Monday, 7 October 2013
Sunday, 6 October 2013
Marco De Angelis - The River / Both Sides Of The Story (2013)
Producteur
confirmé, auteur de nombreuses musiques
pour le cinéma et la publicité, Marco De Angelis sort aujourd’hui
son premier album intitulé "The River / Both Sides Of The Story".
Muti-instrumentiste de talent, Marco a eu l’intelligence de
faire appel à un vrai chanteur (l’irréprochable Marcello Catalano), à
un batteur en chair et en os (le très bon Chistiano Micalizzi) et à pas
moins de quatre choristes aux gros poumons. Les onze
compositions (plus un bonus) gravées sur ce galop d’essai digital
proposent une musique qui ne manque pas de charme. Il y a d’abord un
concept d’une grande richesse, basé sur le cycle de l’eau.
Le maître de cérémonie développe une approche très
mystico-philosophique de ce thème, l’utilisant pour filer une jolie
métaphore sur le combat incessant que se livrent le bien et le mal. Il y
a
également la voix fragile et émouvante du sieur Catalano, vecteur
idéal de la sensibilité à fleur de peau qui émane des paroles. Son chant
vibrant de feeling, magnifié par des chœurs féminins
éminemment floydiens (de nombreux passages évoquent ouvertement "The
Great Gig In The Sky" !), sertit à merveille onze compositions (plus un
bonus) aux atmosphères mélancoliques et plaintives.
Citons, à tout seigneur tout honneur, le véritable condensé
d’émotion pure que constitue l’epic "Regret", aux parties de piano
classique de toute beauté et à la guitare électrique tutoyant David
Gimour. Il y a enfin et surtout l’ensemble des ingrédients qui font
de ce projet initié par Marco De Angelis une nouvelle entité musicale
attachante, avec ses belles envolées de six-cordes (le
décidément incontournable "Regret"), ses délicates nappes de
claviers ("Snowbound") et ses subtiles partitions rythmiques ("What Do
Yo Feel Now ?").
Toutes ces qualités ne sauraient pourtant éclipser un certain manque
de personnalité, avec des clins d’œil un peu trop appuyés au grand
Peter Gabriel (l’ethnique "Tell Me Why") et surtout au Pink
Floyd de "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason" ("Never Look Back" ou "This
Time", aux bruitages calqués sur ceux du flamant rose). Il n’empêche… Il
serait injuste de vouloir réduire cette œuvre
sympathique à une simple succession sans saveur de "progressive
jokes".
Soyons clair : sans pour autant faire preuve d’une innovation
fulgurante, Marco De Angelis et ses complices ont donné le jour, avec
"The River / Both Sides Of The Story" à un premier album
agréable quoique "sous influence". Nul doute qu’ils sauront partir
vers de nouveaux horizons plus personnels dès leur prochain disque…
Affaire à suivre.
Bertrand Pourcheron (7/10)
Friday, 4 October 2013
Music From The Other Side of the Room
Reviews of Progressive Rock, Symphonic and Doom Metal, and mostly tributes
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Marco De Angelis - The River: Both Sides of the Story
Many inspirations can come into different areas at a different time that pours through the various aspects of life and dualism between good, evil, male, female, and the ways we travel and look at ourselves to find out what is it like living in the two different areas of the Waters themselves. And for Marco De Angelis, he made it exactly like that to tell a story about the issues in, The River: Both Sides of the Story. It’s more of this darker and spiritual album that could have been released in the 1980s.
Incomes the radio static for an introduction before it kicks
into thunderous percussion work, organ, and Gilmour-sque guitar lines while the
harmonizing vocals come into the composition, Tell Me Why as it goes into a soothing calming relaxing nature of
the piece to raise your hand up into the heavens for a chance to find out who
you really are. The electronic vibes shown on Black Stare, has an emotional and sadness of a ballad on a person’s
life through the mistakes and the errors of their ways, shows how they can
correct it and learn to walk forward and forget about the past.
