Biography
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Members
- Hugo Race
- Marta Collica
SEPIATONE create a timeless pop music that merges sonic textures of the 60s and 70s eurosound with a contemporary cutting-edge feel. In "Dark Summer", Sepiatone have fused genres and timezones, bittersweet summer feelings and hallucinatory moodswings, juxtaposing nostalgia with the now in a fashion both totally unique and truly modern. The soulful, seductive Sepiatonic sound is the fruit of collaboration between Italian singer and songwriter MARTA COLLICA and Australian artist HUGO RACE.
Sepiatone’s live shows have been blowing away European audiences with the duo’s soulful minimalism and psychedelic undertow. Marta and Hugo’s vocals compliment the sonic mesh of layered guitar and piano, hinting at the expanded arrangements of their recent studio recordings where gurus of orchestration such as Phil Spector and Billy Strange are subtly referred to in the context of the duo’s original combination of soul and songwriting.
Marta began singing with the Australian-Italian group Micevice (1997), and besides playing with Hugo’s True Spirit, is a key member of the new solo project of UK producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Eels). The John Parish band recently released the group’s debut “Once Upon a Little Time” through Thrill Jockey (USA). Marta plays piano, rhodes, hammond, synth, she likes to explore a wide range of electronic and analogic sounds; her original style combines minimal arrangements and a unique kind of playing, stumbling unpredictably between delicacy and distortion.
Critics used comparison as such Francoise Hardy and Julie Cruise to describe the unmistakable character of her voice which with its "indifferent intensity", evokes the slightly disquieting atmosphere of a road movie in slow motion. She also appeared on recordings by the Dining Rooms, Pola, and on recordings of Italian singer songwriter Cesare Basile. Marta founded the European “supergroup” Songs With Other Strangers in 2004, a creative encounter between a diverse group of international songwriters and musicians.
She finished her first solo album, “Pretty and Unsafe”which came out in february 2007 and received a warm and enthusiastic feedback from audiences and press.
Hugo is a prolific and visionary performer, songwriter and producer. First introduced to the international stage as a teenage founding member of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, he left that band to found the seminal Australian garage-blues cult band The Wreckery, following the demise of which he moved to Europe in 1988 with his solo project Hugo Race + True Spirit. Hugo is perceived as a cult figure, unpredictable, brilliant and inspired – in the last 3 years he released a stream of albums: the urban dreamscapes of the True Spirit’s “Goldstreet Sessions”; the elegant trip-hop of Sepiatone’s “Dark Summer”; the ambient noise psychedelia of Transfargo’s “Mil Transit”; the Italian montage of “Merola Matrix”; the raw cosmic blues of the True Spirit’s “Ambuscado”; the live garage rock of the Spirit’s “Live in Monaco”; and in February 2006, “Taoist Priests”. In the last months he's been working live and in studio together with Chris Brockaw and Chris Eckman to their project Dirt Music, their first cd has been released last december in Europe through Glitterhouse
SEPIATONE released their debut production "In Sepiatone" for the influential Italian downbeat label Milano 2000 in 2001 to an overwhelmingly appreciative critical response. They also began co-writing and recording tracks with the Milan based dj project THE DINING ROOMS, released through the US dance-orientated label Guidance Records. On tour in Australia in 2002, Sepiatone engaged instrumental legends SILVER RAY (BrokenHorse Records, UK) as a backing band for the live shows.
In 2004 Sepiatone finished mixing their forthcoming Dark Summer in Melbourne with Mick Harvey (from the Bad Seeds), Aidan Ferguson and Cal Orr.
In 2005 Sepiatone signed with Mushroom Music in Australia and with Italian label Desvelos for Europe.
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