Fredo Viola
Words by Matt Browne
Being postulated as a “cool” magazine isn’t all champagne and mirth you know. Disappear Here has to routinely slug away a surfeit of popinjays before heralding a new act with anything like a sense of assurance. And this can be quite demoralising. On the floor of the office lies a trail of budding music writers who have administered upon themselves some inventive injury in the desperate plea for some real sensation; it got so bad for one intern that they squeezed themselves into a tumble drier lined with nettles and sandpaper and selected the 800 rpm spin. This considered, picture our elation when we encounter someone like Fredo Viola- a veritable beacon of an artist - and his effulgent debut album, The Turn.
When asked for a pithy sound-bite to describe his music, Viola, despite being warned by his manager about the probability of a sardonic response, proudly states “fantasy”. He explains that he is “fanatical” about Federico Fellini films and that he wanted to “take their ambition into my music” - and The Turn is nothing if not ambitious. The genres which it draws upon - ranging from singer-songwriter pop to the English hymnal via medieval folk ballad and electronica - are equally matched by its emotional scope: the opener is an ethereal death march of a song when it gets going and The Sad Song, aptly, has a devastating and beautiful pathos; but The Original Man is all playful humour and Red States is replete with a jangle and jaunt that recalls Belle and Sebastian, whilst making them sound comparatively cheerless. The result is a visceral rhapsody of a record, which takes us sightseeing around a museum of musical form. Sorry to disappoint, but “fantasy” was pretty much on the money.
What about ethics? Viola explains that he worries that the state of music today is in danger of being rendered soulless by technology. “Downloading tracks really takes away so much from the actual experience of an album. I remember buying vinyl when I was a kid, and sometimes you had to listen to a song that you find very boring at first, but then it could become your favourite song: you just have to listen to it and find your way into it”. Despite this, he has an acute mastery of technology and through it he effectively recalls and reaffirms the original meaning of “indie”: He was a YouTube sensation with The Sad Song; he has managed to become a one man virtual choir through the meticulous technical feat of voice-layering and looping; and his videos are all self-made and retain a DIY aesthetic. He accedes to this point: “I think that technology is feeding music in an interesting way too: applications are being created that makes the experience interactive and visual aspects are being married with audio in a very creative way”.
This combination of a picaresque album with some truly progressive artistic principles may just be an antidote to the swathes of shit that threaten to disaffect the living fuck out of you. We think so, and that’s why we’re playing it to those in the office who are about ready to sellotape their eyelids open and look into the wind.
http://www.myspace.com/fredoviola
Posted Fri, April 03, 2009