There are the spirits of the late ‘80s/’90s vibe of Pink
Floyd, David Bowie, and of course Marillion, not to mention Genesis as well
that fits the atmosphere of the storyline and you could tell that Marco had
done a lot of research by listening to them by getting the vibe and understand
how they wrote music and how they would do it. The bluesy edgy crunchy riff
sounds of Never Look Back, has a lot
of soul and a lot of energy while Regrets
he channels Roger Waters’ lyrical context as if it was left off during the
sessions for The Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking, and you could imagine Marco
almost writing a prequel for Waters solo album that has heart and strong will
power.
The haunting melodic turned floating boundary on What Do You Feel Now? Goes into the homage of Obscured by Clouds
movement as it has some ‘70s vibes that is unexpected as the rhythm is very
laid-back and uplifting at times as the guitar slides through various frets,
bass line is calm, along with the drum patterns. Closer, Fly High, is a node to Genesis and Elton John. What’s really
exciting is that he is doing a node to Afterglow and Rocket Man, and its more
of a tribute and showing how much Marco admires this music so much as it goes
back through his childhood from the moment he picked up an instrument.
Zachary Nathanson
Thursday, 3 October 2013
www.neoprog.eu
Groupe Marco De Angelis
Album The River - The Both Sides of The Story
Label autoproduction
Année 2013
Mais pour ce qui nous intéresse, Marco est avant tout l’auteur compositeur d’un album de crossover progressif, The River sorti en août 2013.
Sur The River, Marco est partout ou presque, guitare basse, stick, claviers, chœurs. Pour le chant il fait appel à Marcello Catalano (retenez ce nom), pour la batterie à Christiano Micalizzi et à Désirée Petrocchi, Fabiola Torresi, Suzanna Stivali et Sara Berni pour les chœurs.
Dès la première écoute de The River, plusieurs comparaisons me sont venues immédiatement à l’esprit, Fish, Peter Gabriel, Tony Levin et Deep Purple rien que ça ! Généralement les projets multi instrumentalistes m’inspirent de la défiance, ici je suis tombé complètement sous le charme. Soyons honnête, je n’écoute pas souvent ce genre d’album, à part pour quelques artistes, j’en chronique encore moins, cette fois ci je ne résiste pas à l’envie de vous faire partager cela, c’est trop bon.
Tout d’abord il y a le timbre de Marcello qui me touche, un peu voilé juste comme il faut, capable de belles modulations. Ensuite il y a le jeu de basse et de stick de Marco qui sans égaler le grand Tony Levin, s’en approche quand même pas mal, son jeu de guitare également qui nous livre de très beaux soli et des claviers avec une jolie palette de couleurs. Le batteur Christiano fait son travail assez discrètement mais parfaitement, les morceaux ne se prêtant pas vraiment aux démonstrations rythmiques.
Marco n’est pas ingénieur du son pour rien, le son de l’album est un vrai régal pour les oreilles, faisant ressortir toutes les nuances des voix et des instruments, que du plaisir.
Et les morceaux dans tout ça ?
Douze titres du très court, Radio avec 21 secondes (plus à proprement parlé une ouverture) au long plus de sept minutes avec Regrets. Le dernier titre Our Trail of Tears, fait bien plus de neuf minutes, mais il y a une petite entourloupe.
Comme écrit au tout début, musicalement on se situe entre les deux carrières solo de Fish et de Peter Gabriel avec un petit air de John Lord aux claviers. J’irai jusqu’à dire que c’est même de meilleur facture que le travail de notre écossais ex leader de Marillion. On est dans le même esprit musical à savoir du rock tinté de prog, ballades, ritournelles presque faciles mais les titres sont, à mon humble avis, musicalement mieux construits. Je viens de briser un mythe et j’assume. Le côté Gabriel est moins flagrant, il tient à la fois aux sons de basse très Levin et à quelques petits passages instrumentaux.
