IZZ Celebrates 20 Years of "I Move"
New York progressive rockers re-release their epic masterpiece with improved sonics and a ton of bonus material.
Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection and happy Thanksgiving to all readers who are celebrating the holiday this week. I thought I’d get this week’s issue out a day early due to the holiday here in the U.S. One of the many blessings I have to be thankful about is having people out there in the world reading this newsletter, watching the interview videos, and listening to the MRC podcast. I do this for fun, but it warms my heart to know that others are enjoying these endeavors and I can’t thank you enough.
This week, I spoke with bassist/vocalist John Galgano from the New York-based progressive rock band IZZ. The band has remastered its outstanding second album, I Move, to honor the 20th anniversary of its original release and has included a bonus disc with well over an hour of bonus material.
Let’s get right to that story.
Background and the Review
I first became aware of IZZ when I started listening to progressive rock internet radio stations like The Dividing Line, Delicious Agony, and ProgRock.com in the early 2000s. The band had a couple of albums out and these stations were often spinning tracks from I Move, the band’s second release. The title track in particular was getting a lot of airplay from online “DJs,” and just a few months after I started listening to those stations, I started my own show in 2004 at The Dividing Line, which is — sadly — no longer a thing.
Once I had access to the station’s library — and we did think of it as a “station,” even though it was only virtual and all of the show hosts operated out of their own dens, offices, bedrooms, basements, and rec rooms — I grabbed both of the available IZZ albums so I could add them into my rotation. Shortly after that I purchased my own personal hard copies of both Sliver of a Sun and I Move. Shortly after I started my show (Epic Prog with The Lurker), the band released an odds-and-ends album called Ampersand, which contained some new studio tracks as well as live cuts, and I picked that one up too.
The band had a big sound, like the classic progressive rock bands I’d fallen in love with during the Napster download frenzy, when I finally had unfettered access to tons of music I’d been meaning to check out but never had. Through Napster, I had discovered Emerson, Lake & Palmer and King Crimson and dove deeper into bands like Yes, and then I ran out and bought all the albums that I liked. This completely negated the “free” part of the illegal downloading service, but I felt better about having compensated the artists for their work.
IZZ sounded a bit like all of those bands I mentioned above, plus my personal favorite band — Genesis. However, their multiple vocalists and the personality of their musicians somehow still gave them a fresh, new sound and a unique vibe. I wasn’t quite sure what that vibe was until I learned that the band uses two drummers. Greg DiMiceli plays the more traditional drum kit while Brian Coralian plays a kit that combines traditional acoustic drums with a myriad of electronic percussion devices.
And then there is guitarist Paul Bremner, who has the ability to absolutely blow listeners away with a fiery solo, but he can also play folky acoustic chords or the most poignant and sweet subtle and atmospheric electric parts that lend depth and texture to the band’s music.
Brothers Tom and John Galgano play primarily keyboards and bass, respectively, but the siblings also provide the lead and harmony vocals. Backing vocalists Laura Meade and Anmarie Byrnes sweeten things and make the songs broader and fuller when the band goes big on harmonies. They got more (deserved) solo spotlight opportunities on subsequent IZZ records.
The band has released nine studio albums (counting the two partially studio Ampersand releases) and an EP, Half Life, between 1998 and 2020, with a new album in the works. In the meantime, IZZ has just reissued I Move to honor the album’s 20th anniversary. The anniversary edition dropped on Nov. 18 on the band’s own label, Doone Records.
In addition to remastering the album, IZZ sweetened the deal by including a second disc of unreleased studio tracks, live recordings, newly recorded acoustic piano versions, and alternate mixes that provide well over an hour of additional material.
While some reissues can seem like a bit of a cash grab, this is one of the best “re-investments” in an album that a music fan can make. The original I Move album certainly didn’t sound bad, and the music on it got IZZ noticed in the prog world to the point where they became festival darlings, popping up all over the place, including the initial CalProg festival in 2004 — which is where I saw them for the first time. But the original mix was just a little bit on the muddy side, if I’m being honest — not terribly so, or in a way that made it unlistenable, but I did have a sense that something about the mix or the recording or mastering was preventing the album from being all that it could be.
The remastered anniversary edition defines what reissues should be. The audio of the new version adds clarity, space, and bite to these songs and brings them to life in a way that makes them seem new and exciting all over again. Even some of the shorter, more connective songs like “All the New” and “Something True,” which could get somewhat lost on the original album — sort of mixed in with the endings of the previous songs — have been given a chance to stand on their own.
