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Transmission (Norway), 1/2009
”Digital Angel” (...) the debut album of the classically trained Greek pianist Othon Mataragas (...) melancholy, longing and emotion.
(...) On the vocal front, the album boasts decadent legend Marc Almond (known mainly for the 80s synthpop band Soft Cell, though his solo career is even more endearing) and (on one song) David Tibet of Current 93. However the main vocal attraction is the Italian Ernesto Tomasini, with a voice spanning 4 ½ octaves, which he is not afraid to use to the full (especially in the profuse glass-shattering falsetto). Klaus Nomi has not lived in vain but Tomasini is more trained - and somewhat more coquettish - than Nomi ever was. In general he is a highly original and unique singer, although comparisons with Nomi are inevitable.
Othon's compositions for him move within the same hybrid form of pop, cabaret and classical music that was Nomi's trademark but here the emphasis is much more on the classical (...). There is also more intimacy on display than in the Nomi repertoire because the piano is the only accompaniment. In other operations of the kind, this fusion of classical and popular music has rarely worked, simply because the musicians involved were not talented enough. Here they are so musically and vocally superior that their work is close to genius. It surely is extremely original and idiosyncratic.
In "Digital Angel" there are no half measures: love is all-consuming and desperation regurgitates flames from hell and often the two extremes happen within seconds from each other, as in the sweeping opening number "When I Leave You": "the sky turns blue / the wind stops blowing / the birds are galumphing / while singing jolly songs (...)" Then the relationship becomes very turbulent ( "I wake up with you / in Spain or in jail) and goes from ecstatic heights to ecstatic depression:"(...) when I leave you / my feet are trembling / my mind is shutting / my heart is failing / my will resigning / the Gods are dying / when I leave you."
(...) These lyrics, sung to perfection by the divine Ernesto Tomasini, say much about the album. Emotions are expressed poetically, as in an opera, but they are transferred to the lurid alley behind the opera house. There is no intermediate stage between the total bliss and total degradation (an element this that had potential for becoming grotesque but it's never such because the gap is not used to merely create an empty discrepancy, on the contrary, it is there to enhance the emotions: total drama + total drama = absolute depth). The same extreme feelings belong to the listener's reaction: you either love or hate "Digital Angel"; completely, totally and unconditionally.
I am one of those who love the album and Othon and Tomasini are not the only two responsible for it: In "Digital Angel" Almond delivers the best performance of his career. I don't think I have ever heard the man sing better; especially in the album's third song "The Epitaph of God" that takes him to familiar territory, with lyrics on hedonistic sex among men and angels rebelling against God.
”The Dreamer is Still Asleep”, the Coil cover, is sublime. (...) David Tibet is (...) a strength (...) when the piece gains momentum, with the events speeding up and the pace slowing down again, (...) it makes for great and moving art.
(...) One of "Digital Angel"s best pieces is the final track:"The Tango Song", a tune composed by the English occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Here Othon and Almond are on the verge of stepping beyond the border of cheesyness by performing what, on the surface, sounds like a simple showtune but (...) lyrics that are over the top (...), combined with Almond's rendition give the song an aura of the decadent cabaret from the 1920s and nostalgia à la Hollywood's golden age. Excess decorating excess can become a strength if it is performed in a superior manner (as it happens here), for authenticity can often be acheived through the opulence of artificiality.
"Digital Angel" is a visionary and original work (...). I was (...) deeply affected by it. (...) [It] is for me like a lover: I cannot imagine life without it and - although we sometimes need a short break from each other - we cannot live apart for too long, I cannot afford to lose it.
5 stars
Avopolis (Greece) 1/2009
With a little help from his friends Ernesto Tomasini, David Tibet and Marc Almond, Othon introduced his first personal work, Digital Angel, having already successfully embellished with his music films by BruceLaBruce and Derek Jarman.
On the first hearing, Digital Angel seems to be a weird and odd mix of musical styles. However, the more you listen to it, the more you understand the genius of Othon. From melodic tunes ( "The Dream-Signal Of A Lonely, Broken (Half Dead) Planet") and theatrical, operatic songs ( "When I Leave You") to the otherworldly and melancholic piece by Coil ( "The Dreamer Is Still Asleep ") and a dark adaptation of Aleister Crowley ("The Tango Song "): this is the recipe for an Othonesque composition, which includes original melodies, a small dose of punk and opera but also a sweet lyrical romanticism. With obvious influences by Tibet's music, the sensitivity with which Othon composes - with the great voice of Ernesto Tomasini and, of course, the sweetness of Marc Almond's - make the listener feel like he's in a movie scene, transported from a theatre stage to a dark alley and from a damp dungeon to an opera house, all this in less than an hour.
