Ark Records is an Italian music label that has produced Argine.Now Ark Records has produced Arcana Eco of the Italian neoclassical masters Ataraxia. Ataraxia is a neo-classical group with a number of releases under their belt and Arcana Eco is a book+cd that describe the complete discography of ATARAXIA with black & white and color photographs that include live shots of the band in concert, photographs of the band members posing in natural settings, and several images of band members dressed in medieval.The CD is packaged in a DVD pack, and the book and the CD are packaged together in a slipcase. BOOK : 164 pages,six chapters developping through Livio Bedeschi's photos, Ferruccio Filippi's reflections and Francesca Nicoli's writings; an exhaustive interview; a full discography and the 'Arcana Eco' Cd lyrics.CD : 7 exclusive tracks recorded and mixed between April and July 2004 (total length35 mn), four of them are new, the other three are older songs revisited with a todaysensibility.Cobalt(exclusive new song)Astimelusa(new key-chimes version)Mirsilo(exclusive new song)Fire in the Wood(exclusive new song)Nossa Senhora dos Anjos(new studio version)De Pourpre et d'Argent('A baroque divertissement' version)The Island of Docteur Moreau(exclusive new song)Arcana Eco is a an impressive job and an excellent guide to the vast offerings of Ataraxia .

"Hank! The Herald" is a classic X-mas carol and Hana Miya make of it a tortured soul's song. Her internt was of playing a three minutes forty one seconds song that makes everyone stop listening to classic lyrics and whishing for peace on earth. The song is arranged with piano, voice and few lines of strings and it is very touching. A sort of female Nick Cave version of a carol that is brought to you by Sonic 360. P.s. As always this is a download only release.

"C'mon brothers and sisters, it's sermon time with Father Murphy!!", don't worry this' a band and their only religion is music, for God sake it has nothing to do with any kind of church. "Six musicians getting unknown" is full of indie/alternative folk influences, when playing acoustic they have a lot of Modest Mouse (track 6) or remind their side project called Ugly Casanova. As you can imagine the equation is: "folk-rock", "alternative-rock" with an eye open on american roots. The songwriting sometimes is incredibly good and arrngements such as backing vocals, violins, keyboards don't hide too much the genuine "acustic-rock" style of the tracks. Father Murphy (aka Federico Zanatta plus some boys and girls from the Mad Cap collective) knows pretty well where he's coming and above all where he's headed, despite the songs pass from the depressed ballad to the rock hit, the sound is tight and homogeneous. Probably I'm boring but one of my favourite track of the lot is the last one (I'm talking about the hidden one) that's probably the weirdest track of the record: a real acid pearl a la Radiohead (Pink Floyd!?), that means an effected vocals that floats on a of single note reverbed drone with feedbacks fading distantly. Father's sin is indie music.

Announced about a year ago, finally BEAUTIFUL CREATURES, the debut Fretaste's album is out. A year ago I postponed my judgement about the band, waiting for the release of this CD. Well, I must say that the duo formed by Sylvie and Pierre refined their style and they produced twelve tracks of electro wave that really convinced me. I didn't remember their music to be that seductive, so just to give a good judgement I checked the MCD that already was containing four tracks that have been re-released on BEAUTIFUL CREATURES and I was right, because now they sound amazingly better: I think that the production of the album helped so much giving a new life to "Discordance", "Victim's heart", "For your own good" and to "Re-love". The vocals are better mixed with the instruments and the music sounds well balanced. In this way the band's skills are better shown and you'll will appreciate the catchy melodies and the electro wave style they deal so well with. The album doesn't sound retro even if you can hear the '80s influences. Melancholy is well balanced with the energetic arrangement and, in this way, the calm and mysterious Sylvie's voice find completion into the beating drum and the synthesizers programmed by Pierre. Tracks like "That smiling man" or the main title "Beatiful creatures" sum really well the new band's style and the whole album is a convincing one that prove that in one year the band did a wonderful job.

"Lo-fi indie folk" that's the galaxy you'd better look for if you wonna find Stop the wheel. If a title like "Nothing" makes the old farts like me think of punk nihilism, the music comes from another planet, it's folk, mainly acoustic guitar and vocals "back at the origin". At times this cd recalled Evan Dando's Lemonheads in the midst of the "Mrs. Robinson"-phase (above all tracks like "Bastard he was"), but the softest songs are closer to Guided by Voices or Jim O'Rurke (sure, minus his Bacharah-arrangements, so "american folk!" to the bone). Yes, Stop the wheel's music has reminiscences of american folk, Mark Kozlek? Pedro the Lion? I think these guys can appreciate both of 'em. I know I've started by saying "lo-fi", the recording is intentionally rough but good, the way it has to be. I think the main quality of the songwriter here is that the guy in not trying to be anybody else but himself: naive, but not pretentious at all. It's breakfast time and many of these tracks can ease the bore while going to work...sometimes it feels like John Fahey and Nick Drake are the fathers of us all...may God bless both of 'em!!.