Waves on Canvas - Into The Northsea LP [Pre-Order]

kd397

The debut album by Waves on Canvas is now available to pre-order from our Bandcamp page.

Every pre-order includes a FREE CD posted to anywhere in the world.

Also includes immediate download of 2 tracks in your choice of MP3 320, FLAC, or other formats. A link to the complete album will be emailed to you the moment it’s released.

http://psychonavigation.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-northsea


PRESS INFORMATION :

Waves on Canvas is the brainchild of Italian composer Stefano Guzzetti. Following the much praised 7” vinyl single Angel (Vocals by Louise Rutkowski of This Mortal Coil & artwork by Vaughan Oliver) the artist has decided to work with many other well respected vocalists for his debut album Into The Northsea.

On the album Guzzetti also handpicked two of his own personal heroes Ian Masters (Pale Saints / 4AD), Pieter Nooten (Xymox / Michael Brook / 4AD).

Guzetti was born in 1972 in Cagliari, the capital city of Sardinia, an island of the Mediterranean sea. At the age of 9 he fell in love with Bach’s organ works and decided to take organ lessons.

After receiving a computer as a gift, Stefano, inspired by Kraftwerk,began programming sounds and noises. His love affair with electronica began.Then in his teenage years, musical influences like the sound of the electric bass along with the music of Joy Division, The Cure, Siouxsie & the Banshees, and a lot of 4AD artists would also inform his own future musical endeavours.


Always prolific and on the search for innovative ways to create new and interesting sounds, Guzetti admits “I never stopped programming and tweaking synths and samplers. I’m currently studying the ‘Electronic Music’ course held at the Music Conservatory of my town. I love using notes, noises, frequencies, and everything that can be put on a grid or a score and sounds good to me. This is how I feel music. I also love being in harmony with everything around me. Just living every moment of my days. This is how I live life”.

kd397

http://textura.org/reviews/wavesoncanvas_intonorthsea.htm

Waves On Canvas: Into the Northsea
Psychonavigation

While Waves On Canvas's Into the Northsea doesn't situate itself radically outside of the electronica genre, it's also perhaps more song-based, overtly emotive, and melodious than the Psychonavigation norm. The project and album are the brainchild of Sardinian composer and producer Stefano Guzzetti, who was born in 1972 in Cagliari (the capital city of Sardinia) and is currently studying electronic music at the Music Conservatory in his home town. Growing up, he developed an interest in computers, began programming, and found inspiration in the music of Kraftwerk, Joy Division, The Cure, and Siouxsie & the Banshees during his teenage years. The album alternates between instrumental electronica and vocal settings, with different singers appearing on each of the vocal pieces. The stirring voice of Louise Rutkowski (of This Mortal Coil) was heard prior to the album's release when the single “Angel” was issued in late 2011, and the album also features singing by Françoise Lacroix, Ian Masters, Yvette Winkler, Pieter Nooten, and Irene Nonnis.

Guzzetti's melodic gifts are on full display from the start when “Twenty Years” inaugurates the album with a pretty melancholy setting for piano and glockenspiel. It segues into the strings-heavy ballad “Angel,” which features two of the recording's most ravishing hooks (in its “When you think you're falling / Think of me I'll be there” and “‘Cause I'm your angel” lines), not to mention a powerfully heartfelt vocal by Rutkowski. Masters' voice nicely complements the acoustic guitar-driven swoon of “Starfish,” which Guzzetti otherwise dresses up with sleigh bells and xylophone. As spoken-sung by Lacroix, Marc Atkins' French lyrics lend “Voix dans une voix” a cosmopolitan air; elsewhere, Yvette Winkler and Pieter Nooten make a compelling pair when their voices are presented in unison on the piano-centric ballad “Frozen,” and Nonnis memorably recaptures the emotionalism of “Angel” on “In My Dream.”

On the instrumental front, “Stella” is elevated by the sparkling synthetic treatments Guzzetti adds to its beat-driven, strings-and-electronics dramatics, whereas piano sprinkles brighten the electronic design of the brooding meditation “A Dedication.” Tracks like “Twenty Years” and “Pure” also indicate that piano is Guzzetti's core instrument, no matter how many other sounds appear on the album. For whatever reason, he chose to follow the album's first eleven songs with four minutes of seashore sounds before the appearance of the final instrumental setting “Here and Away.” There are also moments when Guzzetti would have been better to pull back on the production design—a potentially lovely piece like “Flowers of the Sea” is marred by an excess of electronic clutter when a less busy approach would have served the material better—but that's the sole weak aspect of this otherwise charming collection.
September 2012