The very essence of Fredo Viola’s work to date lies on his vocal prowess, singing each and every melody and harmony on each and every one of his songs. The issue with this is that, while he can record or video himself many times, there is, ultimately, only one of him. The live environment could therefore have been well beyond his reach, his music too clever to be performed in front of an audience. The solution could well have been to take backing tracks with him and sing over them, and it is exactly as his set starts, with, fittingly on the night of the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing, a rendition of Moon Over Berceuse, where he sung the lead vocal over pre-recorded instances of his voice harmonising. This was however the only song relying entirely on the laptop that was performed all night. Right from the second song, he was joined on stage by Ben Evens (guitar/voice), Graeme Brooker (bass), and Jasper Walkinson (rudimentary drums – only a bass drum, a snare and a couple of cymbals to him to play with – guitar, voice) all three of Manchester outfit I Am Your Autopilot, together with French touche-a-tout Scalde, who added many textures and sounds by playing anything and everything from bells to flute and cythera.

The laptop was dropped all together for Red States, which followed, and suddenly, the delicate folk sound of Viola’s debut album, The Turn, with its electronic tints, came to life in entirely fresh and rich attires. Other songs also performed with no computer assistance later on were given new tones and hues. This was particularly the case of the playful The Original Man (a song resulting of a dream during a time when Viola was snowed under doing graphic design work) or the beautiful and delicate The Death Of A Son and Robinson Crusoe, which, despite a false start, still managed to draw some pretty emotional moments. Ben Evens and Scalde provided the bulk of the vocal harmonies, their voices in turn forming gentle motifs around, or strong counterpoints to, Viola’s leads, ensuring his multi-layered harmonies were exquisitely rendered.

At one point, Evens and Viola joined forces to give a rendition of All In Our Hands, a song taken from I Am Your Autopilot’s forthcoming debut album, their two voices circling around each other and weaving breathy threads around the delicate melody. Later, Viola called upon his laptop once again for Umbrellas, this time using it to loop and layer his own vocals for which the band carved a complex and powerful backdrop. After a quick permutation of functions between Ben Evens, moving to the drums, and Jasper Walkinson, taking on guitar duties, the evening concluded with a version of Petula Clark’s 1965 hit Downtown, here given, rather successfully, the Viola vocal treatment, and, as an encore, a pretty underwhelming version of The Sad Song.

This London stopover, coming on the back of a handful of successful dates in France, including one at La Cigale in Paris, represented British-born Viola’s first chance to play in the UK, and the crowd, piled up in the downstairs area of the Fly bar, was keen to show its appreciation. His highly personal work was never going to be an easy one to take on the road, but he has surrounded himself with excellent vocalists and musicians and, as a band, they have brought his songs to life, retaining their original flavours and displaying under totally new angles.

Fredo Viola | Fredo Viola (MySpace) | The Turn | Because Music