Current lineup: Paolo Iocca, Marcella Riccardi, Mattia Boscolo & Marcello Petruzzi.
They play: vocals, bass, guitars, banjo, mandolin, keyboards, drums, drum machine, steel drum, percussions, electronics.
Influences
Yeasayer, Liquid Liquid, ESG, Spacemen 3, Father Murphy, My Bloody Valentine, The Black Angels, Loftus, Orso, Oneida, Meredith Monk, Beach Boys, Califone, Dirty Projectors, Konono, King Tubby, This Heat, Animal Collective, Mahjongg, High Places, Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Rhys Chatham, and of course a whole stack of records we forgot to mention.
Sounds Like
The Beach Boys going to church where the church becomes a mutant disco. Monkeys and birds in the Amazon rainforest. An alien lost in space. Staple singers on acid. Dervishes dancing to a Red Red Meat song. Dark side of post folk. Folk side of post-punk.
BLAKE/E/E/E "The Thing's Hollow"
Acoustic radio session @ Maps (RCDC)
Oct 30th, 2008
BLAKE/E/E/E "Narrow Zone"
Acoustic radio session @ Maps (RCDC)
Oct 30th, 2008
BLAKE/E/E/E "Saint Lawrence Tears"
Acoustic radio session @ Maps (RCDC)
Oct 30th, 2008
BLAKE/E/E/E "Saint Lawrence Tears"
Live @ Oetinger Villa, Darmstadt Germany
March 17, 2009
BLAKE/E/E/E "New Millennium's Lack Of Self Explanation"
Acoustic Live @ Mini Bios, Cross Linx Festival, Eindhoven Netherlands
March 20, 2009
Blake/e/e/e (pronounced "Blake-ie") is a Bologna based music project. The band currently consists of Paolo Iocca, Marcella Riccardi and Mattia Boscolo. The lineup sees other members switching roles: Davy DeLaFuente, Oren Wagner, Egle Sommacal, Bruno Germano and Marcello Petruzzi.
Marcella Riccardi and Paolo Iocca met in 2002 and started recording together under the moniker of Franklin Delano, releasing 3 albums and touring both the States and Europe a number of times. In 2007 they decided to disband and start Blake/e/e/e to further develop their work with a freer approach.
Although the band is often classified as psych folk/dub/post punk, it is hard to define Blake/e/e/e sound as they often experiment with diverse styles and ideas. Their debut album, Border Radio (Unhip Records, 2008), has been defined as "Beach Boys go to church where the church becomes a mutant disco".
The band has recently toured the States and Europe and is currently working on new material.
Quotes:
"Blake/e/e/e take the listener on a vivid and diverse musical journey. [...] Through fields of indie, folk and psychedelic rock, Blake/e/e/e delve into the heart and soul of experimental songcraft. Afterall, this is not radio, it’s Border Radio."
Will Miller - Sound As Language
"This disc may be the soundtrack to a bizarre hallucination, and it is truly for a select audience."
Rich Quinlan - Jersey Beat
"They are very free spirited and almost impossible to classify, thus making them intriguing and interesting to listen to. Some would say it’s folk, but only as much as the Pacific is “some water”."
Kevin LeDoux - Northwest Music Blog
"Half-Italian/half-American Chicago-based quartet Blake/e/e/e isn’t only unique in its moniker and makeup. On latest album Border Radio (FreeFolk), they flip through dub, folk, punk, and psych channels with celestially unnerving results."
Audra Schroeder - The Austin Chronicle
"They know that they are of a genre, freak folk as its dubbed. Their label is called, apropos, freefolk. But more than copping the emergent practices of this genre, they are contributing to its definition."
Art Of The Mix
"You see it is very difficult to pin down the blackguards, one minute they are introspective and thoughtful the next they are bursting out the traps like a highly-strung greyhound. Evidence of the dichotomy is particularly evident on the schizophrenic ‘New Millennium's Lack Of Self Explanation’. Now here’s a tune to wet your experimental hoarding receptors, a song that could only exist in a post Arcade Fire meltdown."
MP3 Hugger
"Listening to Blake/e/e/e's Border Radio (Free Folk), one is reminded of that cliche about Chicago's weather: If you don't like it, wait five minutes."
Illinois Entertainer
"Like so many stellar LPs before it, the Chicago group's "Border Radio" seems to improve with repeat listens. Chalk it up to eclecticism: this is a complex sort of indie-rock--fuzzy and textural one moment, folkish and fumbly the next--and it resists cop-out hooks like they're the plague."
CNET Asia
