are the trademark of the quartet from the German capital. The ductility in visiting different musical genres is amazing but even more so is the fact that their style is confirmed, and this recognizability becomes their passport, to confirm that uniqueness that is often, instead, lost in these cases.  Uncertainty, confusion, the drudgery of living, presence, the will to know how to manoeuvre words, the insecurity of excessive information that destabilizes, the three-dimensionality of things are some of the topics that the skillful Sascha Blach knows how to address, for a sonic combination that hypnotizes by precision, in a mental rather than physical dance that definitely conquers. One experiences ecstatic paralysis with the baritone voice, that approach that often reminds us of Stuart A. Staples with his Tindersticks and Liam Mckahey and the Cousteau.

But to generate a list of comparisons is debasing, unnecessary: in this album we are faced with a deep belonging to pride aimed at presenting uniqueness and difference. One often feels the need to embrace these compositions because one immediately feels the debt to the beauty, richness and benefit that listening generates, to enter fairy tales in which the end does not come because of their ability to permeate everything at the foot of heaven, where everything begins and nothing dies...  One weeps since in this musical cylinder the atmosphere becomes a refuge, as well as a delicious dirty sweetness to be kept segregated in the depths of one's considerations. The production manages to make perfect the high stylistic figure of the writing, a glue, a shield, a protection towards these ten tears with a smile that make Where The Deep Ends a screen to keep the right distance from what oppresses. Songs that clear the air of polluted atoms and suspend it, as in a fairy tale that switches from fantasy style to noir, to legitimize their thirst for exposure. 

They cross decades, knocking on the door of memory as well as that of a future they know how to tease, to lay brick upon brick, without forgetting the objectivity of the deception of living.

The depth and wise decision to arrange the songs with a methodology reminiscent of classical music gives the whole an intoxicating fragrance. Each instrument seems to shoulder the reception of that which lends mystery and a great evocative expression: it can be the violin as well as the use of synths that stun with quality and precision in a remarkable balancing act.  As suggested in the lyrics of the final song, we are guests, but more importantly, witnesses to a quality that is out of the ordinary, and it is astonishing how the group, with the third album, imparts a sense of the continuous need for listening, to become a blotting paper, to enter into a contract with addiction, a drug that is not addictive but beneficial.  

Listening turns into journeys where slowness generates the extension of imagination, the internalization and projection of images that emerge elegantly from stories that are written to become our chance to mate with magic...

So whether it's Alt-Pop, Post-Punk, Progressive, Alternative we don't care and that's not why we can love them: we will be constantly devoted to their being a black and white cinematic film, able to ridicule our fake colors by making this album govern and discipline us, giving their art the sceptre of command...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

5th June 2024

COP International

https://thehalotrees.bandcamp.com/album/where-the-deep-ends-album-2024

My Review: Gene - Olympian

 

Gene - Olympian

‘Life and dreams are sheets of the same book. To read them in order is to live, to leaf through them at random is to dream...’.

Arthur Schopenhauer 

An ancient bubble, small in size, sits in the musical sky of a delicate moment, that 1995 that had the burden of giving notes new shapes, of giving oxygen, of making people forget the pain of the previous year and of keeping the intention of helmsmen with a different task, an escape from dirty rock, stained with blood and frustration.

London, the queen of this art, moves its horses, its queens and kings in the hustle and bustle of an effervescence that was born with Suede just before.

The blood pressure of enthusiasm circulates in the streets, in the clubs, on the radios, an effervescence that resembles the coronation of a new dream.

The Gene's sweep everything away, heedless, at ease only in their wandering through the areas where everyone had not set foot for a long time. Music not as a vehicle for confrontation, but as a marble imprint to be regarded with suspicion. We find, thus, clear signs of migration, a turning off of the spotlight on the superfluous and a channelling, instead, of a close and dense series of relationships with doubts, sorrows, the initial forms of bewilderment and depression, without, however, lacking the desire to inflate the romantic vein, to put the dream and positivity in contact with each other. Olympian, to begin with, considers these elements to broaden notes and tighten wrists, in contradictory acts that stun, but without lacking a fascination that smells of antiquity. It is a work imbued with an English imprint such as we have not enjoyed in a long time: the land of Albion was losing its roots, its temperament and, much more seriously, its sense of belonging to a conservative side that seemed to be dying.

Songs with lapels and silk gloves, with the dim light making the gaze an unavoidable effort: Martin Rossiter's realities and mood swings are razor-sharp, icy kisses in the fire of a politely shouted goodbye, a gentleness not devoid of cynicism and assorted decadence, in a general framework where gloom seems like a stained rainbow on a working day. A daytime album, as annoying as the hours spent at work, one made up of an absolute reluctance towards the joyful exchange of movements, whether physical or mental. 