Othon's world is distant and remote, almost occult, romantic and fierce, full of death but also ecstasy. When his piano becomes a lullaby, notes suddenly burst out and you feel the world crumbling all around you. Think of Antony & The Johnsons mixed with a bit of Current 93, sprinkled with the virtuoso piano playing of Diamanda Galas and voilas: Digital Angel opens before you its wings ...
Discogs 7/1/2009
This album is not for the fainthearted! If you are into light tunes and music full of clichés then this CD is not for you. If you like bold statements, music that has you on the edge of your seat and weird vocals then Digital Angel is definitely for you. Marc Almond who sings in 3 of the songs shows a face different and darker than we are used to. His voice becomes an instrument of pain, anguish and anger. He even sings a song by the magician Aleister Crowley called The Tango Song. Ernesto Tomasini, an Italian opera singer, sings from low to high and from high to super high. When I Leave You, the opening song in the album has become a hit with OTHON’s fans and Tomaisni’s vocals sound as crystalline and tempestuous as the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
KCTV 30/12/2008
(...) D.A. is a no mans land of musical innovation, where the deepest millennial monstrosity and the finest conceptual glockenspiel reverberation sew the contour of mankind's future. A future OTHON announces as made of a passion devoid of any regret. Digital Angel is thrust, exhilaration, howl, moonlit dance, sweaty darkroom, chasm of voice and vibrato, black and white tapestry of keys hit by the sharp virtuoso will of a musician whose career appears to us as the very manifestation of magical vision. As we let ourselves be sunk, dragged, smitten by the four dimensional embrace of this sound-gloved fist, a sense of lyrical and poetic explosion take heed of our mind and sails us across Hercules columns. There, floating on top of a piano, we hear Othon¹s intimate offerings, opening the curtains of perception beyond the known, beyond the fathomable antithesis between beauty and ugliness. As if led by hand, we march across a Bosch-like soundscape infused with an artistic vision still holding the bold yet delicate courage of true wonder. Othon's piano becomes a cloud-busting Reichian machine turning the sky into a reflection of dreams music itself has yet to recognize. Submerged by the currents of a musical hall yet to come we surface into a realm of aural transubstantiation, where the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Three voices and a piano are the invocatory elemental chore of this work. In the trilogy of songs titled Digital Angel, Monsieur Ernesto Tomasini cuts across the most experimental atonal production and a soave almost child-like carousel spatiality. Infused with the erotic intensity of a Sufi dance performed in a theatre des supplices, Greater Feast Massacre sees the Sicilian artiste and counter-tenor carry a textual goblet of abomination through a landscape of baroque obsession and iridescenttonal intensities. Marc Almond's a-temporal vocal harmonic cathedral envelops us like the night itself in Tonight and The Tango Song. Here, accompanied by OTHON's Mishima-like piano warring, Almond's lyrical darkness becomes the syncope suspension between notes resonating with the glimmer of a consciously studded theatrical heaven. David Tibet's languishing impossible tonalities fall like the sedimentsof revelation itself in the Coil track The Dreamer Is Still Asleep making us think of the dagger of which Saint Luke's speaks: there to pass our very soul so that we might feel within the passion that the world creates - Et Tuam Ipsius Animam Pertransibit Gladius. And it is indeed in those terms that this album works, it is a dagger, not a caress, its blade passes our selves as if emotion and reason wereagain adjunct, and the future a concrete pillar unto which the face of humanity might be sculpted with features anew.
Through the precise sensual creativity of OTHON, the artist, musician, virtuoso, DIGITAL ANGEL brands upon our minds its deepest and most daring of thoughts, that the only limit to our existence be the fear to reveal the delicate hues through which our very soul sings. There is much sincerity and desire, passion and kindness in the work of this young musician, so that as we fall into the embrace of this musical album, we see it transforming itself into the fundamental radiation, the very pervading echo of an age where creativity can only be but an act of Will against the death and decay of all that makes life so excruciatingly worth living. Lets murder this century, and in this act, reveal beautiful songs.