Joey Cutless’ music has been featured on shows like “Making the Band” to “The Oprah Winfrey Show”, plus hundreds of other nation-wide, prime-time, and major network TV programs. His beats have been heard by hundreds of millions of TV viewers around the world. In addition to multiple hip-hop beats, orchestral compositions, and sound-bed music production, Joey Cutless has produced or engineered projects for most of hip-hop’s upper-echelon of elite recording artists in some capacity, at some point in his 15-year career.
He has freshly released “Veni Vedi Vici – Orchestral Compositions By Joey Cutless”. It is the perfect synthesis of orchestral and electronic scoring, with each track being dark, moody, majestic, and exciting. These 5 epic compositions are seriously waiting for a movie to happen. Even the song titles allude to as much. As a lover of film scores, I enjoy listening to scores on their own in the album format. But there is often a dichotomy in film scoring – the mandate for the composer is to create music that works for the film. So there’s no requirement that the music sound good on its own; it just has to support the visuals on screen. Not the case here, as Joey Cutless has no visuals to support his music, so it needs to standalone…and be good.
“Veni Vedi Vici – Orchestral Compositions By Joey Cutless” is a symphony of electronic sampling and percussion. In many ways, it’s a representation of what film scoring has become in the new century. But if you think you’ll be missing the classical themes and fanfare, think again. The album opens with “Battle With Godz” and it’s like a cover to a book. It lets you know what’s coming. I dare you to turn this one up loud because it’s rolling percussion and strings will move you. “Kill Ceasar” has plenty of great moments, again, mostly coming from the grandiose percussion, as well as the brass.
“March of Destiny” will scare the mess out of you, if you still have the dial turned up loud. I literally jumped…trust me. The drum rhythms are marching, war like, and hard hitting throughout much of the track and there is plenty of musical variety to keep things interesting. And if you think things are slowing down due to the choral intro of “Operandi”, you’re wrong. It’s a piece that hums along, grows, diverges, relying more on the choir-like voicings and the majestic string section, than it does on the percussion. I like it when music gives me a picture and this track does just that. The last bars of this piece remind me of a proud warrior walking through the battlefield music. “Lord Of The Orch”, is really cool. It’s a great closing piece that is worthy of a hero riding off in the sunset after his victorious battle.
You’re probably not going to be sipping cappuccino while watching the birds through the window with this playing in the background. You’ll need Mozart for that. Listening to “Veni Vedi Vici – Orchestral Compositions By Joey Cutless” you’ll need to let the theater of your mind create its own adventures. You’ll enjoy and appreciate the sheer artistry of Joey Cutless. He has done an outstanding job here. All the tracks are deep in symphonic sound with plenty of dramatic tones. The music is capable of completely filling a room, the headphones and even the atmosphere of your car.
“Veni Vedi Vici – Orchestral Compositions By Joey Cutless” is just an awe-inspiring collection of classically inspired orchestral soundscapes – beautifully recorded, mixed and mastered – which basically sends out the message that there is hope; there is redemption; and there are urban heroes like Joey Cutless out there willing to put their creativity on the line for the good of music, in any and every genre!
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