Check out ‘Hi’s & Lo’s’, the debut single from Italian act Cavalo55. The wide-open spaces of the beautifully-shot video are matched by the expansive, richly-layered music, which swells and grows throughout this finely crafted song. Produced by Simone Carugati, Hugo Valverde and Tiago Saga, the song has a real warmth and depth, enhanced by Louis Pavlo’s keys and Carugati’s atmospheric slide. Emerging from these smooth sounds, the melodious vocal delivery is genuinely intimate and full of character.
The artist behind the Cavalo55 project is the well-travelled Simone Carugati, a multi-instrumentalist who began learning guitar at the age of 8. Since then, he’s picked up various other instruments, including bass guitar, slide guitar and banjo. Inspired by American landscapes, cities and cinema, Carugati practised his finger-picked guitar alongside film scores and found he could create his own soundscapes. He spent time travelling the world, exploring Indonesia, Australia, Scotland and the USA, where he immersed himself in old-time folk and blues, learning new instruments like the Appalachian banjo. On one of these trips in particular, ‘Hi’s & Lo’s’ was born. He explains: “I wrote this song on the way back from France to Portugal. There’s this little place called Santo Tomé, close to Madrid, very dry, desert like hills, highways, and nothing else.” Carugati relates the journey to our experience of life and its natural conflicts: the highs and lows of our emotions and circumstances and the opposite sides of the same story. He continues: “It’s about opposing forces that want us to keep some things unchanged, forever unspoiled, and at the same time our need to go forward. And it’s about being happy, and being sad, and then being ok, and then in the end, it being all good.”
Currently based in Portugal, Carugati has spent the last couple of years journeying around the country, playing in various bands and collaborating with the likes of GRAMMY-winner Paulo Novaes and Latin-GRAMMY-nominated artist Rube. Now Carugati is set to release his debut solo EP early next year under the Cavalo55 moniker. ‘Hi’s & Lo’s’ is his first single release and, on the strength of this epic, sweeping song, the EP should be an absorbing listen. Enjoy.
