Browsing Tag

Neo-Classic

Billy Moffat has released his symphonic masterpiece, Through the Eyes of God, featuring Davie Brockett.

Posted on 19 June 2021

Scottish-born composer Billy Moffat brought plenty of his experience touring the globe with the show, One Night of Queen, to his latest release, Through the Eyes of God, featuring Davie Brockett on guitar.

Starting with dramatic neo-classic keys, there are no hints in the production to warn that the stunning crescendos will soon give way to over-driven scuzzed-up guitar solos that easily match the furore in an Apocalyptica track. Davie Brockett’s searing solos blazon the professional instrumental score with even more virtuosic stripes.

Though the Eyes of God is, quite literally, a jaw-droppingly symphonic masterpiece that will easily leave you ensnared by the sheer nuance and Moffat’s ability to compose a score that will put your rhythmic pulses under instant command.

The orchestral release is now available to stream via SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia

Paul Ettore Tabone takes us to ‘Heaven’

Posted on 21 April 2021

Opening up with some Spanish guitar, Paul Ettore Tabone – a.k.a. The Tenor From Oz – brings us an Italian language operatic version of Bryan Adams’ ‘Heaven’, as a sampler from his new album ‘This Is Me’.

Paul was given the prestigious ‘Most Promising Voice For Music Theatre’ in both 2007 and 2009 at the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music, before making his operatic debut in Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’, a period in West Side Story and Puccini’s ‘Madame Butterfly’, and a four year West End run in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Phantom Of The Opera’. That operatic heritage and training has stood Tabone in good stead here, his deep, rich resonant tenor voice carrying the song beautifully, the combination with the Italian language lyrical translation transforming a pop-rock classic into something much deeper and more emotional.

You can hear ‘Heaven (Paradiso)’ on Soundcloud; order Paul’s debut album, ‘This Is Me’, from Paul’s website.

Review by Alex Holmes

Sophia James – beautiful, healing hope with ‘Sixty Years’

Posted on 20 April 2021

“Sixty years from today, the earth will have withered away”…Sophia James grew up in Long Beach, California, and that airy chilledness shows through in her music, earning her a place in the coveted ‘Top Ten’ on 2020’s American Idol. ‘Sixty Years’ is a beautiful, piano-based song, down-tempo but not slow, melancholic at times, but not sad, a mixture of jazz, folk, rock, and soul, hopeful, gentle, and charismatic. It’s a lovely record, Sophia’s beautiful vocals rolling and lifting, the lyrics stunning and superb.

It’s genuinely moving and emotive, Sophia’s voice carrying the listener away on a wave of beautiful nostalgia around love and regret, and the way some people are just destined to always be there, one way or another, no matter what – those relationships that you can leave untouched for five years and yet pick up like you only popped out yesterday. Sophia wants to ‘create music that will connect people, move people, and heal people’; in ‘Sixty Years’, she’s done just that. It’s a truly beautiful single.

Hear ‘Sixty Years’ on Spotify; check out Sophia James here or on Instagram.

Review by Alex Holmes

Brian Crosby – A Strong Tide of Liberty: An Intimate Take on Neo-Classical

Posted on 11 April 2021

Brian Crosby’s ‘A Strong Tide of Liberty’ may not be an OST to a motion picture film, but the minimalist neo-classic soundscape will evoke plenty of its own imagery as it experiments with your rhythmic pulses and allows you to rehash memories that ring with the same psychological timbre.

It’s a stunning instrumental piano score, and thankfully, there will be plenty more to come from the Irish-based composer in 2021 and beyond. A Strong Tide of Liberty is just one of the singles to feature on their modern and intimate album, ‘Imbrium’.

A Strong Tide of Liberty is now available to stream via SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Benjamin Witt has made his neo-classic debut with their album ‘Coming Out of It’

Posted on 2 April 2021

North Carolina-based artist, composer and producer, Benjamin Witt has made their debut with their ambient neo-classic album ‘Coming Out of It’. Any fans of Nils Frahm’s tender melodic touch will want to spend time with this remarkably evocative album which could serve as the OST to Hollywood’s next blockbuster.

The best exhibition of Benjamin Witt’s astuteness when it comes to capturing emotion on piano keys is ‘Running Through It’, a soundscape that quiescently captures a break free from stagnation with tentative steps that guide you towards living instead of existing at the mercy of the universe.

Running Through It is now available to stream via Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Michael Livschitz mellifluously hammers home the tragedy of silent suffering with ‘When Broken Hearts Are Silent’

Posted on 11 March 2021

Between the title and the stabbing intensity of the piano progressions which mellifluously hammer home the tragedy in silent suffering, you can’t help but engage with the evocative potential within Munich’s Michael Livschitz’s latest score ‘When Broken Hearts Are Silent’.

