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"One of the best Records I’ve heard this year!"" – AMERICANA HIGHWAYS (UK)
“An experience beyond the ordinary. The combination of folk music, rock, Americana – and that raw, explosive quality – creates something that sounds both unique and very much like the kind of tunes that hardly anyone else can produce. it's a bit different, and sometimes it carries a touch of melancholy, Nevertheless, it's excellent and, as mentioned, it stands out!! BERLIN CALLING (SWEDEN) - EDITOR PICK OF THE WEEK
“An artist who continues to grow and expand his vision. Worth your time! Strong production and superb musicianship.” LONESOME HIGHWAY (Ireland)
“8 out of 10” WHISPERIN’N’HOLLERIN’ (UK)
“I loved BEAT THE NIGHT, TO THE LIGHT turns it up and brings an E Street Band warmth and breadth to Abbiati’s music.” FATEA (UK)
“This album alternates between bittersweet emotionally charged retrospective moments and rougher rock, consistently delivered with infectious intensity.” WRITTEN IN MUSIC (BELGIUM)
“A nice mixture of indie, college rock, singer/songwriter, americana, melodic pop/rock, heartland rock and everything in between. many tunes that could easily become radio hits. 8/10” STRUTTERZINE (HOLLAND)
“Edward Abbiati, makes a strong impression on his second solo album.. successfully bringing together various influences that, in reality, are not so far apart: Delightful power pop, from punk to pub rock, a blend of Stones and Kinks, Hendirix, Replacements, Marah and Springsteen it even briefy revives the paisley underground.” – ALT COUNTRY (Holland)
First "proper" Solo record. Co Produced by Edward Abbiati, Mike Brenner and Chris Peet.
Featuring many friends from all previous recordings: Mike "Slo Mo" Brenner, Gnola, Stiv Cantarelli, Joey Huffman, Antonio Rigo Righetti, Michele Gazich, Simona Colonna, Jimmy Ragazzon and many more
“Somewhere between Steve Earle and the Replacements. Home made, self-produced, independent and free from the trappings of the record industry, because certain emotions should be hanled with care, depth and attention, rare things.” Marco Denti — Highway Italy“Beat the Night is a most private and unfiltered album. The bittersweet sound reminds me of Richmond Fontaine's Willy Vlautin or Jay Farrar (Son Volt). First Choice record!” - Fabio Cerbone Rootshighway (Italy)
“Beat the night fluctuates between the lights and darkness of life, looking at new horizons. To be listened! Recommended Album!” - Mauro Zambellini Buscadero (Italy)
“An extremely profound album. emotionally upsetting and dangerously intense” - Sara Bao Bao Blog
“An Intense and deep album filled with ballads of rare strength ” - Paolo Vites Il Sussidiario
“A strong record that should be read as well listened to. A point of arrival as well as a new departure.” - Fabio Baietti Mescalina (Italy)
“The best album of his career” - Gianni Zuretti Mescalina, Buscadero
Joint Effort by Edward Abbiati and Stiv Cantarelli who produced this garage, punk, rock, blues NO-FI album.
Featuring Joe Barreca on Bass and Antonio Perugini and special Guests Mike "Slo Mo Brenner on Lap Steel, Richard Hunter on Harmonica and Chris Cacavas on Keys.
MC5 Meet Wilco! 7/10 - Vive Le Rock (UK)
"The album is a raw and raucous...simultaneously the antidote to Music City’s slick showmanship and to peacock-poseur art-punk. It’s muthaflippin’ brilliant. It’s Ennio Morricone if he had grown up playing in The Gun Club, it’s Johnny Thunders in Neil Young’s plaid shirt, or perhaps the other way around, it’s mutated blues that has crawled from the swamp and taken on human form." - Dancing About Architecture (UK)
A magnificent set of scuzzy rock songs which owe as much to Husker Du, Gun Club and The Stooges as they do to Neil Young and Crazy Horse…a grand holy mess! - Blabber 'n' Smoke (UK)
"A gorgeous little album. There is a very lo-fi, garage vibe to ‘Beautiful…’ A vibrant yet pathos-laden celebration of the darker side of the rock ‘n’ roll canon. An album that truly lives up to its title: beautiful, dark, bluesy, punky all in equal measure…you definitely need to check out this little gem before it passes you by." Uber Rock (UK)
"Screeching punk in places, but with enough country to keep its roots in Americana... Like it has been beaten just one too many times to care anymore... This is rock n roll, but it’s a mutated form. There is something beautiful in the ugliness, though." - 9 out of 10 - Maximum Volume Music (UK)
"It is at the wild end of the spectrum – more Stooges than Sweet Nashville…There is an air of 70s Stonesy looseness and sonic abandon to the songs. Impressively raw in these times of polished product and there is much to admire - Americana UK
There are elements of Americana, of Blues, of Punk and of a something that approaches Iggy & The Stooges. It took a few listens for my ears to find the different paths and neural interconnects that make it all work but, like the old 3D Posters, listening long enough exposed the layers and showed me exactly what the music is. And it really is something a bit special. **** - Music News (UK)