This Time par exemple est un étonnant hybride entre les deux artistes, des éléments musicaux à la Peter avec des références World Music et un chant très Fish avec des chœurs façon In Your Eyes. Le titre me scotche, tout en ayant pas mal de point communs avec ces deux monstres sacrés, il garde une belle dose de surprises, bravo !
Regrets, avec section cuivre (claviers), le piano, le solo de guitare sublime, est complètement de l’univers musical de Gabriel, la voix de Marcello emprunte le feutré de Peter, on s’y croirait, un titre absolument sublime qui fait plus de sept minutes et qui possède en plus un très beau texte épuré. Là je suis amoureux, il faut le dire…
Sur Take It Away, écoutez cette belle basse, les rifs de guitare et les touches d’orgues. On est encore une fois très proche de l’univers musical de l’ex leader de Genesis avec nettement plus de partie instrumentales quand même. C’est très très bon tout ça.
What Do Feel Now est l’un des titre les plus instrumental. Vous y retrouverez une atmosphère floydienne qui début par un long instrumental planant avant de livrer un très court couplet.
J’ai beaucoup comparé The River avec d’autres artistes, pardon. L’album ne se résume pas à ça bien entendu. La musique de Marco possède sa propre identité même si on trouvera toujours des similitudes (à force d’écouter trop de musique…). Il s’agit d’un très beau concept album, des titres qui se suivent agréablement, à écouter dans le bon ordre, agrémentés de textes qu’il faut découvrir pour en profiter pleinement.
On va pouvoir fatalement reprocher à Marco sa proximité avec Fish et Gabriel, ou alors au contraire le louer pour ça, je suis de ce dernier groupe. Avec une très belle qualité de son, un livret réussi, The River est un excellent album de crossover progressif qu’il ne faut manquer sous aucun prétexte.
Jean-Christophe Le Brun
Wednesday, 2 October 2013
The River from Marco De Angelis
Some time ago Italian musician,composer and producer Marco De Angelis released 'The River (Both Sides Of The Story)', a concept album. Marco is backed by a crew of very talented artists. There're plenty of excellent melodies on this CD. And if you appreciate such performers as Marillion, Pink Floyd, Carptree, Peter Gabriel, then 'The River' should be your next choice.
http://www.theriver.it/index.html
This is a really really nice album. Imagine that somewhere in the late 80s Mike Rutherford (bringing his Mechanics drummer), David Gilmour (bringing in Jon Carin on keys and Tony Levin on bass) joined forces with a young Steve Hogarth (who at times would channel his inner Gabriel). Sounds like an odd combo and you would expect it not to work but De Angelis holds it together very nicely. The first half of the album is maybe a bit more Rutherford / Mechanics like and the latter half clearly Floyd inspired with musical tip-of-the-hats to both The Final Cut and The Division Bell. A very cool discovery.
Christian Bekhuis
"In this day of downloading and all, CDs are becoming like jewelry for men. " - Sunhillow (PE Member)
http://www.facebook.com/xymphonia
http://www.omroepalmelo.nl/xymphonia
Monday, 30 September 2013
This is an excerpt from the radio show Xymphonia bradcasted Sunday 29/09/2013. Xymphonia is a wonderful dutch radio show entirely based on Prog Rock music from all around the world.
