Showing posts with label Davide Floreno. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Davide Floreno. Show all posts

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Davide Floreno - One Thursday Evening

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 49:54
Size: 114.2 MB
Styles: Guitar blues
Year: 2011
Art: Front

[5:06] 1. Droolin'
[4:20] 2. Jone's Groove
[3:11] 3. Gutbucket
[8:40] 4. Blues For Miss E
[2:36] 5. Mister Sandman
[5:03] 6. Who Does The Dishes (Feat. Erja Lyytinen)
[8:26] 7. Beautiful Love
[3:56] 8. Broadcast
[4:52] 9. Space Boogie (Feat. Erja Lyytinen)
[3:39] 10. Munkka

Born in Rome and making his home in Helsinki, Finland, Davide Floreno is best known as the right-hand man to contemporary blues artist Erja Lyytinen. He has played lead & rhythm guitar on each of Lyytinen's first four international releases and accompanied her on hundreds of live dates. He'd have no problem keeping it that way. "I’m not much of a singer and I am not a front man by any means," says this modest six-string maestro. "I like to be on the side." But Lyytinen's fans, recognizing Floreno as an integral part of her sound, have been pestering him about a solo album for years.

So last summer, when Lyytinen's band had two days off between festivals, Floreno decided to oblige them. One Thursday Evening, an album of ten topflight instrumentals, showcases him together with other core members of the Erja Lyytinen band: bassist Roger Innis, drummer Miri Miettinen, keyboarder Harri Taittonen as well as select guests including Lyytinen herself on a pair of cuts. "The current line-up is the best band I've ever been involved with. You can throw pretty much anything at these guys and they'll nail it straight away."

The impromptu session took place in a cramped rehearsal space cluttered with drums, amps, tour cases, mics and cables. Floreno originally planned to lay down basic tracks and then overdub his guitar, but when push came to shove, he and the band went 100% live. In the course of a single day (hence the album title), the musicians set up, sound checked and got the whole album done. "In retrospect," says Floreno, "it was the right thing to do. There's definitely some sour moments on my part, but I like the struggle. Kind of like Buddy Guy when he goes wild. Just when you think he's really out there and lost, he lands on his feet and it sounds great."

Floreno didn't set out to copy his guitar heroes, but to make an album that feels like the classic recordings he loves most. He has always been partial to American rhythm & blues, professing his admiration for everyone from James Brown to the renowned "Three Kings": B.B., Freddie and – more than any other artist – Albert King. "Guys like that had the ability to be really tight and still sound extremely relaxed. And that always fascinated me." This really gets to the heart of the matter. Recorded smack in the middle of a busy concert season, One Thursday Evening captures a band at the top of their game, locked in and grooving. But there's nothing hectic or hurried about that groove. The music they create evokes images of dusty roads and southern jukes where slow is the order of the day – because it's just too damn hot to move any faster. Once upon a time, the measured pace of life in the American south filtered into the way people like Albert King played the guitar. He wasn't about crazy-fast licks and hundreds of notes and neither is Floreno. One Thursday Evening moves at a casual clip, leaving Floreno and his mates plenty of space to stretch out and shine as they deliver impressionistic splashes of jazz, some straight-ahead Bo Diddley bounce and a whole lot of gutbucket blues.

Along the way, Floreno shows that, while he may not sing, when he lets his guitar do the talking, good things happen. One Thursday Evening – the album his fans have been waiting for – is most definitely a good thing. ~Vincent Abbate

One Thursday Evening mc
One Thursday Evening zippy

Saturday, December 23, 2017

Erja Lyytinen, Davide Floreno - It's A Blessing

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 38:13
Size: 87.5 MB
Styles: Country blues
Year: 2005
Art: Front

[4:36] 1. Welcome Song
[3:52] 2. Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
[3:24] 3. Frustrated Woman Blues
[3:42] 4. Whiskey Days
[3:44] 5. Hurry Make Love
[3:05] 6. Habanero
[4:53] 7. Love Me
[3:08] 8. Your Brown Eyes
[4:13] 9. Why
[3:30] 10. It's A Blessing

Erja Lyytinen : vcl/gtr, Davide Floreno: gtr/lap steel/vcl/dms/bss, Teemu Keränen : db-bss, Chris-Tomas Konieczny : dms, Pepe Ahlqvist : hca, Esa Helasvuo : pno.

Since first entering a recording studio some 15 years ago, singer/guitarist Erja Lyytinen has become a bona fide star in her homeland and a fixture on the international music scene. In that time, “the Finnish slide goddess” (The Blues Magazine) has recorded in places as diverse as Helsinki, London and Memphis, earning numerous accolades along the way. Rooted in both traditional and modern blues, she successfully blends styles like jazz, pop, soul and rock into a sound all her own. Celebrated slide guitar master Sonny Landreth, upon discovering Lyytinen’s music recently, remarked: “I sure enjoyed her guitar skills. She’s obviously made a big name for herself. Things are going well for her and for good reason.”

Born into a musical family in the town of Kuopio, Lyytinen quickly emerged as an artist to watch in her native country. She recorded her international debut Pilgrimage after signing with Germany’s prestigious Ruf Records label in 2005. The 2006 Blues Caravan tour gave audiences in Europe and the United States a first taste of her spirited live performances. The solo follow-up Dreamland Blues took her back to the USA to record with David and Kinney Kimbrough (sons of Mississippi blues legend Junior Kimbrough). After two years on the road, she returned with Grip of the Blues in 2008, mixing hard-edged blues with modern R&B. Her 2010 release Voracious Love was even more adventurous: The lavishly orchestrated “Bed of Roses” – featuring contributions from Marco Hietala (Nightwish) on vocals and Apocalyptica cellist Paavo Lötjönen – showed once and for all that Lyytinen is unafraid to push the stylistic envelope. With 2013’s Forbidden Fruit, she returned to more familiar territory.

It's A Blessing mc
It's A Blessing zippy