Review
Number 5 of Top Ten Picks of 2004 -Diego Sandrin, New talent. Brilliant results. --Thom Duffy, Billboard Magazine, December 25th, 2004(On-Line
Product Description
Diego Sandrin’s audacious but understated Ten Songs in the Key of Madness spins its enigmatic tales unhurriedly and meticulously, establishing character and setting as a short story would. This is not the sort of approach favored by the major labels, which these days are in the blockbuster business, much like the big movie studios. But just as independent filmmaking is flourishing even as the behemoths focus on the lowest common denominator, musical artists with vision and resourcefulness are finding ways to get their music out there. Ten Songs was recorded and mixed at the Sirius studios in Rockefeller Center. Sandrin enlisted veteran musician Teddy Zambetti to produce; in turn, Zambetti tapped Niko Bolas (Neil Young, Warren Zevon, Don Henley) to engineer and mix the record. The first step in the process was determining what sort of album they wanted to make. “The basic rule that Diego and I came up with for this record was, ‘It’s about the words, the melodies, his voice and the grooves,’ and anything getting in the way doesn’t belong,” Zambetti explains. To that end, Zambetti brought in a core unit of song-serving players who possessed the wherewithal to bring Sandrin’s material to life without unnecessarily cluttering it: drummers Pete Thomas (Elvis Costello, Los Lobos) and Steve Jordan (Keith Richards, Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow), guitarist Smokey Hormel (Beck) and bassist John Conte (Peter Wolf). The tracks were started very simply in order to achieve optimum intimacy from the getgo, with Sandrin singing while Hormel played acoustic guitar. Then the rest of the instruments were “underdubbed” part by part, with Zambetti and his wife Violetta (a classically trained pianist) supplying the keyboards and Lance Langston on backing vocals. A string section was added to three tracks. The musicians didn’t just play the notes; they played the songs – and that’s a big distinction. Ten Songs is filled with such meaningful details, as the sympathetic players underscore Sandrin’s noirish tales with tones and textures that range from the elegant to the rawboned. With his unflinching eye and willingness to illuminate the disturbing as well as the divine, Sandrin is carrying on the legacy of artists like Neil Young, Beck, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed – artists who say exactly what they mean in a manner that is altogether their own.