omroepalmelo.nl/radio/programmas/xymphonia
Sunday 29 September 2013 Show No. 1061
NIEUW
De Angelis Marco
Afkomstig van "The River - Both Sides Of The Story" (eigen beheer, 2013)
Hoe zou een album klinken dat ergens eind jaren 80 gemaakt zou zijn door Mike Rutherford en David Gilmour gezamenlijk, met als nieuwe frisse ontdekking Steve Hogarth op zang? Dat zijn de referenties die opdrongen bij het beluisteren van het album “The River” van de Italiaanse gitarist/bassist/toetsenist/producer Marco De Angelis. Het is een album met twee gezichten: een kant wordt gevormd door de uptempo songs a la Mike + The Mechanics, de andere kant door sfeervolle songs die regelmatig refereren aan en zelfs soms heel kort en sneaky letterlijk quoten uit het oeuvre van Pink Floyd. Maar dan wel opvallend genoeg “The Final Cut” en “The Division Bell”. De Angelis echter weet deze twee kanten mooi te verenigen op een album dat zeker meer bekendheid verdient. Het is in zijn geheel hier te beluisteren op
So this is how an cooperative album would sound made somewhere at the end of the 80s by Mike Rutherford and David Gilmour with a then relatively unknown STeve Hogarth on vocals. That's what I kept thinking of when I listened the album The River - Both Sides Of The Story by Italian guitarist / bassplayer / keyboardist / producer Marco De Anglis. It is an album with two pretty distinct faces: on one side you have uptempo songs who are clearly influenced by Mike + The Mechanics. On the other side you have atmospheric songs which keep me thinking of and at times even literally quoting from the oeuvre of Pink Floyd although interestingly it mostly seems to go towards the direction of The Final Cut and The Division Bell. De Angelis however manages to unite these two disparate faces into a cohesive whole and has created an album that deserves to be much more widely known.
Friday, 27 September 2013
Brilliant album form Marco De Angelis, a nice surprise handed to me by The Boss, Nem Nol, watch out for the review coming soon!! In the meantime, listen at progstreaming.com
A nice interview of me talking about "The River" on SpireFocus.
Thanks to Matt Schrader:
Thanks to Matt Schrader:
Artist - Marco De Angelis
New album The River - Both Sides Of The Story
Spirefocus - What spawned your idea of writing a concept album?
Marco - I always love to tell
stories, something that is not just a snapshot: a three minute pop song
is not the way I'm comfortable with. I mean, there are bright diamonds
in the pop music, nowadays as well as in the past decades (The Beatles
were incredible in doing that), but I prefer to bring my listener (and
when driven, myself) on a more complex path.
SF - I'm feeling some prog 80s/90's Pink Floyd-esque sounds in there. Did you draw on these kind of influences for the album?
Marco - When I grew up and
started to play guitar I was listening to the UK's Rock /Prog bands in
the '70s (Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, but also Led zeppelin and Deep
Purple on the hard side of the rock). Its been a sort of musical
imprinting, so it's natural for me to use that kind of style in my
writing process. I don't feel it's something to be ashamed about. I
don't try to hide it.... It's me!
SF - Where does The River sit in your thirty years of musical experience?
Marco - It's not my first
release. I've had some titles out there in the past, but this album is
what I can refer to as "my beloved one". It has something personal in
it... but I won't tell you what…..haha.
It was hard to put it together
because of the large amount of songs I had - some are very old and some
were written during the last year of work. So I had to leave some of
them behind. It's always an unpleasant process to judge your own work.
SF - Did the album come from planned writing sessions or did it form during the recording process?
Marco - Yeah probably both situations I guess.
SF - Did you audition the players or did you have the specific players in mind when writing the parts?
Marco - Well it was pretty
simple. I played all the instruments on the album but the drums, so I
just had to make a phone call to my friend Cristiano Micalizzi, (a well
known drummer in Italy) and make him part of the project.
Some years ago I recorded in my
own studio a great female gospel vocal ensemble called Vocintransito,
so when the moment came to track down all the backing vocals I had
written for The River, I called them back into my studio and... you can listen to the wonderful vocal works that they put on throughout The River.
Lead vocalist Marcello Catalano
is probably one of my best friends ever - I call him my brother. He is
such an incredible vocalist. I was fortunate to work with him many years
ago when both of us were involved in Jesus Christ Superstar the musical
- I was the sound engineer and Marcello played Hannas. In the same cast
we had the one and only Carl Anderson, God bless him. So it didn't take
me more than a second to choose Marcello as lead vocal.
