I’ve come across numerous artists who blend rock with electronic elements, synths, and various other styles. Additionally, some are recognised for their contributions to art rock and space rock. However, in today’s music scene, I consider Andrea Pizzo and his band, The Purple Mice, to be my top pick. Let’s dive deeper into their latest EP, We Are All Bots.

First of all, the track begins with an Alternative Rock intro, some brightly toned overdriven guitars playing a chord progression with an awesome strumming pattern that’s moving and emotional. The first encounter we have with vocals is during that part, and they are soft and dreamy to fit with the alternative and 2000s-inspired movement that’s playing.

To everybody’s surprise, the song’s bassline and additional piano melodies serve as a breakdown and transition the chord progression that we were just listening to into a much heavier piece with Black Metal-style tremolo picking and a shoegaze atmosphere. The change may sound drastic, but when you listen to the actual track and see how it all emotionally connects, you will find it to be a super-coherent and awesome piece. 

For an additional five minutes that tremolo picking continues and is intercepted by some additional melodies and then some ominous vocals in the middle…it’s all the post-rock goodness that I never knew I needed in my life. The synths and the crisp production mixing all those elements together were the cherry on top for me. 

I love just about every aspect this track has, and I believe you will do too. If you want a brilliant Post Rock/Shoegaze number that’s not stale or repetitive and has a lot of changes and transitions to keep you hooked, then this is the track for you.

 

Ada opens with a floating dreamy melody that promises a bright colorful tune with an open sound. Its smooth flow slowly carries the listener to a powerful expressive verse, with a swaying groove and well-arranged, and layered instrumentation in a subtly dynamic structure. It has a soft laid-back groove that easily takes over your senses, and will get you unintentionally moving with its enjoyable engaging bass lines, spacey guitar melodies, chilling percussions, and melodic poppy synths and keyboards. Ada has a fluid progression that kept pushing Andrea Pizzo and The Purple Mice‘s sound into a bigger, more open one as they lay note after note and melody after melody, with a diverse vocal delivery that shook its dynamics and twisted its mood. 

Ada is a chill uplifting tune that can give you a break from all the negativity that surrounds us nowadays, it has an easy-going flow with a big sound and dynamic structure that keeps on moving and evolving from the first to the last note. Keep it up Andrea Pizzo and The Purple Mice, cheers!

Check out all Andrea Pizzo and The Purple Mice previous features here.

⦁ And again, I salute you for original space rock vibes! First, I’d like to know is this like a solo project aside from The Purple Mice band?

Hello Mena, the Potatoes on Mars project was born as a solo, but the contribution of each artist was so decisive that in the end we decided to sign ourselves as Andrea Pizzo And The Purple Mice or even The Purple Mice.
Andrea Pizzo And The Purple Mice was born with this record, with my desire to play and sing my music, with Raffaella’s desire to write lyrics, draw and make videos, with Riccardo’s desire to compose, with the essential contribution of Roberto to compose, arrange, produce and play, finally with the amused participation of the little Maria Elena.

⦁ “Among the Stars” is your call for humanity who have conquered and will conquer space. May I know what’s the point exactly?

The track stems from our reflection on the new “space race”, that of Musk, Bezos, Brenson and many others. The album is about science fiction, but we also wanted to describe the era we are living in and the immediate future.
Months ago Raffaella was reading a book by Harari “Sapiens: a brief history of humankind”, about the history of our species from its evolutionary roots to the age of capitalism and genetic engineering and I was reflecting a lot too, especially on the transition from human to cyborg, on the fact that mankind must become something else in order to explore space. The song describes these two moments: the space race that began in the 1950s, with the launch of Sputnik, and the near future.

REVIEW – Among the Stars by Andrea Pizzo

⦁ The “Among The Stars” animated photos video is cool, still, aren’t you gonna film a music video soon?

For the moment we are very happy with this animated format that gives Raffaella the opportunity to try her hand at her art, but never say never, we may also experience with other formats in the future.

