Taoist Priests

Descrição

AUSTRALIAN GUITARMAN -EX BAD SEEDS...

In the last 3 years Hugo Race has released a stream of albums: the urban dreamscapes of the True Spirit's "Goldstreet Sessions": the elegant trip-pop of Sepiatone's "Dark Summer": the ambient soundtrack-style noise psychedelia of Transfargo's "Mil Transit": the Italian montage of "Merola Matrix": the raw cosmic blues of the Spirit's "Ambuscado": and the live garage rock of the Spirit's "Live in Monaco".
Hugo explains in an interview during the Australian Ambuscado Tour, Brisbane, December 2005:
"For me, those six albums have been a journey of exploration through my creative psyche where I've let tangents unfold and the music that's in me emerge without judgement or self-consciousness. In a way, all this has been leading up to the new studio album from myself and the True Spirit, "TAOIST PRIEST". It's pretty much a songwriting album with the emphasis on the lyrics and voices, but we've combined this classical approach with the kind of soundtrack-style abstraction we focussed on for the "Ambuscado" record. In a way, all the sounds and moods of the previous six albums have been fused into one total vision that is a kind of multi-layered self-portrait. I had to deconstruct everything to find out what I'm about and how far this band can go with it. Here I'm dealing with my own demons and also with the demons unleashed in our epoch. The album has a beautiful lush sound that aims to seduce, which is good because as a concept, "Taoist Priests" is all about what it means living and loving in a world poised on the edge of self-destruction, and this political background to it is even more present than on "Goldstreet Sessions".
Its difficult to write anything today without including the devastating changes this planet is going through because everything we know and do is conditioned by a global awareness. So Taoist Priests explores this concept without mincing words because we all have to stare down the enemy within. And its about rock music, feeling how good that stuff is when you really mean what you play on a gut level. Theres too many records today with no soul and just a lot of heavy marketing. What I wanted to do with Taoist Priests was write an album that's totally about content, about having something to say then setting it in a context of music that not only entertains but challenges and disturbs, and does all that with a lot of love. Because none of us have infinite time left, and to me the music is tremendously important as communication and as a bond between us. We called this project the True Spirit because I believe in the spiritual power of music as a way to uplift and empower, not only as a form of light entertainment. We'll be touring in Europe on and off from March until June with the core True Spirit line-up of Chris Hughes, Michelangelo Russo, Marta Collica and Giovani Ferrario. Looking forward to it." ...(...)