Of all the things that have been lost and have been changed since the pandemic started, I consistently find myself mourning the fact we seem to be slipping into hesitancy to speak, hesitancy to be loud, artful and incredible, hesitancy to be who we were before in the wake of catastrophe and ennui.

When Broken Hearts Are Silent is not a sombre composition, by any means. It is explorative and poignantly reflective through the way it tugs on tender heartstrings, allowing the keys to say what words won’t let us express.

Any fans of Hans Zimmer, John Williams and Ennio Morricone will undoubtedly want to get acquainted with the cinematic presence which resides in Michael Livschitz’s sound.

When Broken Hearts Are Silent is now available to stream via Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Marcus Moon marries the present with the past in his neo-classic score ‘Wedding Waltz’

Posted on 2 February 2021

Canadian Neo-classic artist and composer, Marcus Moon, released their highly-anticipated debut album, ‘Letters from the Moon’, as 2020 drew to a close. His “classical music for modern times” is an all too welcome distraction from the same modernity it reflects.

The refined decadence in the lead single ‘Wedding Waltz’ is the aural equivalent to slipping into a Jane Austen novel; it’s grandiose without becoming theatrical. Instead, through his command of vivid melodies, Marcus Moon is able to paint a neo-classic portrait which evokes emotion instead of forcing emotion upon you; allowing the timeless tones to resonate as much in your own world as they would in an imagined archaic fantasy (we all have those, right?).

Marcus Moon’s debut album is now available to stream via Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

 

Momento has celestially revived Sigur Ros and Devotcha’s ‘Through The Horizon’

Posted on 23 December 2020

Self-described as ‘Genre-Fluid Performers’, childhood friends Jonathan Chan and Jan Bislin – better known as Momento – are multi-instrumentalists, performers, and composers, specialising in a mixture of original and reworked pop and classical compositions. Here presenting their new single ‘Through The Horizon’, a mixture of Sigur Ros’ ‘Hoppipolla’ and ‘How It Ends’ by Devotchka, the classically trained duo mix electric and acoustic violin performances with sequenced electronic drums and synthesiser parts to create a beautiful, entrancing soundscape that is at once familiar and wholly new.

Already well-established as support for acts as diverse as Tim Minchin, James Blunt, and Gary Barlow, and with over half-a-million YouTube views under their belts – as well as regular headline shows on the streaming platform Sofar Sounds – Jonathan and Jan have here created a beguiling instrumental piece which allows both performers to shine, never overly flashy yet clearly demonstrating their supreme musicianship and arrangement expertise. Based on ‘Through The Horizon’, 2021 should be pretty memorable for Memento.

Check out ‘Through The Horizon’ on YouTube, and follow Memento on Instagram and Facebook.

Review by Alex Holmes

The Spice Cabinet serve a finesse-fuelled feast through their latest single “Bittersweet”

Posted on 18 November 2020

With a cinematic Jazz ensemble quiescently quivering beneath a poetically enticing spoken-word monologue, The Spice Cabinet’s latest release, “Bittersweet”, is captivating from the intro.  

From there on out, the Neo-Classic soundscape demonstrates its efficaciousness in arresting your rhythmic pulses with the subtle yet striking fluctuations in zeal and style, leaving you eager, but assured, you’re in masterfully safe aural hands.

With the nuance exhibited in Bittersweet, it comes as no surprise that Beijing’s 11-piece award-winning Jazz fusion collective have amassed plenty of acclaim. Frontman, arranger, pianist and trombonist Terry Hsieh is able to bring modernism to a genre consistently perceived as archaic. Perhaps more pertinently, he is able to make a plaything of your psyche through his ingenuity.

Bittersweet is available to stream via Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Sonophonix drive us ‘Crazy In Love’ with their latest single

Posted on 5 October 2020
https://vimeo.com/461511090

Commencing with a beautiful, arpeggiated piano motif before being joined by the deep, sonorous swell of cello, ‘Crazy In Love’ is a beautiful, haunting piece, an instrumental duet of resonant, musical artistry and elegance that showcases the talents of two incredible musicians.

Pianist Deborah Robb and cellist Xue Yang Liu met while students at the Mannes School of Music at the New School in New York City.  While attending Mannes they performed chamber music together and were members of the Mannes American Composers Ensemble (MACE) under the direction of composer Lowell Liebermann.  Their Sonophonix duo merges their composing, arranging and improvisation skills, and ‘Crazy In Love’ is a perfect example of their art, allowing each performer the personal space to breathe whilst intertwining their individual contributions into something altogether greater, a delicate, mellow, composition of refinement and elegance that transcends the classical genre and becomes something altogether of its own.

Crazy In Love can be heard from the Sonophonix website.

Review by Alex Holmes