SF - Did the performers play their parts exactly how you wanted it or did they move around and elaborate?
Marco - All the parts were
already written, but of course they put a bit of their own personality
into them. And I liked it a lot.
SF - As a self-producer, were there other people you trusted on for extra ears?
Marco - Yes, a couple of long
time friends and colleagues. Having some extra ears is very important.
As I told you before, it's very, very hard to be objective when you keep
working on a project for a long time. You could hear something that is
just in your mind but not in the music you are listening to. You loose
the ability to keep your mind focused.
SF - Is the concept album idea something you would revisit again in the future?
Marco - Don't know. For sure I won't put together songs too far from each other, but I don't know yet.
SF - Are you planning on performing the album live?
Marco - For sure. It should be next year!
Thursday, 12 September 2013
Hi everybody out there, The River is featured on Progstreming.com
Check it out and please hit "Like". Spread the word!!!
Visit The River on Progstreaming.com
Visit The River on Progstreaming.com
Thursday, 29 August 2013
The River @ The Prog Mill on Stafford Radio 25/08/2013
Tuesday, 27 August 2013
The River has been part of the "Prog Mill" playlist on Sunday 25/08/2013.
Thank you Shaun Geraghty for having me on your show.
Thanks to all the Stafford Radio staff!
Thank you Shaun Geraghty for having me on your show.
Thanks to all the Stafford Radio staff!
Sunday, 16 December 2012
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
I have finished recording my new album “The River” and just need to master and manufacture it.
On my PledgeMusic page, you can become an integral part of it. The funds I raise through PledgeMusic will help me to finish this record and get it out to you. You’ll find a rather attractive list of exclusives that you can preorder or “pledge” for. These include signed copies of the new CD, original t-shirt and other apparel, your name in the liner notes and much more.
Every single Pledge will also include a digital copy of the album, which you will receive before it is released to the general public.
Here’s how it works:
1) You pick one of the exclusives/bundles.
2) You provide your card details, which are stored securely by PledgeMusic
3) If we hit the target, you are charged for the amount pledged; if we don’t, you are not charged at all (please note: you can also pledge via Paypal and your pledge will be taken immediately and refunded if the 100% target is not reached).
4) Spread the word: By linking this pledge page on your social networks (facebook, twitter, etc.) you can share the news of my new album with your friends. The more people involved, the better!
5) “The River” gets released and you receive your exclusives!
I’m also happy to announce that I will be donating a 25% portion of all proceeds beyond my initial fundraising goal to Save The Children www.savethechildren.org
Thanks for stopping by and thanks in advance for helping me do this.
— Marco
On my PledgeMusic page, you can become an integral part of it. The funds I raise through PledgeMusic will help me to finish this record and get it out to you. You’ll find a rather attractive list of exclusives that you can preorder or “pledge” for. These include signed copies of the new CD, original t-shirt and other apparel, your name in the liner notes and much more.
Every single Pledge will also include a digital copy of the album, which you will receive before it is released to the general public.
Here’s how it works:
1) You pick one of the exclusives/bundles.
2) You provide your card details, which are stored securely by PledgeMusic
3) If we hit the target, you are charged for the amount pledged; if we don’t, you are not charged at all (please note: you can also pledge via Paypal and your pledge will be taken immediately and refunded if the 100% target is not reached).
4) Spread the word: By linking this pledge page on your social networks (facebook, twitter, etc.) you can share the news of my new album with your friends. The more people involved, the better!
5) “The River” gets released and you receive your exclusives!
I’m also happy to announce that I will be donating a 25% portion of all proceeds beyond my initial fundraising goal to Save The Children www.savethechildren.org
Thanks for stopping by and thanks in advance for helping me do this.
— Marco
I'm releasing a new record and I'd love YOU to be a part of it! Get into "The River".
Visit my PledgeMusic page at:
www.pledgemusic.com/projects/theriver
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