LONDON, UK (Top40 Charts/ CIAM Official Website) - Art Rock gets a minimalist makeover when London-based CIAM release their debut record Anonymous this summer. The brainchild of vocalist/guitarist Jeff Shapiro and viola/violinist Hadar Goldman, CIAM create cinematic music with a sleek rock edge. With nods to the seminal art rockers
Velvet Underground and more recent British counterparts Radiohead, Anonymous is a collection of densely-layered musical instrumentation, alternately complex and refined rock for the progressive listener.
The scope of Anonymous demands repeated plays, each listen revealing subtleties and nuances of arrangement that suggest a rare clarity of thought and expression. The opening track, "Here I Am" begins with a floating mix of vocals and guitars, with viola weaving in and around the melody like a thread pulling together a strange embroidery. Likely to cause a stir is a cover of the Velvet Underground's "Venus In Furs". Shapiro admits it was done tongue-in-cheek, just as a little nod to the forbearers of the art & rock confluence of the '60s, taken to dazzling heights by the searing relationship between the Velvet Underground and visual artist/ filmmaker, Andy Warhol.
There's dark humor here too - the Eastern sounding electric violin and cello of "It Takes A Friend (To Bring You Down)" smirk mercilessly at the protagonist's plight, while the plaintive bass melody of "The Journey", sends the listener into an intricate phalanx of acoustic and wah-wah guitars. It's a highly developed and intelligent record, extraordinarily assured for a debut album.
Featuring support from drummer Chris Hall, who worked with Shapiro previously in a band named Astrohound, Farrell Lennon on programming, sound architecture and guitars, as well as Mark Ferguson on bass, CIAM has designs on a most untraditional touring experience and show for audiences - playing the famed modern art museums of the world.
Conceived as a multi-sensory experience, Anonymous serves as only part of the total visual concept that includes short films. Unlike traditional music videos, where the visuals serve to highlight the music, CIAM's shorts films are entities unto themselves; living a symbiotic relationship with the music, where each may thrive on its own in terms of art, though combined achieve greater dimension and depth. It's a heady concept born from the imagination of Shapiro.
Every song will be matched with a cinematic representation, the first being "Here I Am", which may be viewed now at https://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NbzXCk28Mbs.
"Here I Am" has already been the most viewed video of the day at YouTube in the UK and Japan, among other honors.
