Inhabiting a different genre of music than what I usually listen to, Mario Spinetti lives in between the musical theatre and electronic pop-a-la-Frou Frou sections of your local record store (if those still exist…). His aptly titled song “Delirious” was featured last year in an episode of the TV show “So You Think You Can Dance?” and has since become a minor hit in his native NYC and viewers around the country, so much so that many amateur and professional dance companies set many choreographed pieces to this song.

“Delirious”, off of his debut [1/1] EP will catch the listener’s ear and may sound eerily similar to Imogen Heap’s successful single, “Hide and Seek”. The layered accapella vocals and the opening melody may propel one to dismiss the song as just a knock off but Spinetti really focuses on creating an aural representation of a dance, or a vocal representation of a string orchestra, and as such he develops the vocal lines accordingly. He doesn’t use vocoder (as Heap does in “Hide and Seek”) or do other crazy embellishments to the song, but he does surprise the audience with delivery and with his musical writing. There are moments when the song seems spastic and disjointed like the “beatboxing” in the background by a not so good beatboxer, or when the singers become an instrumental “band” and imitate musical instruments. The only way to pull this off convincingly is by employing the assistance of vocalists who can beatbox WELL and imitate sounds and instruments WELL. Otherwise it sounds like – listen to the track and it’ll speak for itself. Spinetti does seem to want to do too many things at once and experiment with genres he may like but might not know how well to incorporate into his music. However, the track goes on to include harmonies and melodic lines reminiscent of choir music a la (Handel? Orff? someone, that’s for sure), a blast from the Medieval past. It’s a hint to his own background, growing up with two opera singers for parents.

You can purchase “Delirious” and the rest of the pop-musical theatre infused [1/1] EP on iTunes.

Here’s a choreographed performance set to Spinetti’s “Delirious”:

enjoiiii,

bixo do cocoa puffs