Savona, Italy based bassist Andrea Torello (member of Qirsh and NightCloud), returns with a visionary and dreamy second instrumental album. A video for each track, straddling Post-Rock, New Wave and Film Music.
Watch the official video for the track “Separate Ways” through the YouTube player below:
Purchase the track on Bandcamp: https://andreatorello.bandcamp.com/track/separate-ways
“Blend” was born from an ambitious and hard-earned idea: to create a project of music and images, which would capture the listener’s attention and entice him to ‘know how it ends.’ All the tracks are connected by a common musical and graphic thread. I therefore started to publish the first track and its video, and then gradually with all the others. In the end, the whole work had to end with an album that encompassed them all. After all, images have now become an integral part of our lives and the enjoyment of music cannot but pass through this channel, which is now indispensable.
Music and image, a single project that unites them and involves the listener/viewer in a new musical vortex. This is the goal of Andrea Torello, who six years after his debut album “Appunti di viaggio” (Zeit Interference/Lizard Records) returns with his second album “Blend” (Kleisma Records): an entirely instrumental record, in which each track is linked to a video. A musical-visual project, therefore, that fully represents the bassist of Qirsh and NightCloud: it is not an Italian-style Prog Rock record, nor a Metal Prog work – areas in which the aforementioned bands are active – but an instrumental sequence straddling Post-Rock, New Wave, Jazz Rock and Fusion, Film Music.
“Blend” is an operation to which the Ligurian musician attaches great importance. The first step was the periodic publication of videos and tracks finally collected in the record, which is different from its predecessor but also from what was done with Qirsh, one of the best-loved names in the Italian new Progressive scene: “Compared to Appunti di viaggio, I think I have made a more mature record, both from the compositional point of view and in terms of the choice of sounds and arrangements. What hasn’t changed is only the approach to composition and songwriting, which always stems from an inner conflict that leads me to write music rather than find a different outlet. In Qirsh I limit myself, in most cases, to the performance part only. However, the fact that I tried to contribute to the Qirsh ‘cause’ also made me discover my compositional side, which is far from the classic progressive world and closer in sound to new-wave, post-rock and film music.”
Composed and played entirely by himself, except for the contribution of musician friends on some tracks, “Blend” fully represents Andrea Torello‘s sound world.
Ten tracks and ten videos that wordlessly describe moods, hopes and disillusions, but which also reveal the artist’s background and horizons: “What drove me to take up music is now part of my past, without which I would not have come to appreciate what I appreciate today.If at the beginning of the 90s I was literally thunderstruck by Pink Floyd, Queen, Pooh, Marillion, Talk Talk (just to name a few), with time I started to listen to Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Sylvian, Hans Zimmer and all the more cinematic and orchestral strands of the musical world.”
“Blend” is available for streaming and digital download on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, Deezer.
Andrea Torello: keyboards, synth, electric guitar, electric bass, percussion
Simone Piccolini: piano (Midnight sky)
Francesco Mancuso: piano (Red leaves, A beat of wings)
Carlo Speranza: piano (I’m water)
Daniele Ferro: electric guitar, acoustic guitar (Heartbeat, A beat of wings, Talk to me, Road to you)
Giulio Mondo: drums (Heartbeat, Talk to me, Road to you)
