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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
There are not many bands around able to materialize, through their music, not just their individual talent as musicians but also the Scandinavian rhythm of life and human nature as well as the Swedish collective Daniel Karlsson Trio does.
The band's new album, simply called 5 (being this indeed the band's fifth release), is one of those records that, straight from the first notes of the dreamy opening tune Dubious Whisper, captures immediately everyone's attention, intrigues and entertains the listener thanks to an instinctive, eclectic and imaginative sonic blend of Jazz, Ambient and occasionally, even Electronica.
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
For many artists, a new record is like a new re-birth and this is a concept that singer/songwriter and guitarist Bernard Allison applies often in his records, especially when hard times hit him hard, as it happened in the making of his new album called Let It Go, using music as a therapeutic weapon to release all the negative things happening during the making of the new record.
His 18th album had indeed met deep obstacles to overcome, emotionally, for the American artist. The loss of a brother and a sister in a relatively short amount of time had a profound effect on Allison, somebody that, in his life, had often faced painful situation, starting from the premature death of his father, the great Luther Allison.
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
Who said that you cannot combine passions like martial arts with rock and roll and perform them both at an outstanding level of ability? Guitarist and singer/songwriter Kris Barras certainly know well how to make a lifestyle recipe like this to work until 2014, when he retired from his cage fighting activity and fully focusing solely on music.
Somebody that has never been shy to live his life at full throttle, Barras has loved music and martial arts since a very early stage of his life, opting for the latter when he realized, at some point, that bookings for cage fighting were coming more often than live touring as a musician, until his change of direction in 2014.
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
The 70's have been, without a doubt, a decade that has created a vital turning point in the history of rock and roll. The genre was progressively moving, during that time, into new dimensions and forms, from Progressive to Psychedelia, from Glam to Hard-Rock.
Many of the best records of all times came from this very important stage of rock & roll history and the genre was flourishing every day with new ideas, new incredible talents, new ways to move forward a music style so close to millions of people around the globe.
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
It took almost a decade for the experimental collective Rausch to release their second offering, after the mixed reviews received in 2009, when their self-titled debut album came out.
Since then, front-man Doug Rausch and his band of brothers have spent a considerable amount of time working on the next step of their musical vision, by trying to build a follow-up record that would adequately carry forward the multi-faceted sound structure, the mood and the vibes that the band had widely expressed on their first record.
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
It's hard to believe that 25 years have gone by in the artistic life of Finnish Blues Baron Micke Bjorklof and his band of brothers Blue Strip. Formed back in 1991, at the core of the collective's backbone band leader, singer and multi-instrumentalist Bjorklof and bass player Seppo Nuolikoski have always been there from the beginning, with different band members replaced throughout the Finnish collective's history.
Despite having recorded few studio albums throughout their career, Bjorklof and his band have built, throughout this last quarter of a century, a solid reputation and credibility as one of the most fresh and exciting live acts coming from Europe. The secret being not just the strong individual skills of each band member, but also their winning blues/rock formula, one able to embrace and to amalgamate cleverly various elements belonging to different styles, from Blues to Latin, from Jazz to Rock.
Read more: Micke Bjorklof & Blues Strip - Twenty-Five Live At Blues Baltica
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- Written by Giovanni "Gio" Pilato
Blues and Blues/Rock can be a very funny business, sometimes. It is somehow baffling how often record labels pick and choose artists and sign them mainly because they have what they call "a fresh face" and they might look cooler in their appearances more than others artists more skilled and talented than them. Inevitably though, although well hidden under this aforementioned layer of smooth appearance, such artists will show through times their lack of musicianship and creativity, to the point that they will disappear completely from the music scene in no time at all.
It is therefore incomprehensible why an incredibly talented and multi-instrumentalist artist like Ted Horowitz, aka Popa Chubby, doesn't get snapped and get ignored by record labels and needs, instead, to get to the point to self-produce and engineer his own body of work which, in this case, it is perhaps the best album of his career to date.