The guitar and bass are punched up, as well as some of the keyboards. Subtle parts that got a bit lost in the mix before are now more apparent and there is better separation between the instruments. The whole thing practically jumps out of speakers and/or headphones, with far more vibrancy and energy than on the original album. It’s the audio equivalent of having a visual filter removed from a gorgeous landscape and finally seeing all the colors. This is, simply put, how these songs should be heard.
Sometimes a remastering just means making everything louder. Not so with I Move. Listening back to the remastered version (repeatedly), I didn’t suffer any noticeable fatigue whether listening through speakers, over-the-ear headphones, or earbuds. I even inspected the wav form of the old tracks and new ones side by side. The new ones are louder but there is no “brick-walling.” Visually, the new tracks have as much dynamic range as the originals — they’re just clearer and more atmospheric.
The improved sound is easy to hear from the album’s opening notes, and it truly shines during the atmospheric bits of “I Already Know,” with Bremner providing some Steve Hackett-esque guitar sounds that could have come directly off The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
The highlights of the album, at least for me, haven’t changed. There are concert staples like “Another Door” and the incendiary instrumental, “Star Evil Gnoma Su,” (read each of those words backward) which have never sounded better. But for me, the true crown jewel of this classic album has always been the ending trio of songs that all run together nicely: “Oh, How It’s Great,” “Coming Like Light,” and “Light From Your Eyes.” I liken that trio of songs to the twists and changes of the Yes masterpiece, “The Gates of Delirium.”
“Coming Like Light” also has my favorite IZZ lyric and one of my favorite verses by any band:
So I reach for her and she moves closer to me
Whispering a secret faithfully
She says, “To love someone is to learn the song that is inside their heart
And to sing it to them when they cannot remember how it starts.”
Comparing that trio of songs to an iconic progressive rock classic like “The Gates of Delirium” may sound hyperbolic, but “Oh How It’s Great” is a bit of a ‘normal’ melodic pop/rock song, “Coming Like Light” is a musical pyrotechnics show that goes through several twists and turns, and “Light From Your Eyes” is a gentle and soothing closing song. That run of songs perfectly mirrors the Yes epic for me, and in fact it’s one of the reasons that “Light From Your Eyes” ended up on a CD of songs that I gave the DJ who played the music at my wedding reception (as did the “Soon” single edit by Yes).
John Galgano said that IZZ creating its own label and the success of I Move combined together to allow the band to be able to continue to make music.
“It's been so freeing to be able to to not have to answer to anybody,” he said. “And we've been really lucky, I think, and that's why part of the reason why I love I Move is because — even if we hadn't released an anniversary edition — I Move still sells. I mean, we still sell CDs of I Move. And so, for me, it’s the album that enabled us financially to say, ‘Oh, we can keep doing this, like let’s make some more CDs, let’s make some more music.’ So, it really was the catapult for everything else. Without I Move there's no My River Flows. There's no Darkened Room, you know, all that stuff.”
The Road to I Move
The Galgano brothers both took piano lessons as kids and the seeds for the siblings forming a band together were sown during their childhood. They shared a love of progressive rock that their mother handed down — she was into Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
“When Tom was 15, 16, 17 — and I was 10, 11, 12 — Tom was really, really getting into music in a serious, serious way — just always playing guitar (and) piano,” John said. “He was writing his own music and I was kind of watching as the little brother, and he would involve me. And so, we kind of always had this idea in the back of our heads like, ‘Oh we’ll form a band someday.’
“And we always would try to think, what would our band be called? Even before we knew what we were doing. And we did have this concept of a name IZZ. There was a pitcher for the New York Mets at the time, Jason Isringhausen, whose nickname was Izzy. And we thought about Izzy for a name, but then we thought it sounded too much like Iggy or Iggy Pop or something. So, we just took the Y off and were like, ‘IZZ! That’s great! It’s three letters like Yes, so we can write it really big and people can read it.’ It didn’t sound like anything anybody else was doing.”
But it was when Tom went to Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, that he met DiMiceli, and the band that later became IZZ began to take shape.
“They bonded over a shared love of Yes and Genesis,” John said of his brother and one of their future drummers. “And then, through Greg, Tom met Brian (Coralian) and Paul (Bremner), a.k.a. ‘Brems.’ We all played in one of Tom’s concerts at college, a composer’s concert, and I guess that would probably be the first performance of an IZZ iteration — in 1994 or 1995.”
The band’s first album was a solid, self-released effort. Sliver of a Sun produced some well-known IZZ concert staples, such as “Assurance” and “Razor,” and established the band’s progressive rock bona fides.
