Claudio Conti Channels Nike Drake & Jim Morrison On 'Garnet Dusk' LP

I can't believe it's already the end of the year. Time flies so much faster when you have a great soundtrack. I've been listening to the new 'Garnet Dusk' LP from Claudio Conti.

This collection of tracks presents life through the perspective of an Italian extensive traveler of America and Britain. While he has folk roots, his branches reach into the Psychedelic world, much as occurred in the young mind of Jim Morrison.

This LP was awesomely foreshadowed by the first single ‘Old Clouds Fell‘, a beautiful track with a delightful ebb and flow that unites the peacefulness of Nick Drake with the catchy straightforward melodicism of Scotland's Trash Can Sinatras.

The accompanying video was created by Claudio Conti & Frederick Byron and filmed entirely on location in San Francisco and Bodega Head Beach in California.

Apart from 'Old Clouds Fell', there are also several other choice picks here, including 'Autumn Song', 'Of Nylon', 'Ode To The Mews', and 'Yeasty March'.

Claudio Conti is an Italian songwriter whose style is rooted in the same romantic pensiveness that mark the music of Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, Gene Clark and Tim Hardin. Largely drawn to psychedelic music, folk rock and 80's indie rock, he considers Gram Parsons, The Doors, The Smiths and early R.E.M. as his main influences.

His new 10-track album 'Garnet Dusk' is a very ambitious and personal album with moods alternating between the chaotic experiences of a man in his early to mid thirties, the solidification of his beliefs and worldview, including its flaws and qualities.

'Garnet Dusk' addresses such issues as migration and maturity - the product of deep thinking about the impervious, inevitable situations that life dishes up, usually not on a silver platter. This album was equally inspired by the sound of the ocean as by a woman's departure. This is Conti's attempt to explain unusual encounters like ships passing slowly in the night.

"This album is about the mysticism of love and rediscovered affection. The truth in children's eyes and parents' lack of consideration. And the frustrations, the illusions of flippancy that take us far from certain situations and on a detour towards the firmness of our insight, the channel of real life, where we find the lifesource that we really need," says Claudio Conti.

Back in 2003-04, Conti dared to self-released a sequence of home recordings called 'Botticelli', followed by the 'Handmaids Skim The Marble' EP in 2008 and the 'Northern' EP the following year. Having spent a significant amount of time in the UK and the United States, his various life experiences there allowed him to further shape his expressive-musical style and influences, resulting in the album 'Every Forest Has Its Shadow' (2012), which he fully wrote and then recorded with psychedelic folk rock band Magic Salad.

After a two-year hiatus, Conti split his time between Chicago, Los Angeles and London last year, and decided to officially release his first solo album 'Saltworks' (recorded in 2013-14) with Seahorse Recordings and was very well received by Italian magazines and webzines.

This latest album 'Garnet Dusk' is a worthwhile experience and one I recommend.

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