“Three years ago we had the idea of Stay Here My Friends: we wanted to compose an album about friendship as a common thread between past and future, it develops the difficulties of the man with the shocks of life and how much friendship is necessary for these obstacles to be overcome. Certainly our music comes from this melting pot: the classic prog associated with metal and alternative rock, for example”.
Two key words concept albums and progressive rock are the core of Wish, a Roman-Perugian quartet active since 1992 who releases the long-awaited debut album Stay Here My Friends. A concept centered on friendship as a pivotal theme, a modern progressive-rock which many contemporary references.
Stay Here My Friends faces the theme of friendship as a bulwark, the difficulties of each individual in affective or religious choices, in recognizing a role in the world. And as often happens when an album tells a story, the music is progressive. Wish is close to the idea of new prog but with a personal cut: “Many people are telling us that we have a recognizable, identifiable, original style. We are really very pleased. First of all the texts, our way of seeing things and making music that we want to share are important for us, then we look for imagination in composition and a certain originality. We don’t like unbridled technicality, we prefer perhaps a passage technically simple but impactful, that is not obvious or an end in itself”.
Wish is born in 1992, in 1997 the quartet is getting closer to progressive and after having founded its own recording studio BbBox, then works on the album that will become Stay Here My Friends. Six tracks of modern prog, sung in English, full of influences and references of the four members: “We all grew up with Pink Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, besides it is fundamental to mention the different influences of each of us: Yes, Supertramp, ELP, Marillion, PFM, Banco, Orme, Area, but also Led Zeppelin, Clash, Police, CSI, Afterhours and the most flourishing Italian singer-songwriter of ideas like De Andrè, Fossati. There is still so much good music in around and even a lot in the 2000s: we all appreciate the works of Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree and Steven Wilson’s masterpieces, Opeth, Tool, Big Big Train. We like too much also Radiohead and the first Arcade Fire. We like italians ORK and Winstons. Some of the best works of the last two years are between different kinds of music: Sons of Kemet, Regal Worm, I Hate My Village, Childish Gambino, Flying Colors”.
Stay Here My Friends is a landmark in the new Italian progressive, it embraces past and present and conceives new graphic and visual implications: “We wanted to create a work in a more complete sense, we wanted something beautiful, concrete, consistent, so it was natural to think of a quality packaging, but above all to involve other forms in the project art: painting, photography, video making. The project had to convey the basic IDEA, which was about integration and completion with respect to music and lyrics “.
Track list:
1. Like a Yes
2. Deep Wish
3. Dancing With Myself
4. Scrambled Eggs
5. Church
6. Stay Here My Friends
Line-up:
Piergiorgio Franceschelli – vocals
Giorgio Simonetti – guitars, vocals
Salvatore Patti – keyboards
Massimo Mercurio – drums
Links:
https://www.wish-music.com/
https://wish-music.bandcamp.com/releases