Danielle Altieri and Michele Salustri, more friends of Tom and Greg from college, provided vocals on Sliver of a Sun, but before long they were out of the picture. The two women were replaced prior to the recording of I Move.
“There came a time around Sliver of a Sun, so ‘98-’99, when (Altieri and Salustri) were doing kind of other things and we were, for a moment, a five-piece of just the boys,” John said. “But it was around that time that I started dating Laura (Meade) and Tom started dating Anmarie (Byrnes), and as fate would have it, they both have amazing voices.”
John said the few years between Sliver of a Sun and I Move were filled with life changes among the members of IZZ. John graduated from college — also Manhattanville, where he met Meade — and started law school; Tom married Anmarie; and DiMiceli and his wife went on a cross-country road trip together.
“There was a lot kind of personally going on,” he said. “And I think we, as a band, were trying to figure out where we were going next and had this concept of…if we're going to be a band, and if we're going to pursue this, how are we going to pursue this? Because there were moments where we were like, ‘Should we just write pop songs and try to get a record deal or something?’ We didn't really know what this was about. Or should we try to just do what comes naturally to us? Even after Sliver, I don’t think we were aware that there was this whole progressive rock scene.”
If IZZ didn’t know about the prog rock scene before, they were about to find out. Upon the release of I Move, with a lot of hands-on work from the band in promoting it, progressive rock radio stations online and prog media outlets began to take notice of the band. They started playing all the major domestic festivals: ProgWest, ProgDay, CalProg, Rogue Fest, the Rites of Spring Festival (RoSfest), and the prestigious Northeast Art Rock Festival (NEARfest). The band was turning up at so many festivals that fans were jokingly speculating online about which bands would be joining IZZ at the next one.
As good as Sliver was, I Move was on a different level. And as much as I love their entire catalog, for me, I Move is still (so far) their masterpiece.
“The I Move concept is really about us as a band,” John said. “I mean, to me, this is what it means: It's about us, as a band, kind of defining what we wanted to do and making some decisions about how we wanted to write music. And so that's what the concept is, to me, and it kind of vaguely follows this character who’s kind of looking for his way, and so, because of all the personal stuff that happened during that time, it's a really important album, I think, for all of us. And on many days, I think it’s our best album.”
The improvement in the sound on the remastered anniversary edition, which was largely Tom’s doing, along with mastering engineer Joe Lambert, wasn’t lost on John when he heard the new mixes.
“Listening to ‘I Already Know’ for the first time with the remaster, I was sort of like, ‘There's something special here,’” he said. “You can hear Brems’ parts a lot clearer. The keyboard sounds are much more lush and present, and I think elevate an already very emotional guitar solo.”
No one really wants to pay for an album twice, but fans of IZZ will find this anniversary edition worthwhile. The bonus tracks are of high quality and worth the price of the reissue alone, but the way the new mix opens up the classic original album is the real value. You can always keep the original CD as part of your IZZ collection or pass it along to a friend to create a new IZZ fan.
John said a vinyl release wasn’t financially viable for the band, but he hopes it will happen later. In the meantime, IZZ will do some touring and will be playing I Move in its entirety and there is a good chance that a future live album and possibly a DVD/Blu-Ray release can come from the live dates.
To find out more about IZZ, visit their official website and purchase their music on their Bandcamp page.
Tracklist:
Disc 1
Spinnin’ Round
I Move
Weak Little Lad
I Already Know
I Wanna Win
All the New
Star Evil Gnoma Su
Another Door
Something True
Believe
Knight of Nights
The Mists of Dalriada
Oh, How It’s Great
Coming Like Light
Light from Your Eyes
Disc 2
I Move (Live)
From Here I Can See the Horizon (Alternate Version)
Weak Little Lad (2022 Acoustic Version)
I Already Know (2022 Acoustic Version)
I Wanna Win (2022 Acoustic Version)
Piano Themes
Confusion Jam (Live)
Spinnin’ Round (Live in Studio)
SEGS (OG Intro)
Star Evil Gnoma Su (Live at NEARfest Early Mix)
Another Door?
With the World Away
Lifecycle (Alternative Mix)
I’ll Never Finish Loving You (Previously Unreleased)
Oh, How It’s Great (Alternative Mix)
Coming Like Light (Live)
What Are We Playing?
Oh, That One/Mists of Dalriada (Live)
For my full interview with John Galgano, check out the video below or download / stream Episode 87 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast. In addition to I Move and the track-by-track explanations of the bonus disc material, John talked about his musical upbringing, his first favorite album, the song he wrote because he was afraid to ask Laura Meade out, and much more.
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