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. Continue Reading »

New York based audio visual artist Fredo Viola released his first EP, The Sad Song, to critical acclaim last year. The EP, including the video accompanying the title track, shot and directed by Viola, generated a lot of interest, especially from film directors and authors. Viola even received an offer to collaborate with Massive Attack. A few months later, he launched theturn.tv, a website collating more videos and new songs. The Turn is now being released as a full length album, and the CD also comes with a DVD featuring the videos showcased on the web. Here, Fredo discusses his artistic background, how he developed his particular blend of work and how the internet is a key part of his work. Continue Reading »

FREDO VIOLA
The Turn
BEC5772438
Because Music 2009
12 Tracks. 45mins19secs

Buy: CD | iTunes
Stream: Spotify

Fredo Viola makes pop music like no-one else. Fearlessly rejecting traditional forms, he uses vocal layers to build songs and harmonies, but instead of relying on other people’s voices, he works with multiple instances of his own, adding line after line, variation after variation, to eventually surf on the strength of a choir of which he is the sole defining element.

Born in England, where he spent his first few years before his parents moved to Italy then, later, to New York where he still resides, Viola released his first EP, entitled The Sad Song, last year. The title track was accompanied by a video, directed by Viola, which expanded on the vocal concept by using multiple sequences of himself singing different lines. Shortly after he posted it on his myspace page, he began receiving emails from directors and film critics, and even got an offer to collaborate with Massive Attack. The EP featured three original songs plus three radically different reworkings of the title track from Prins Thomas, Roland Appel and Tunng.

The Turn first materialised at the end of 2008 as a dedicated website, where users were invited to play with shapes, each one representing a song and its accompanying video. Continue Reading »

FREDO VIOLA
The Sad Song
BEC5772159/BEC577216
Because Music 2008
04 Tracks. 16mins23secs / 02 Tracks. 15mins36secs
Format: Digital, 10″ / 12″

Fredo Viola was born in London where he spent the first few years of his life before his parents moved to Rome and then New York and Los Angeles where he spent most of his formative years. He studied to become a film director, but music took him on a different path. Strong from a recent collaboration with Massive Attack, Viola follows a couple of MP3 releases with his debut EP, The Sad Song EP, on French imprint Because Music.

The Sad Song EP features three of Viola’s delicately crafted songs, showcasing quite a wide range of styles, starting with the elegant vocal layering and melody of the title track, with only discreet electronic textures added in the background. Continue Reading »