Monklog: Fredo Viola

Sounds like: Animal Collective, Paul Simon, The Beach Boys.

I really cannot fully express how compelling, vibrant and moving Fredo Viola’s music can be.

The Sad Song from Fredo Viola on Vimeo.

In a time when the music community could be accused of fetishizing the good old fashioned harmony, Viola is an auspicious addition to the chamber choir. With its digitized vignettes hauled up by layer-upon-layer of ascending vocals, his debut album The Turn stretches and tumbles as if it were trying to climb itself into the clouds. Mournful but bright, medieval but modern, devout but unscrupulous, Viola is sometimes candid and contemporary, other times timeless and graceful.

He’s also a man made of everything digital/creative. Hook yourself up to fredoviola.com and therein you’ll find the full story. I especially recommend the flash site he’s built for The Turn - an astonishing mix of experimental video and sound that positively reinvents the formula of experiencing the music ‘album’. If you ever find yourself on the receiving end of a grumbling old-timer scorning the mp3 generation, I suggest you take him for a walk through Viola’s ‘linked-in’ eccentricities. There are, indeed, ways to have profound experience as well as the attention span of a twitterer.

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You can also hear ‘The Sad Song’ in happy-mode. Courtesy of LowLifi.net

MP3: Fredo Viola - The Sad Song (.:L.o.w.L.i.f.i:. Remix)

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