The structure of these eleven compositions is that of a ship sailing through calm and impetuousness with the same approach: watching to learn, without breaking down. In order to do this, each song swings, like a wave full of unexpected resources, without remaining anchored to the ropes of the song form, in evident chiaroscuros, like ascents and descents, in which the rhythm changes also highlight the need not to encounter boredom.

Although Steve is an excellent guitarist, we only notice one solo in the whole album: this fact alone shows how the four guys have determined specific artistic choices, in order to give the listening world that compactness that, especially in the stupid movement called Britpop, used to show with cupidity. But we should never cease to consider the London band as an inaccurate, rebellious miracle, unwanted and undigested by the majority of Brits, as everything heard in this work does not show the future at all, denying that joy and silliness that they were looking for instead.

Each fragment is a dream, an act of life to be devitalised, a tooth affected by nostalgia, of memories as bad as wolves in the forest of a pop devoid of wisdom and maturity. Gene, on the other hand, bow to time, to stories no one spends their days on, and tell existences of marginalisation without a spotlight, as God commands...

An album made of questions, of lowered curtains, of old books, of a language that is sometimes archaic, at other times of an almost unhinged immediacy. The splendid cover is enough to be able to tune in in advance, the play of colours, the penumbra, the feeling that listening has to do with a journey backwards, and that is exactly what Gene Ship accomplishes.

These are power games that the three main instruments enact with the support, at times, of strings that widen the breath to better explore the emotion of tears swirling in the chest, like lead-stained ankles. 

The singing, a seal of quality and abundant doses of tremors given unsparingly, is an honest fist inside our carelessness, a perfectly rude invitation to make us feel guilty, without renouncing a melody that obtunds, sows reflections and conquers, despite the fact that the words are wreaths of wandering thorns, on an often punishing mission: Martin makes you feel like a sea port, welcoming and always operational, but above all the place where containing his marasmus eventually makes your legs bend. The rhythm section is a constant amazement: the group seems to have decades behind them, with strategic moves that align the planets of beauty with those of wealth. Almost silent, and when thunderous, it always knows how to grant the illusion that this sonic storm will soon come to a halt. 

They can paint, draw, print, photograph the possibilities of unwanted developments, to defeat predictability. And it is here that Olympian stands out, detaches herself from her colleagues and leaves, in a carpeted living room to enjoy cups of absinthe and whiskey, without a care in her wrist. Slaps, hugs, caresses and then her, the queen of the album: intensity, no matter what. Nothing is ephemeral, light, destined to disappear in these eleven compositions, in a pact where memory is guaranteed, the preservation of these seeds smelling of sacredness and uncomfortableness to which one does not deny the consent to live in the perimeter of one's own beat

Observing the releases of that year, one realises how nothing could have foreseen the band's success: songs like these are suitable for restless souls, sweet until the sun stops pouring heat on their skin, for hearts that lose their security by inquiring, for minds that always feel the desire to allow themselves the luxury of hesitations and confusions. 

And then there is that delicate propensity to marginalise others: these texts are difficult to discuss, as one is overcome, from the outset, by a kind of concern for the inhabitants of the ship, not to mention the helmsman, who often seems to throw words under the skin of the waves in order to crucify them in the cruellest immediacy.

We grab the anchor, the lifebuoy and set sail. Eleven waves wait to be experienced without fear...

Song by Song

1 - Haunted By You

When we set off, we do so with decision, with rhythm, with that force that gives enthusiasm and vigour. We immediately have the coordinates of the journey: courting the empire of mystery, floating between words that sound like slaps relegated to the dark cellar of our hearts. The melodic search is imbued with the corrosive backbone of the guitar, the bass that sounds like the twin brother of a dynamite educated to explode with softness, and the drums that drag take the song on their shoulders and lead it into the middle of the ocean

Rock takes off its sequins, its nails painted with silliness, and turns into a snake that kisses the early seventies, those of the American shore, with the sharp, scratchy notes of the guitar. 

2 - Your Love, It Lies

Magic is a prostitute that often lies in the naivety of unconscious talents. The song is a play of lights and moods, of raids and different brakes: the melody knows different possibilities and manages to soar in the presence of lightning, making every dream weep. The blues that Steve hints at is an intimate miracle that is immediately ousted by an impetuous impetuosity pregnant with need, in an angelic marriage that allows the drum breaks to take the lead. Martin's voice is a ribbon that suffocates uselessness, and does so with firmness and a slight vibrato in the lower register, for a result that is a timeless Munch cry, with no need to gape... 