⦁ “Jupiter and the Galilean Moons” is amazingly stunning, still, weren’t you afraid that an almost 10-minutes song wouldn’t fit the trendy digital music industry nowadays?

Thank you very much, I’m glad you liked it. From the beginning, we told ourselves to do what we wanted to do, to have a lot of fun on a musical level, to try to do original things.
I don’t expect the streams that our other rock songs had, but this song is getting a lot of warm feedbacks, especially from old 70s prog nostalgics like us 🙂
“Jupiter and the Galilean Moons” represents a tribute to the scientist Galileo Galilei, to his discovery of the “Medicean Stars” that marked a very important moment in the history of astronomy. At the beginning we can hear Raffaella’s voice reading the Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo, then we tried to imagine the past and future explorations of the jovian system, which is one of the most interesting in the solar system: Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede have two vast underground oceans and could host life forms.

⦁ Was the orchestration planned to be the main core of the track?

From a musical point of view we tried to imagine a journey towards Jupiter and the Medicean Moons, we divided the suite into 5 parts: the first should have been an introduction with Raffaella reading Galilei, but Roberto transformed it into a wonderful movement with a Hollywood science fiction breath; then there are two pieces with my long vocalizations that alternate tenor and countertenor parts, in the part of Jupiter’s moon Io there are high insisted notes (“picchettato notes”) in correspondence with the volcanic eruptions of the satellite; in the third movement we find more aquatic elements and X-files sounds to describe the ocean of Europa; in the fourth movement I play the steel tongue drum trying to describe the path of some bubbles that rise in the ocean of Ganymede, finally there are the Kalimba and the strings to describe the placid tranquility of Callisto, a place where nothing ever moves.

⦁ Many singles this year, are you planning to release an album soon?

Yes, we plan to release our first album by Christmas, we will probably also make physical copies, not only digital. “Potatoes On Mars” will soon see the light!

⦁ Finally, thank you for the chat and tell us more about your upcoming plans.

We have a lot of fun in the studio activity, we have already recorded the vocals of several new songs of a new album that will take up some concepts already present in our songs like “Among the Stars”. It will be a record on the evolution of humankind starting from the first industrial revolution, a journey that we want to dedicate to some legendary characters who have marked our age: Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and many others.

Thank you for your time,
Thanks to you Mena for the chat!

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I loved the funky space-rock atmosphere really of the track! The strength of this song here isn’t the music only, but also its marvellous theme. Let’s start with the music, I believe this track will satisfy funk and progressive rock fans alike. When you check it out you will feel it’s divided into two parts, the first is so energetic and funky, and the rest is very harmonic, melodic, and progressive as well. The smart move here is when Andrea recorded different voices aligned together to create a stunning transition of humanity or as Andrea stated “The song is dedicated to the women, men and robots who have conquered and will conquer space.”

By the way, I recommend you check their single “Jupiter and the Galilean Moons” as well, it’s remarkable as ‘Among the Stars’ for sure, but what I love here is the well-orchestrated, performed, and arranged along with the space-rock atmosphere. “Roberto’s magnificent arrangement opens with Raffaella reading Galileo Galilei’s Sidereus Nuncius, a treatise from 1610 which marked the abandonment of the Ptolemaic theory, in which Galilei announced the discovery of the Medici satellites (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto). This part is dedicated to Galileo and the planet Jupiter. The second movement is dedicated to the turbulent moon Io and sees Andrea vocalizing accompanied by Riccardo’s piano and Roberto’s arrangement. The third describes the flight of the Voyager probes (and the others that followed) to discover Europa, one of the most interesting celestial bodies in the solar system, characterized by a gigantic underground ocean. Andrea here is accompanied by Roberto’s guitars and keyboards. The fourth movement is dedicated to the moon Ganymede and sees Andrea playing the Tongue Drum Handpan and Roberto the keyboards. The suite closes with the melancholy Callisto with Andrea playing the kalimba accompanied by the strings arranged by Roberto.” – Andrea Pizzo explained.