GINO FOTI

Artist's Website
Contact Artist
Massachusetts, USA

Available CDs

"Playing world music fusion demands understanding and respect of the cultures involved in the creational process. Capturing the essence of the various musical heritages, is another challenge. And here comes Gino Foti! He is one of the rare musicians whose sensitivity to spiritual and magical is mixed with unparalleled musical skills. His profound understanding of cultures and world's main philosophies is embedded in his compositions rewarding the listener with an amazing palette of melodies, sounds and rhythms." - Stephen Bocioaca, JazzWorldQuest.com

"Orbis Terrarum shows a combination of improvisation on mostly progressive electric and bass guitar in (jazz) fusion style, but also some Spanish guitar, combined with some keyboards (like jazz piano) and with the use of some sampled and rearranged percussion, as strong rhythmic and colourful grooves, using the latest sampler techniques on computer and on MIDI bass guitar, that uplift the use of sampling to a smaller detail and to the level of composing with a certain spontaneity as if a few extra musicians governed by the composer were also participating and even interacting with the musical evolution in studio.

At several times, Middle Eastern percussion is used, but also Latin rhythms, even in combinations (like on “Credo”, in combination with jazz piano), making appealing drives into the music. The first track, "Dionysian Stream" is more progressive rock, with Dave Kulju on electric guitar. "Kujichagulia" is a mix of exotic percussion with African vocal samples and fusion bass improvisation, in a rather simple but effective mode. “Ultradian Rhythms” combines Latin rhythms with jazz piano, bass, flamenco guitar and keyboards. Each track is arranged in such a way, in many different varieties. “A Smile For Every Tear” is only based upon rather classical piano with Spanish guitar. “Apollonian Stream” goes one step further to Baroque piano played with a jazz effect, and with Middle Eastern percussion in a Latin jazz way. That track reminds me of the 'Mozart in Egypt' project, from a few years back, with an album that for me wasn’t so convincing (while the previous 'Lambarena-Bach in Africa' was); here it is more fitting together, even when the idea of it still is a simply-doing-the-combination, it is done with a feeling for harmony."  - Gerald Van Waes, Psyche van het Folk and Radio Centraal

"It's great to see how some musicians and composers are inspired by a microclimate as big as the world. For Gino Foti there seem to be none of the now more or less known styles that are not adapted and used for his personal Fusion style. After having established a recording studio and the principle of software samplers, Gino started to record his own blend with world music, mixed with his Jazz Fusion bass guitar abilities. All his music is built carefully with bass guitars, keyboards, synthesizer, loops and samples, often in a way the music stands compositionally on its own. Fusing improvisation therefore is an important element.

On this release World Music sources and ideas are used for further improvisations, from East over Middle East to West, and beyond, seemingly more improvised in mood/sphere and in a floating continuum, compared to the previously reviewed release which had more surprises in explorations, while here the music is improvised more while staying in each track on the same spots longer. On “Amor Y Poder” especially, Gino Foti proves to be able to play flamenco guitar with flair, here combined with some accompanying Middle Eastern hand percussion, and some electric bass improvisation, and a few touches of airy keyboards. The few additional keyboards here and there lean towards New Age, and perhaps this association is wanted. Mostly the music is like its own style of jazz fusion, with less World Music but still within the whole wide world's "sphere of influence". “One Day As A Lion” is filmic, with its colouring rhythms and lion roars, like the introduction of a safari road movie. Also the last track, "Prescient Visions" recalling a jungle (and with a native Indian singing) could have been lifted from a movie."  - Gerald Van Waes, Psyche van he Folk and Radio Centraal

"This release is a successful, moody and inspired conceptual, almost cinematic, musical exploration, digging into associations and ideas from ‘The Wheel Of Life’, presented musically like a world with an essence of exotic and magical mystery. Just listen to the successful craft of electric guitar on “Akusala-Mula” with bass, moody keyboards, played with an underlying power, followed by a moody piano ambient track, "Intermediate State". This is followed by 6 parts/tracks representing the 6 worlds of experience according to the Vedas (the world of Devas or Gods, Titans, Hungry Ghosts, Hell creatures, Animals and Humans). The 'Deva world' is presented by eastern folk music played with Chinese instruments and dulcimer. The ‘titans’ are present in a new World Fusion style, with its own magic of sounds and rhythms, with a frightening underlying power, still presented with a relaxing calmness of unattachedness. Also the ‘hungry ghosts’ are colourfully presented with the right instruments and effects. The ‘hell world’ is presented with dark ambient drones, not sounding too different from the ‘animal world’, which sound except with a similar frightening magical tension, also sad with additional flute playing. The 'human world' continues with the flute, and has some beautiful solo singing from Vietnam, a Buddhist prayer, with three guitar notes repeating and spinning around the sphere.

Most of the tracks hereafter continue the musical theme and sphere described in the human condition, and also shows these human conditions in which you can be born; if one incarnates into that last realm, a choice which is hopeful, but still is built by restrictions that must show the condition of being incomplete, before a person understands and decides to take an outwards evolution, after realising all the elements of incompleteness. First we can hear sad drones with Chinese flute (ignorance), a complex continuum drone with melody (karmic formations), something which isn’t changing to something more hopeful, but only gets more description and flavours through the following tracks (presenting the elements of consciousness, naming and taking form, six senses, contact, feelings, craving, grasping/desire, becoming, birth, decay and death), presenting the underlying growth of one’s consciousness within the wheel of life, and from birth into rebirth. All the realisations of its consisting elements, all with its specific formal results, have all the same practical result which can make a purpose for a person when realizing how everything has an inevitable nature, in its whole presented, to end one day or another (Lord of Death), or to see its true nature of what things really are, and some time are not, as the essence of being or not-being (Buddha of Infinite Light).

“The six senses” were of course presented with more aesthetic brightness (sitar, guitar, tabla, keyboards, and improvised vocals). The other tracks enfold, with various different elements (piano, flute and keyboards, electric guitar, Indian voice,..), of how attractive it can become in becoming someone in this world, which can form a reason, according to the Buddhist beliefs, of how people finally are reborn into the human state. The result in life itself will become once more of how all attractive elements will show their limited states. The ‘decay and death’ part has almost industrial rhythms and keyboards, with a magical, dark tension. But also the closing sections, after ‘death’, presenting the Buddhic realms have a different, melodic attractiveness. When considering an artist and his vision to look at the different realms, one can realize how much all creative forces can come from the same source of inspiration.

The CD is truly successful, and is a musical spiritual journey with a powerful expression. It should also interest people interested in Buddhist, Jain or Hindu ideas, looking for an honest creative exploration of their ideas into a musical form. The music works as a deeper interconnected meditation into the subject, and is the opposite of most vaguely self-fulfilling New Age products."  - Gerald Van Waes, Psyche van he Folk and Radio Centraal