313 by Phideaux
Phideaux
CD, Booklet
Art/Pop/Progressive Rock
What do we have here? Folk, rock, prog and pop. Incredibly melodic. The lyrics are bizarre and humorous. Always different. A completely underrated band, with an active mastermind. Phideaux released the album “313” in 2006. Phideaux, Alexa can't do that, so here is the CD version. The design of the whole CD is reminiscent of fanzines or hand-painted cassette covers.
I won't go into detail about the 13 songs, they couldn't be more different. Nevertheless, the listener will recognize a common thread in the style of music. It's about friendship, social criticism, endangered species, perception, religion, dreams and cats. Sometimes poppy like in “Railyard”, spacey and groovy in “Have you hugged your Robot”, folky in “A Storm of Cats” and sometimes orchestrally pompous in “Never gonna go”. In between we find rock ("Sick of Me") and spherical at the end in “Benediction”, which could easily have been recorded in a church.
Xavier Phideaux loves art rock, prog, folk, punk and rock. Phideaux loves working on albums and it shows. Lots of little cogs mesh perfectly here. Quality? Contrasts between lyrics and music and vice versa? Sounds varied? There's a check to be made everywhere. Too melodic for the proghead, for me the melody of the music and the sung lyrics are important in prog too. Breaks are of course the icing on the cake, they're here too, just more subtle. The musicians are all good and know it, nobody here wants to prove that they're the best at their instrument. If you like fiddly prog interludes, you've come to the wrong place. Or, like me, who loves all facets of prog, just to the right place as well.
Produced by Gabriel Moffat
Performed by
Ariel Farber: Vocals
Valerie Gracious: Additional Guest-Appearance Vocals From Detroit (Rock City)
Julie Hair: Bass, Voice, Paper & Percussion
Rich Hutchins: Drums
Gabriel Moffat: Protools, Guitar Textures, Bass & Noise
Molly Ruttan Moffat: Drums & Vocals
Linda Ruttan Moldawsky: Vocals
Mark Sherkus: Keyboards, Synths, Piano, Guitar & Electric Sitar
Phideaux Xavier: Piano, Guitar, Bass, Electric Sitar, Ensoniq & Vocoder
www.bloodfish.com
www.bandcamp.com
The photos are all from my private CD. The rights to all motifs, logos, texts and fonts that can be seen in the photos are of course owned by the copyright holder.