Album Feature : Love to Bleed’s ‘Last of My Kind’
Love to Bleed is the musical banner founded and produced by songwriter, composer, and frontman, ‘Mauro Martins De Oliveira’. He fuses the ardent and passionate spirit of rock with the free sentiment and emotional depth of classical music to claim a niche that inspires him and his audience. ‘Last of My Kind’ is the band’s latest album. Each track is infused with an eclectic pulse, one that streamlines the artistic landscape of the album and proves the ingenious mind of Mauro. Listen Now!
What sparked the creation of this album and how did it guide you through the process of writing and making this LP?
Well as far as sparking an album, that didn’t happen. I’m almost always writing music, lyrics, poetry and the finished works (pop/rock) have till now just been released as they finish production, as singles. But singles are difficult to promote and statistically audiences prefer a larger release. So keeping that in mind last year I put together some of my recent works with a couple of previously released singles that really seemed to fit with the new ones and I wish had more attention (promotion). All that being said I didn’t know what to call it but in that phase of my year and inner self-work I was feeling a lot of solitude. Last Of My Kind juxtaposed my bigger hopes for humanity with the global chaos we all are witnessing, especially in the USA.
‘Quetzalcoatl Meets the See’ breaks out the collection with a theatrical orchestra of violins, underscored by feel-good guitars, celebratory percussive spirit, and anthemic pop. It grows like a Disney song, with a lavish sense of triumph, optimism, and buoyancy. ‘Open Your Eyes’ is an acoustic dalliance. With the contemplative context of soul, blues, and ethereal accents, it is reminiscent of John Mayer, Adele, and James Taylor.
The album sports an eclectic collection of tracks that span across genres. It has elements of neo-classicals, rock, pop, and even bluesy acoustics. How do each of this variety play into your original artistic vision for the album?
I’m a classic rock fan, the Beatles, Stones, the Who for example. and more of the progressive classics like Yes, Genesis. I think some typical song structure of that era and those genres is one of my first go-to’s when fiddling with a melody or even just a chord progression. So it’s natural to try a blues color to early experimentation and sometimes it just stays there, like Open Your Eyes. I’d like to think I broke away from a well worn sound, for example with SandMan, by adding an Arabian feel and scaled melody to a more contemporary chord progression and song structure. My song Winds, has only two chords so that requires a lot of effort via the melody and backing harmonies to keep the bars fresh sounding to the end. Scaling up the energy as well as the volume certainly was a big part of that. Genesis, or more specifically Peter Gabriel, comes to mind as where that may have become Ingrained in my experimentation.
‘Stand or Fall’ rocks out with 70s rebellion. Driven by the wariness of oppressive agendas of Uncle Sam, the rock song is full of a Pink Floyd and Queen charisma. Classic hard rock characteristics are presented with experimental solos and mercurial rhythms. ‘Sand Man’ is modern electronica, spreading with ideological themes and concepts. A dark sense of propaganda is dispersed in the air. Middle-eastern melodies and beats drum against the explorative vocal atmosphere. This motif reappears in ‘I Forgive You’. However, using ethereal folk accents and silky blues rock melodies, the track is more buoyant and uplifting.
Love to Bleed is the banner of songwriter, producer, and frontman, Mauro Martins De Oliveira with a prominent classical background. How do you think your classical training and composing molded you as an artist for this contemporary world? And how does it influence your way of perceiving music?
More than anything classical piano training taught my fingers to have the freedom to make complicated playing sounds easy, and graceful. And because I was spending so much time practicing for my next lesson I was fiddling around a lot between lesson assignments. One day in the seventh grade I discovered my fingers knew how to make music without reading….not music I had heard but spontaneously making music that was coming from somewhere. In the beginning, I had no idea where that was because it seemed so complete and as complicated as my lessons were when I mastered them.
It’s the same today and I understand it more and know how to pull it up….though some days it’s not as beautiful as others. The same today is true about the complications. If I were to read what comes out of me it would take me days or even weeks to master it. The first time a spontaneous song comes out it is the most expressive and likely will never be heard again. I have over a thousand of these piano pieces as I put my four children to sleep or just played Dailey, never anyone heard twice other than the recording. I hope that all makes sense.
When I WRITE a song though it’s different. I might use one of the spontaneous compositions as a source to pull from but I will engage music theory to get the song done. The best ones are done in one sitting. I composed an entire symphony, four movements in four sittings over a weekend. 15 hours including some sleep. As far as perceiving music I will not be analytical about something I hear unless I’m curious….how did they do that? Then I use what is called relative pitch to put the chord progression together in my head. Of course, if an instrument is around it’s easy to figure out what someone is doing. For the record, I do not have a perfect pitch but I do have a really good relative pitch. I wish I had perfect pitch, I’m in awe of those who do.
‘Open’, ‘One More Day’, ‘Brother’, and ‘Winds’ are classic blues rock ballads that take on the deep contemplative states of artists like Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, and Jimi Hendrix. Slowly sustained with electric guitar work, expressive vocals, and immersive lyrical craft, they emulate the classics in such affecting ways. By the end of it, you can’t help but be amazed by the emotional spheres and resilient flows that make these songs.
Who are some artists who played a vital role in inspiring and molding you to become musicians and why?
As I mentioned, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, Yes, oh my Goddess Kate Bush, I would love to just touch her hand lol, Mozart and Chopin and of course the Beatles and all the early pioneers. Elvis Presley incidentally inspired Open Your Eyes.
You tackle viscerally human themes in the album, from failure, faith, and fear to forgiveness, freedom, and fortune. What do you want your listeners to take away from this basket of ideas, these opposite forces that affect life as we all know it?
It’s time we all heal ourselves and get on with our evolution. That’s the message.
We are living in the greatest time maybe not ever but I believe the greatest time since the last reset. Nowadays that looks like the Younger Dryus age, when Clovis man and all the megafauna in the Americas went rapidly extinct. We have been kept in the dark about our true history and that is by design. The powerful controlling element of humanity has done everything they can generation after generation to take and hide archeological finds that expand our perception, our history.
Who built the Great Pyramid and carved the giant stones of Baalbek? Not anyone since the Sumerians that’s for sure but they speak of those that did. Gobekli Tepec in Turkey is waking a lot of people up. At the same time, we are falling deeper and deeper into destroying what is essentially the womb of our existence. As we realize finally we are all interconnected physically and metaphysically we are also realizing we have come to the brink of ruining our survival. If we don’t have a revolution and it can be peaceful, where all races and backgrounds come together as a family, we will see another reset. The universe is tuned to this. It’s like an hourglass. We get so much time by the rest of all to join the enlightened and take our place as Creators, not like some God, but using what we all call God As our source of creativity and….now let me say this with emphasis, with our magic. Our purpose IS to tend this garden, not follow the leader. I say it’s the greatest time of this Grand Cycle because it’s like this, NOW OR NEVER.
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You can listen to ‘Last of My Kind’ by Love to Bleed here -
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