Recorded in a barn in Pavia- 10 Co-Writes by Edward Abbiati and Chris Cacavas recorded with super group containing: Winston Watson (Bob Dylan) on drums and Mike "Slo Mo" Brenner (Magnolia Electric Co., Marah) on Lap Steel and Bass
It will blow your mind! Little Light House (USA)
A Work of Genius! Unlikely to hear a better album this year -R2 Magazine (UK)
Cracking album and somewhat the meeting of two (plus two!) of the most interesting characters in Americana Music today. Very highly recommended - Blabber'n'Smoke (UK)
An album like very few today. Recommneded CD of the month - Buscadero (Italy)
I just want to play it again and again! 8/10 - Whisperin & Hollerin' (UK)
A very strong collection of songs with echoes of Exile on Main Street and its shambolic beauty. The variety in dynamics is impressive. The Marvelous Meeting of two Kindred Spirits - Americana UK
This album is beautiful. A killer shot that brings it all back home.A home where Rock'n'Roll lived for years before being contaminated. It posseses the essence and urgency of Rock Music, frill free folk and intriguing beauty. - Mescalina (Italy)
Magic. Night Visions, Jump Blues of the 50s, folk ballads, early rockabilly when Rock'n'Roll still had to be imagined. Beautiful songs, voices and sounds...offered as vision, as hope, as hearts that bleed - Paolo Vites
An Album of surprising beauty - EXTRA Magazine
A real, continuous flow of beautiful songs. A candidate to becoming one of the best releases of the year. A visionary rush, desolate, scorching. - Enzo Curelli
Recorded in a barn in 5 days with Winston Watson (Bob Dylan, Giant Sand, Warren Zevon), Mike "Slo Mo" Brenner (Magnolia Electric Co., Marah) this is a Garage Folk album! Songs Written by Green on Red founding member and Read more
Recorded in a barn in 5 days with Winston Watson (Bob Dylan, Giant Sand, Warren Zevon), Mike "Slo Mo" Brenner (Magnolia Electric Co., Marah) this is a Garage Folk album! Songs Written by Green on Red founding member and Lowlands frontman.
Collaborations can cross oceans and cover land masses, from East Coast to West, but when former Green On Red keyboardist Chris Cacavas upped sticks for southern Germany, he hardly reckoned to find a writing partner so close at hand. A straight drive down through Switzerland and over the Alps to Italy brought him to the door of Edward Abbiati of the country’s premier roots band Lowlands.
Six months (and several ‘phonecalls, emails and ‘plane tickets) later, the pair are now ready to present the fruits of their labour in the form of Me And The Devil. The songs were recorded in 5 days in an old barn outside the northern Italian town of Pavia, and features the collective talents of Cacavas and Abbiati, plus Bob Dylan, Giant Sand and Warren Zevon drummer Winston Watson and Marah and Jason Molina alumnus Mike ‘Slo Mo’ Brenner.
Three of the four have known each other for a while, Cacavas and Brenner both guesting on Lowlands’ 2008 debut The Last Call. Keeping in touch, Cacavas and Abbiati had long talked about a joint project between the two of them and the seeds were finally sown last year when Cacavas accepted an invitation from his Italian friend to travel down from his home in Germany to write songs around a kitchen table in Pavia.
Philly slide guru Brenner was a shoo-in, being practically an honorary member of Lowlands, while Watson was recruited to the drumstool by Cacavas. Following a period of economic and logistical headscratching, the quartet (plus recording engineer Rainer Lolk) finally convened in Italy in August to begin work. Two days later they already had ten tracks in varying degrees of readiness. Another two days and they were ready to be mixed by Chris Peet, a Newport based engineer who has been working with Lowlands recently (including their forthcoming album “Love Etc...”).
“I am as proud and satisfied of what we have achieved with this record as I am with anything else I have ever achieved and recorded in my career” says Chris Cacavas.
“We wrote the songs in two short two day sessions,” explains Abbiati. “A blank page and no preconceptions. The songs seemed to flow out of us very quickly, adjusting chord changes and lyrics till we got the song to where we were both happy with them, we’d record a quick demo on the phone and move on to the next one.”
“The ‘Studio In A Barn’ was something I had never experienced before,” adds Cacavas. “In spite of the cluttered, dusty and at times very hot room, the band played the hell out of the songs and the session moved along effortlessly. I knew Ed and I had ‘stacked the deck’ with Winston and Mike, but in the end I was blown away by their incredible playing and unexpected musical ideas. That we achieved so much with so little effort is a gift.”
