Paying homage to the victims caught up in the Ukraine war, “New City Comes Along” seeks to shine a light on the stories of those citizens whose lives are completely destroyed by such conflict. As Quarry explains:
“A city devastated by bombing and reduced to rubble is one of the most heartbreaking things to see. How many stories are behind those bodies scattered along the streets, those destroyed buildings that were once warm houses to families. I wrote this song thinking of a beautiful city like Kyiv falling into ruin, but it could be any city destroyed by warfare. New cities will, eventually, come along through the skin of the razed ones.”
Agitated by injustice but laced with an optimism for a better, more peaceful future, “New City Comes Along” is a punk-razored track that finds Quarry taking inspiration from the revolutionary class of The Clash while injecting a chorus of hope into their frenzied formula. Showing a new side to the multi-faceted artist that the softer and more reflective previous singles “This Is The Story” and “Beyond Any Sense” perhaps left camouflaged, it blends clangorous drums with impassioned vocals and driving guitars that rise-up like a rallying cry for peace.
The new track was the finishing touch to Quarry’s new LP ‘Positioning The Sun’ (out now via Lowfieye Records); an album born out of the feeling of living suspended in time during the pandemic. Written and recorded in Milan between 2020 and 2022, the LP has a knack for capturing the overwhelming weight of the world’s complications.
Warm and expansive, full of beauty and melody and revolving around love and loss, Quarry explains of the album:
“I wanted to make an eclectic album. I started writing a sort of soundtrack to an imaginary movie. But then I realized that I was locked in my tiny home studio with this new pandemic bursting into planet earth, and I was writing songs about isolation, distance, separation. It was the soundtrack of that particular time. Pandemic permeated the album with a sense of loneliness and concern, and when it was almost finished the outbreak of war in Ukraine made the songs more relevant.”
Quarry is the alias of Italian-born multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Vittorio Tolomeo. Self-taught, he began playing the drums and guitar before playing in a handful of bands in Italy, releasing two EP’s with indie labels and writing the theme song for a popular radio show.
Living between Milan and London, and playing across Europe both solo and with various bands, the musician released two critically acclaimed solo albums, ‘Prize Day’ and ‘Super Arcade’. His notable single “Micro Plastic People” also gained attention for its exploration of the socio-environmental issue of microplastic pollution.
With his band Prizeday, Quarry has performed at festivals like The Great Escape, played a run of shows supporting Arthur Brown and premiered a short film at Cannes Film Festival. His solo material has also featured in a range of TV shows including Animal Kingdom and Top Gear, an advert for Vans and Italian film ‘La mia ombra é tua’, and garnered praise from a range of tastemaker names including Rolling Stone France who described his music as “highly contagious”.
-Official bio
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