Fredo Viola - 'The Sad Song'

Fredo Viola sounds like one of the many people ahead of me in the “creativity queue”.  Multi-instrumentalist, photographer, film-maker, multimedia artist, collaborator, you name it this guy can do it, and then some.

'The Sad Song' EP is vast in the genres it covers, with each track sounding nothing like the last, but retaining the unique touch of this eccentric New Yorker.  ‘The Sad Song’ is what the result would be if Wilson Pickett had met Sigur Ros somewhere up in the stratosphere; it’s strangely hypnotic acapella vocals leave you frowning (in a good way) as it feels so earthy and natural, you want to immerse your arms up to your elbows in it!  Conversely, ‘Hogwash’ flits between blues and a mischievous tribal beat replete with hand claps and flute.  It all feels like it shouldn’t work, but it does! Lastly there is the dark, almost free-form ‘Ether’ which treads the thin line between genius and madness very precariously and isn’t as immediately lovable as the opening two tracks. It is hard to say whether it’s about the afterworld or Hunter S Thompson’s drug of choice but it could (un)comfortably accompany any gonzo freak-out scene from Leaving Las Vegas.

The EP is rounded of by a couple of needless remixes of ‘The Sad Song’ that neither bring anything new to the table nor take anything away from the title track.
You’ll not have heard anything like this before and that feels good!  Strange does not always equal weird because, whilst Fredo Viola sounds like he may have had some mushrooms and been shut in a room full of instruments by the record label, he has emerged with something quite unlike anything else around at the moment.