Post-classic rock fusion incorporating elements of rock, electronic, folk, symphonic, world, blues, jazz, latin, and country influences, with lyrics based upon informed agnostic humanitarianism and political independence. F. J. Serafim - Vocals, Electric/Acoustic/Synth Guitars, Synthesizers, Pianos, Bass & Production Song order is based upon technical considerations and not any intended sonic or creative merit. "Hi Frederick, I liked the lyrical concept, the musical arrangements, musicianship and vocals... ....you are on the right track with your songwriting. Wishing you success with your music, Mike" (Moody Blues co-founder Mike Pinder, 2018 R&R Hall of Famers) Licensing only upon direct contact with artist. Associated SoundClick Sites: Cryterion , The Schizoid Visionaries

I first started doing paid performances at the age of 16. My last string of performances was from 2005 to 2008 with Cryterion. (www.soundclick.com/cryterion) However, live performance always required too much time be spent on cover material, whereas I've always been driven to write and record original material. These days it would take an unrealistically interesting opportunity to get me out of my hassle free retirement lifestyle. Now, I mostly just promote my music through the use of good old fashioned email, bringing both regular listeners and some of my past musical associates to SoundClick. My family came to Canada in 1908 after emigrating from a town in the Venetian hinterland, where the most celebrated member, Santo (also known as Sanctus Seraphinus, Romanized), was a close associate of Stradivarius, and produced Seraphinus violins. Though he had no children and therefore no direct descendants, his instruments are still around today and his top lines sell at auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I only found this out fairly late in life, when it was brought to my attention. It somewhat explained my particular musical inclinations.

I've always appreciated a wide spectrum of music beyond my own personal styles, but some of my early favorites, back when high economy of scale production costs necessitated label support, ranged from the likes of Warren Zevon, Springsteen, Santana and The Band, to progressive Art-Rock bands such as the Strawbs and Pink Floyd. However, my single favorite was always Moody Blues co-founder and mellotron proponent Mike Pinder, and so when we exchanged emails when he first appeared on the net, I was very pleased. Also, when I was seriously ill in 2009, he got back to me with words of encouragement within an hour. He's a very singular artist and a wonderful man. At a time when synths were only capable of bleeps and squawks, he and the Moodys were fusing rock with symphonic elements using the analog tape based orchestral mellotron, an instrument he helped develop. Great voice too. "In their eyes it's nation against nation against nation, With racial pride sad hearts they hide, thinking only of themselves"

My main guitar is an electric/acoustic/synth access Godin LGX-SA. I use Roland keyboard-synth workstations, plus various microphones, processors and software applications. Although I occasionally perform and jam with other musicians, my chief interest and source of enjoyment has always been in embracing the entire recording process as a solo artist, from the initial creative spark, through arranging and performing the tracks, to engineering the final sonic masters. After decades of recording analog demos, I started throwing down digital tracks in the mid 90's, knowing that everything could be continually remastered at my leisure. My rationale at the time was similar to that of Dylan and The Band recording the Basement Tapes, but with the digital advantage. You might term my approach to the music business as "Freddy Molasses" :) Though I do use digital editing, I shun automatic arrangers, arpeggiators and vocal auto-tuners, and specifically compose or spontaneously improvise every note of my music, and generally record my vocals in 1 or 2 takes. I try to combine appealing melodies with more complex chordal progressions and arrangements, and strive to achieve the greatest stylistic variability I can attain within a rock blend framework, but not to the degree where it impinges upon quality, or the enjoyment I derive from the creative process.

UKRAINE CRISIS COMMENTARY (For full version go to: http://www.cryterion.com/Abrev.UkraineCommentary.htm) Imagine for a moment what the US would do if a major foreign power assisted an anti-US coup d'etat in Mexico, and then started equipping that regime with hi-tech weapons, while they persecuted and killed Americans and pro-US Mexicans living in Mexico. Russia is facing that equivalent scenario. Pink Floyd's Roger Waters recently posed this hypothetical on CNN. Though I was somewhat alarmed at Russia's tank convoy advance on Kiev, as a long time aficionado of geopolitical affairs, I was not surprised by Russia's military intervention into eastern Ukraine. Here's a few facts you may want to consider, many of which I gleaned over the years from hundreds of, then still objective, mostly western press releases. Now, the mainstream western narrative has narrowed and hardened, but nevertheless a compromise settlement is both justified and necessary. - In spite of the Cold War being declared over, the US pushed for continued NATO expansion into former Soviet satellite states, against the advice of people like Kissinger, Brzezinski, Clinton's Defense Secretary, Bill Perry and CIA Director William Burns, just to name a few, and in contravention to the pledge made to Mikhail Gorbachev as he voluntarily set the stage for the break up the Soviet Union. Russian complaints were ignored and never properly covered in the western press. - The current Ukrainian government first came to power in a violent 2014 insurrection against the legitimately elected government of Victor Yanukovich, who wanted to be on friendly terms with both the West and Russia. The Ukraine Central Election Commission confirmed the legitimacy of Yanukovich. - The US was heavily involved in encouraging the insurrection, with Joe and Hunter Biden in the loop, and more importantly, Undersecretary of State, Victoria Nuland was directly involved in the insurrection's progress, and the selection of the new regime's governmental officials. - The specific ouster of Yanukovich in 2014 was spearheaded by the violence of Neo-Nazi brigades, in particular at that time, the Right Sector brigade. Their leader, Dmitro Yarosh, is now the commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army. - Petro Poroshenko was made leader of the new government. He did try to contain the rise of the Neo-Nazi brigades for a time, but was unable to do so, and was forced to tacitly accept their existence and activities, under pressure of potential assassination. - These are Neo-Nazis, not WWII Nazis. Their prime targets are pro and ethnic Russians, not Jews. For them, violence against Jews is neither necessary nor expedient, at least for now. WWII Nazis killed more than enough Jews in western Ukraine, and President Zelensky, being a Jewish front man, creates deceptively good optics for them. - Yakov Kedmi, the former head of the Israeli intelligence service Nativ, speaking on the air of the Full Contact program said of Zelensky, “He should be an outcast in any society more than others, because he rages on the blood of his ancestors, tries to justify and whitewash the murderers of his people, who today run the show in Ukraine. And at the same time he shouts: "I am a Jew." He is a disgrace to the Jewish people." - Since 2014, the EU and NATO have been rejecting Ukraine's applications for membership on the grounds of unacceptably high levels of Neo-Nazism, and political and corporate corruption. However, they are now being whitewashed and exploited as a convenient means of militarily confronting Russia - as cannon fodder. - In response to the coup d'etat, Putin easily occupied Crimea, and Russian troops were welcomed by the large Russian majority there. - The large population of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine refused to recognize the coup d'etat government. Eastern Ukrainian regions (not just Donbas and Crimea) are historically former Russian provinces with Russian speaking majorities, plus Tatars, Cossacks and Ukrainians. These areas should never have been made a part of Ukraine, when Ukraine, for the first time in history, became a country in 1991 with the fall of the USSR. Lenin and Khrushchev, who was Ukrainian, granted to Ukraine the right to the administrative tax income benefit of these industrial regions, under the Soviet umbrella, as a show of solidarity. They never intended these borders to demarcate Ukraine's borders as an independent country. For more go to: http://www.cryterion.com/Abrev.UkraineCommentary.htm