CANAAN, consisting of Mauro (guitars, keyboards, samples and vocals), Luca (drums and keyboards) and Matteo (guitars and bass) was formed back in January 1996 after the split of RAS ALGETHI, probably the one and only doom band ever born out of Italy. The new project's musical approach was directed towards a contamination of dark, wave and experimental music, something nobody tried before. The extremely important role played by samplers and keyboards, mixed and intertwined with "traditional" instruments (guitars, drums and bass) led CANAAN to new frontiers, disclosing a personal and peculiar way of composing music.
The band's first album BLUE FIRE (recorded in various locations and in various periods between 1995/1996 and released in November 1996 through EIBON RECORDS) came out as a pretty innovative canvas, destined mainly to open-minded listeners. Without any kind of promotion, this cd received extremely positive reviews from virtually everywhere, and reached a satisfying worldwide spreading, selling an almost incredible 5.000 copies. In May 1997, a bass player (Anthony Duman) was recruited in order to add depth to the band's rhythmic section and strengthen the songs' arrangements. With this new line-up CANAAN started (in May 1998) the recordings of the second full-lenght album (always under the wise supervision of sound engineer Paolo Sannazzaro), at Avatara studio in Milan. After two months of recordings, the new double cd "Walk into my open womb: the apathy manifesto" was brought to completion; released by EIBON RECORDS in September 1998, this album progressed further into the fields open with Blue Fire, and turned out as a pretty successful release as well. After a long break, in mid 1999 the band started new rehearsals and in March 2000, having signed a contract with the german label Prophecy Productions, CANAAN entered the studio again to record the third cd "Brand new Babylon", always at Avatara Studios but this time with a new sound engineer - Max Moioli. "Brand new Babylon" was released in July 2000, in two different versions:a luxurious leather bookpack with 6 cards and booklet and a regular digisleeve + booklet. Once again the album was welcomed warmly - very warmly to say the truth. After a 6-months break, the band was ready to rehearse again, but had to replace on bass Tony who quit the band for lack of time. Canaan would collectively like to thank him and to wish him all the best. The newly acquired bass player Nico joined in February 2001 and Canaan started composing new material for the fourth album. After a few more weeks spent with this 4-members line-up, Andrea joined on drums, Luca focused exclusively ..boards and Mauro switched to second guitar. These changes granted extreme flexibility and sensible overall improvement. With this new lineup Canaan started the recordings of a new album in august 2002 again at Sound Factory studio (and again with Max Moioli as engineer), and completed them in mid September. The following weeks were dedicated to post-production and graphic design; the final result was the album "A calling to weakness", that rapidly turned into the band's best seller (more than 6.000 copies so far) and according to many listeners their best album to date too.
2003 was a quiet year for the band, though during the last part of the year, Mauro and Nico set up a small recording-studio, with the perspective of a new album, whose recordings begun in early 2004. The recording process this time was pretty unusual. Rather than rehearsing the tracks then going into the studio to record them in a rush, the band took a different way, never rehearsing with the complete line-up. Basic songs structures were improvised with reduced line-ups (usually drums, 1 guitar and bass or keyboards) during a few sessions in February/March 2004. these improvisations were recorded, then completely de-constructed and re-assembled in various periods, with each member acting separately on them, adding and changing things over time. This process took a long time (actually several months), and led to a monster-amount of "puzzle-like" sound fragments. In April and May 2005 Mauro and Nico took all of these fragments, put them together and shaped them into the form of "songs". Vocals were then recorded (including the two vocal lines sung by COLLOQUIO's vocalist Gianni, taken at the band's own recording studio in June 2005), and final arrangements were done.The songs were then magistrally mixed by Alessio Camagni at Noise Factory Studio (a top-notch recording studio with extremely powerful outboard modules and a warm and rich analog mixer) during 8 days in July 2005. Once again, mastering and graphic design completed the process, and led to "The unsaid words", undoubtably the band's strongest release, in terms of production and inspiration.
The band’s sonic trademark of despair and desolation is deeper and more powerful than ever before...... If “A calling to weakness” was a chant of pain and solitude, “The unsaid words” is a soundtrack of knowledge. Of the knowledge of an unavoidable physical and psychological withering. These 71 minutes will bring you back again to CANAAN’s universe and its 3 only coordinates: NOTHING. NEVER. NOWHERE.
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