Porcelain Raft

All Music Guide:

Italian-born singer/songwriter Mauro Remiddi makes dreamy indie pop with his solo project Porcelain Raft. Prior to playing with Onyee Lo in the duo Three Blind Mice, and in their full five-piece band Sunny Day Sets Fire, the bedroom shoegaze artist got his start composing the soundtrack for the short film La Matta dei Fiori in 1997. The next decade was spent performing in his two groups, as well as collaborating with video artist Ra Di Martino and Filthy Dukes for their 2008 album Nonsense in the Dark. The first Porcelain Raft EP, Gone Blind, was released on Acephale in 2010. Remiddi released his debut full-length, Strange Weekend, on Secretly Canadian in January of 2012, preceding a European tour with M83 and a North American tour with Smith Westerns.

Wikipedia:

Porcelain Raft is Mauro Remiddi's main music project. The New York-based musician began his long, prolific career in Italy, the place of his birth, playing for small, local projects. After composing the original soundtrack for the 1997 Italian short-film La Matta dei Fiori, and collaborating and touring the world with various bands, Remiddi launched his first solo recording project under the moniker Porcelain Raft, and in 2010 released his first solo EP Gone Blind with Acéphale Records. In 2011 he signed with Secretly Canadian and released the debut Porcelain Raft full-length record Strange Weekend which peaked at #33 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers Albums chart. Permanent Signal, Porcelain Raft's sophomore album, is scheduled to come out on Secretly Canadian in August 2013.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

Maruro Remiddi[edit]

Remiddi reportedly began experimenting with music when he was ten years old, playing his grandmother's piano and making make-believe radio programs on a small tape-recorder. He began touring around Italy when he was 20, playing accordion with a klezmer trio. Although he held other jobs to support himself, sometimes doing sound engineering or playing piano in hotels, he continued to tour Europe, and when he was twenty-seven he moved to London. From there, he continued to work with other artists and to tour as the lead vocalist, 12-string guitarist, and sometimes-drummer of Sunny Day Sets Fire, a 5-piece rock band. In 2000, Remiddi spent three months in New York playing piano for an Off-Broadway show, and after spending 12 years in London, performing with rock bands and collaborating with visual artists, he traveled back to the city for the annual CMJ music conference, met his wife, and moved to Brooklyn two weeks later.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

Contents

2010 to present[edit]

In the first year and a half of working as Porcelain Raft, Remiddi self-released a handful of singles and EPs on Bandcamp, put out his first official EP with Acéphale, and began playing local venues as a solo artist. The live shows, for which only one other musician, Michael Wallace (drummer) joined him onstage, featured music from Strange Weekend. In 2011, The New York Times featured Porcelain Raft in a review, describing the sound of one show at the New York venue the Mercury Lounge as an updated form "of shoegaze pop, the spacier side of new wave, contemplative indie rock." In 2012, Porcelain Raft performed two exclusive live-sessions for MTV HIVE filmed a "Take Away Show" for La Blogoteque, and was featured on NBC NY's Non-stop Sound. Consequence of Sound included "Strange Weekend" in a list of 2012's most anticipated albums. The Guardian featured Porcelain Raft as "New Band of the Day" on September 27, 2010 and in November of the same year gave Remiddi another feature in the "First Sight" series. In January 2012, The Boston Globe included Porcelain Raft in their Arts section "annual roundup of artists to keep an ear out for in 2012."

Strange Weekend[edit]

Upon relocating to New York, Remiddi immediately began to record Strange Weekend, inspired by his new environment. He describes the record as "a snapshot of [himself] being in New York, in a basement.”

Tracklist

Critical reception[edit]

In February 2012, Pitchfork named “Unless You Speak From Your Heart” Best New Track. The A.V.Club wrote “Assembled in a Brooklyn basement, Porcelain Raft’s debut Strange Weekend has this DIY aesthetic, but tolerates no defects in presentation. Italy native Mauro Remiddi’s solo project is built on meticulously constructed and delicately polished dream-pop soundscapes, delivered with urgency and momentum.“

Permanent Signal[edit]

On June 19, 2013, Porcelain Raft announced their second record, Permanent Signal, would be released August 20, 2013. A month later, the first single, "The Way Out," was released as a self-directed visual stream by Mauro Remiddi.

Permanent Signal was recorded at the end of 2012 with all new equipment and help from Jonny Rogoff (Yuck) on drums, Darby Cicci (Antlers) on bass and Gaspar Claus (collaborator of Sufjan Stevens and The National) on cello. The title is meant to evoke a sense of loneliness through the symbolism of a phone-line without connection. Remiddi articulated feelings of disconnectedness when discussing the record and life on-tour. "In a way, growing up in Italy, then living for 12 years in London, and now two and a half years in New York, made me realize that I have some dear friends I rarely see," explains Remiddi. "I was touring almost non-stop for eight months and I started having these imaginary conversations in my head with people I wanted to communicate with, but for one reason or another it couldn't happen. This is where the album title came from: the idea of a signal that says the line is off."

Tracklist

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