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Sicily, 1999. Marta Collica and Hugo Race created Sepiatone to experiment with ‘solar’ sounds. Inspired by the mystique of old European films (Godard, Bertolucci, Antonioni, etc.) and using found materials like retro samples and major sevenths, they gradually discovered their own feel between dreams and desperation. Working with friends like DJ Stefano Ghittoni and Cesare Malfatti from acid-jazz-tinged Dining Rooms (Guidance Records in the U.S.), Riccardo Gerbino and Giovanni Arena from the folkloric Sicilian band Dounia, and Giovanni Ferrario, leader of the Italian avant-pop group Micevice, Hugo and Marta delivered two classic albums: "In Sepiatone" (2001) and "Dark Summer" (co-produced with the Bad Seed’s Mick Harvey). Now signed to Chicago label Minty Fresh Records, their US debut “Introduction to Sepiatone”, containing selected cuts from the first two albums.
SEPIATONE creates a timeless pop music that merges sonic textures of Euro-sounds of the 60s and 70s with a contemporary cutting-edge feel. In "Dark Summer", Sepiatone fused genres and time zones, bittersweet summer feelings and hallucinatory mood swings, juxtaposing nostalgia with the present in a fashion both totally unique and truly modern. The soulful, seductive Sepiatonic sound is the fruit of a collaboration between Italian singer and songwriter MARTA COLLICA and Australian artist HUGO RACE.
Sepiatone - "Green House"
Sepiatone’s live shows have blown away European audiences with the duo’s soulful minimalism and psychedelic undertow. Marta and Hugo’s vocals compliment the sonic mesh of layered guitar and piano. This style hints at the expanded arrangements of their recent studio recordings where gurus of orchestration such as Phil Spector and Billy Strange are subtly referred to in the context of the duo’s original combination of soul and songwriting.
Meanwhile, Hugo and Marta returned to the studio in Berlin to continue working on their third album, provisionally entitled “Echoes On”.
Marta began singing with the Australian-Italian group Micevice (1997), and along with playing with Hugo's ‘musical collective’ The True Spirit, is a key member of the new solo project of UK producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Eels). The John Parish Band recently released the group's debut “Once Upon a Little Time” through Thrill Jockey (USA). Marta plays piano, rhodes, hammond, synth, and likes to explore a wide range of electronic and analogic sounds; her original style combines minimal arrangements and a unique kind of playing, stumbling unpredictably between delicacy and distortion.
Critics compare Francoise Hardy and Julie Cruise to describe the unmistakable character of Marta's voice with it's "Indifferent intensity", evoking the slightly disquieting atmosphere of a road movie in slow motion. She also appeared on recordings by The Dining Rooms, Pola, and Italian singer/songwriter Cesare Basile. Marta founded the European "Super Group" Songs With Other Strangers in 2004, a creative encounter between a diverse group of international songwriters and musicians. She finished her first solo album, "Pretty and Unsafe" which debuted in February 2007 and received a warm and enthusiastic feedback from audiences and press.
(More: www.sepiatone.netwww.myspace.com/martacollica
Hugo is a prolific and visionary performer, songwriter and producer. First introduced to the international stage as a teenage founding member of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, he left that band and found the seminal Australian garage-blues cult band The Wreckery. Following that demise he moved to Europe in 1988 with his solo project Hugo Race + True Spirit. Hugo is perceived as a cult figure, unpredictable, brilliant and inspired. Within the last 3 years, he released a stream of albums: the elegant trip-hop of Sepiatone’s “Dark Summer”; the ambient abstraction of Transfargo’s “Mil Transit”; the psychedelic Italian montage of “Merola Matrix”; the raw cosmic blues of the True Spirit’s “Ambuscado” (2005) and “Taoist Priests” (2006). In April 2008, Hugo and True Spirit released their collective masterpiece, the double album “53rd State” (in Europe through Glitterhouse and Bang! Records, in Australia through Spooky Records). In late 2007, Hugo, together with Chris Brockaw (Thurston Moore, Come) and Chris Eckman (The Walkabouts, Chris & Carla), released the debut album of their ‘acoustic’ project Dirtmusic.
(More: www.myspace.com/hugoraceandthetruespirit www.myspace.com/dirtmusicband).