(Gerry Ranson - www.mulefreedom.com)
9/10 - Americana UK **** - Maverick Magazine (UK) 7,5 Rootshighway
Top 10 Seller at Miles of Music (USA)
Top 50 Roots Music Report
"Crazy, Beautiful Album" - Chris Cacavas (Green on Red, Giant Sand & Dream Syndicate)
Featuring: Mike "Slo Mo" Brenner, Nick Barker (Australia), James Cruickshank (Cruel Sea) & Harmonica Maestro Richard Hunter.
Includes: That's Me On The Page, In The End, Ghosts in this Town & In Between
Driving,guitar-led alt-country, albeit with a harder edge than straight Americana. Songs about pubs, cemeteries, ghosts,highways, sunsets, dark nights, deserts, blood, hope, drinking, remembering, traveling, giving up, Read more
Driving,guitar-led alt-country, albeit with a harder edge than straight Americana. Songs about pubs, cemeteries, ghosts,highways, sunsets, dark nights, deserts, blood, hope, drinking, remembering, traveling, giving up, starting again. "The Last Call" from Lowlands has songs about pubs and cemeteries, ghosts, highways, sunsets, dark nights, skies, deserts, cities at night, blood, hope, pints, bleeding, screaming, laughing, crying, drinking, throwing up, hoping, remembering, travelling, giving up, starting again ... tales of lost love and redemption.
Lost somewhere in between the Classic (Dylan, Pogues, Waits), and the more roots inclined side of indie rock (from Steve Wynn and Westerberg to Whiskeytown) from Pavia, Italy, led by British born singer songwriter, Edward Abbiati, Lowlands emerge with a unique sound and a distinctly personal take on Roots Rock.
With Special guest appearances from Richard Hunter - One of the world's most prominent and innovative harmonica Virtuoso (whose many credits include 2 solo albums and the soundtrack to John Sayles' "City of Hope") who states 'Some of my best stuff on record', Mike 'Slo Mo' Brenner (Marah, Magnolia Electric Co., John Train) on Lap & Pedal Steel, James Cruickshank (Cruel Sea) piano and the magnificent Chris Cacavas (Green On Red, Steve Wynn) on Keyboards on "Friday Night". Australian Rocker Nick Barker (Reptiles) duets with Ed Abbiati on the rousing rocker "In The End".
Since it’s release in April 2008, every single track off “The Last Call†has been broadcast in various radio stations (AM, FM and Internet radios) everywhere from San Francisco to Brisbane.
Lowlands have been featured on some of the most prominent syndicated alt.country, Americana, roots music shows like “Miller’s Timeâ€, “AmericanaOK†& “The Comfort Zoneâ€.
Mixes by Edan Cohen, David Henry, Rod Picott and Chris Cacavas. Mastered in Nashville by Jim Demain & Alex McCollough
Current Line Up: Edward Abbiati: Voice & Guitars, Simone Fratti: Bass, Phil Ariens: Drums, Chiara Giacobbe: Violin, Rob Diana & Francesco Verrastro: Guitars, Ste Brandinali: Piano & whenever possible Stefano Speroni: acoustic guitar
PRESS:
“Edward Abbiati shows that he is a songwriter of exceptional talent. ‘The Last Call’ is an extremely good debut album by a band who on this showing could have a very bright future†Steve Wills -Americana Uk (UK)
“Drawing on the sublime aspects of Nebraska-era Springsteen, and the country-dabblings of Green On Red…It’s a Cracker!†Jeff Weiss – Miles of Music (USA)
“One of the best Roots Albums of 2008 - 7,5/10†Fabio Cerbone – Rootshighway.it / Euro Americana Chart
“An album of unusual bravery†Ben Lazar – 10th Avenue Music (USA)
“Recorded with real passion and commitment†Tom Fahey – AmericanaOK (UK)
“Driving, guitar-led alt-country, albeit with a harder edge than straight Americana (…)sparsely desolate (...) minor masterpieces in small-town atmospherics (...) emotionally-convincing (…) As a debut offering, ‘The Last Call’ has a lot to commend it†David Kidman – NetRhythms (UK)
“Lowlands have a strong personality and ‘The Last Call’ is an enjoyable listen throughout. Despite running over 50 minutes, there is never a dull moment - *** †Paolo Carù – Buscadero Magazine (Italy)
“Don't lisen to this album if you are depressed - **** †Maverick Magazine (UK)
“Crazy beautiful record!†Chris Cacavas (Green On Red)
***** - Music Review Unsigned (UK)
"Stomping the same ground as Soul Asylum, Green on Red, Uncle Tupelo and Marah" - Rootsvile (Belgium)
Includes: Lullaby, Walking Down The Street & a Cover of the Gourds tune Lowlands