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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
In the lifetime of many musicians, it often happens for them to go through personal rites of passage, that translate sooner or later, into an artist’s own body of work.
Universally known as one of the best guitarists on a worldwide scale, Blues/Rock’s King Midas Kenny Wayne Shepherd has not only, through the years, demonstrated that he has an excellent singing voice (sharing, in this way, more vocal responsibilities with that fabulous singer in the KWS Band’s that is Noah Hunt) but he is also greatly skilled as a songwriter.
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
There are very few artists, currently, on the contemporary musical scene, who greatly gratify music writers, whenever they release a new body of work. The reason is related to the fact that these artists are able to move their musical path forward with effectiveness, intelligence and talent, applying new musical streaks to their sound but always remaining very recognizable, stylistically, in the eyes of their fans, thanks to their talent, either in playing an instrument at very high levels or thanks to a remarkable vocal talent.
And when it comes to incorporating talents of all kinds, vocal and sonic ones, together with constant artistic growth, one of those names that immediately springs to mind is that of the guitarist and singer/songwriter Albert Castiglia.
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
It happened and still happens very often, within the global music business, that worldwide artists, through the years, have tried to create a specific sound style that would make it as their own trademark sound, something that would be so recognizable that it would be identified immediately to such artists.
The down side of it, though, consists in the fact that such distinguished sound style also becomes, through times, repetitive and sterile because the artists in question wouldn’t be too interested to apply any creativity to their music, for the fear of losing those fans that they so hardly have gained, through the years.
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
Sometimes, some music producers tend to be hyper-cool about the artists they are working with and their records and often, they come out with grand adjectives to define a new body of work and the quality of who makes such records.
As an exception, producer Peter Collins got it absolutely spot on, when describing the time he was working with Rockabilly Heroes Stray Cats, on the making of their new album called 40, due to be released on 24th May, by saying: "There's something very special about Stray Cats; nobody else sounds like them".
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
Often music artists decide to covers songs from other artists solely because they need to fill gaps on a new studio album that might need one-two songs to be completed, choosing tunes that might be close to the style of music that they play but not necessarily be emotionally close to their souls.
It is therefore rather refreshing that Texas-born Troubadour Jarrod Dickenson decided, through his new project, an EP called Under A Texas Sky, to pay tribute to some of the state's music icons that Dickenson respects and love.
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
The fact that a band would choose to name their debut album taking the cue from one of Kurt Vonnegut's science fiction satirical novels, the 1959 book The Sirens Of Titan, is already a very intriguing aspect in itself, even prior to listen to a highly entertaining record like Things I Remember From Earth, from the American quartet Maybird.
Released under Danger Mouse's record label, 30th Century Records, Things I Remember From Earth marries contemporary alt-rock and psychedelia in an irresistible musical combo that take the listeners in a fascinating journey into an imaginary, sonic outer space filled with many great compositional ideas.
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
For several years, contemporary American Hard-Rock has lived a limbo phase, from a sonic point of view, with many bands sounding pretty much in the same way and being incapable to offer new ideas or musical vigour to the genre.
Thankfully, the debut album of the Las Vegas quartet Bravo Delta, called Unbreakable, it offers instead a lot of promises, especially from a musical perspective, with the band being able to craft a melodic formula of muscular-with-melody Hard-Rock mixed with some highly interesting 70's Progressive Rock layers of sound.