3 - Truth, Rest Your Head

This is what has been missing from English music: the enchantment that resides between melodic waves in search of a crash, of an electric charge that follows a series of massed softnesses. As with the first two tracks, this too employs the stratagem of dualism, of diversification, of faces rotating within the promiscuous soul of effervescent solutions. The voice is a romantic cylinder, the words much less so, and in this coexistence nothing appears forced because the structure, of Alternative matrix, ends up in a perfect jingle-jungle, in which the sixties of Swingin London return in the fullness of their decadent lustre... 

4 - A Car That Sped

One cries, in polite slowness, over this ocean with trembling hands: A Car That Sped is a scudding, sudden fluorescence that bends the night and gags the will to live. All the tradition of the streets of Marble Arch seems to come together in this poetic, neurotic tale, a condensation of weed (Steve's guitar is a heart-stopping scratch) that seems to cut us off from any chance of finding the dry silk handkerchief. The piano at the beginning and the synth at the end are the logistical switches of this stunner apparatus, where the rhythm, the clap-handing, the interplay of the instruments' effects are like dough that has to rise...

5 - Left-Handed

The New York Dolls look for grandchildren and find them: like a shake of the sky, in the opening part of the track, everything seems to indicate to us that the four know how to spill oil in their movements and attitudes. But then it veers, like an inevitable climb, towards the territories where they can prove that cohesion, sound architecture must always prevail. We have the clear feeling that this jewel full of neuroses is just a foretaste of a future to come...

6 - London, Can You Wait

Here is the past (evident right from the outdated words chosen by Martin) continuing in these delicate touches, in a grey atmosphere that seeks the sun and instead immediately loses track of it, because it revolves around mystery, darkness, a request that will not be granted. 

When it comes to the refrain, the progression of the chords and the splendid filth of semi-distortions become a stranglehold on the neck that kills the dream, to make every address die in the inevitable physical loss...

7 - To The City

High-voltage cables shove in our faces an urgency that pilots our astonishment into the channels of an unexpected mode: linking the roar of The Who, The Kings, The Angriest Jam, to get to shake the solidity that we had encountered up to now. The song thrives on small areas of calmness, but then, when the bass, drums and guitar decide to be a train, it becomes clear that nothing can be stopped.

Not forgetting an ending that smells of a band that should never be mentioned at random...

8 - Still Can't Find The Phone

Would you ever imagine this band capable of showing rays of light, of financing the dreams of the return of the clamorous musical corridors of the Sixties? Here is a new treaty of non-belligerence, using the courtesy of brushstrokes, both guitar and drums, then indulging in a few electric pounds, but never overdoing it. It is poetry with rhythm, with the desire to sample the skill of arrangements that are shown here with light touches of piano...

9 - Sleep Well Tonight

This second side is full of surprises, clichés are broken down, the story is painted with elegance and hinted distortions, to bring the dream phase into contact with gentler galaxies of reality. Martin's pen here invades every lane, you can't compare it to anyone, and darts across the page where pain and tension become twins in a delivery where poetry reigns in its dormant breath. And the organ gives that sacredness that every dream must have....

10 - Olympian

Life dies, the beat is a distant memory, belonging to others, and the need for Rossiter becomes a request that yields, on the white keys of the piano, on the pulsating bass almost shyly, only to find through Steve's guitar, a zone where all frustration can land. Nocturnal, epic, slow, dreamy, in reality this track is the stove that warms any attempt to give music the last rites, as harmony and melody are spouses who leave home to play cards with rhythm, dry and tense…

11 - We'll Find Our Own Way

Magic is a rarity, in the hands of Gene, who decide to end this debut album with a palm tree full of slow-falling wind in Swinging London, to make us feel the nostalgia of time, of impulses, and to do so they play on rhythm changes, on a classical scaffolding where the initial acoustic guitar finds, along the way, companions of chattering and vapours, a sweet tension that knows implosion, to trespass into a blues attitude while having more evident psychedelic atoms, but always in the context of a pop song that proudly shows its fragility.

It seems that Martin wants to indulge in metres and metres of positivity but, as we will soon see, they will soon be defeated by an obvious depression that will make his verses into splendid graveyards…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

21st May 2024

Martin Rossiter -  Vocals, Keyboards

Matt James - Drums

Kevin Miles - Bass

Steve Mason - Guitars

Phil Vinal - Producer