Spaghetti Eastern Music, the solo venture of genre-leaping NYC/Hudson Valley guitarist Sal Cataldi, is releasing “I Believe in Love,” a stripped-down, all-acoustic ballad previewing the spare narrative style of his forthcoming song-centric EP, “Turpentine Valentines.” The new single will be available as a digital download via Spaghetti Eastern Music’s Bandcamp site and other online stores.

Critics from prestige outlets like The New York Times, Time Out New York and Huffington Post have heaped praise on Cataldi’s debut album under the Spaghetti Eastern Music moniker, Sketches of Spam. This was a 16-track, 69-minute surf through a slew of contrasting moods. It’s largely guitar-driven instrumentals were inspired by the acid funk of 70’s Miles, Krautrock, Ennio Morricone’s Spaghetti Western movie soundtracks as well as Fripp & Eno ambience and the sound of ECM guitar god Terje Rypdal. These contrasted bare-bones acoustic vocal songs reflective of the influence of John Martyn and Nick Drake, the mode showcased on his latest single. The discs’ acoustic titles included originals like “Wild One” and “Mama Called,” an instrumental cover of the Zappa rarity “Sleep Dirt” and a DADGAD-tuned, ballad paced reinvention of the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride,” one that garnered heavy airplay on SiriusXM, WFUV Mixed Bag, WFMU, Radio Woodstock and many others.

With “I Believe in Love,” Cataldi serves up his hard-earned take on romance: the pain it can cause and the beauty too… if one is willing to throw his/her heart back into the ring for another go-round after heartbreak. Two crystalline acoustic guitars and a solitary voice carry the tune whose narrative arc is reflected in the below, the first and concluding verses of the song:

I believe in love but not everlasting love
Life has shown me, it’s just a temporary disease
Attacks the heart, breaks it in two and does something funny to your knees
But I believe in love…

I believe in love but not everlasting love
If you can accept these terms, maybe we can get the disease
Warms the heart and make its whole
At least that’s what life has shown me so
I believe in love

The song comes with a counterpart video featuring some of the great screen kisses from the classic film era which can be seen here - www.youtube.com/watch?v=saG_EGStoa4 It was recorded and engineered by Cataldi at his studios in Woodstock, N.Y. and a floating one aboard his Houseboat Garlic Knot in Port Washington.

“I have never understood the desire to shove musicians into tiny boxes, the belief that you only get to be and play in one genre,” says Cataldi. “I love all sorts of styles – straight-ahead and avant jazz, post-rock, prog, metal and funk, world music, electronic experimentation and, yes, quiet acoustic ballads like my new single, something that is definitely a 360-turn from my recent releases.”

He continues: “I love it all equally, listen to it all and want to perform it all – and that’s what I do with Spaghetti Eastern Music, at gigs and on recordings. That might make it hard for the algorithms that govern everything in the music world these days, so I guess my genre is best stated as iPod Shuffle.”

The New York Times writes “Cataldi’s original instrumentals and acoustic vocal tunes have a beat unmistakably his own” while Time Out New York says "the largely instrumental, Eastern-influenced jams are infused with some delicate guitar work and hauntingly moody atmosphere." Cataldi and his Spaghetti Eastern has been called “truly excellent” by The Village Voice, “a wild ride” by Radio Woodstock, “beautiful and unique” by WFUV’s Mixed Bag, “charmingly melodic and off-center” by WFMU and “a jazz virtuoso without the need to prove it” by Aquarian Weekly.

Almanac Weekly calls Cataldi “a unique voice who can conjure a surprising blend of exploratory fusion, electronica and indie song craft” while NYSMusic adds: “If Walt Disney World’s Space Mountain had a secret chill detour, Spaghetti Eastern Music would be the soundtrack.” KMS Reviews calls Spaghetti Eastern Music “pure harmonic bliss” while New York-based MusiciansforMusicians.Org labels it “as beautiful as a well-tended garden and as seductive as a courtesan in an opium den.” Hudson Valley One calls Cataldi’s oeuvre “Part Sergio Leone fever dream, part Ravi Shankar raga, a whirling dervish of musical creation.” Huffington Post applauds the “soaring, searing instrumentals” and “beautiful, quirky songs that have a darkness-in-light straight out of the Nick Drake bag. Simply put, it’s the perfect soundtrack for New York City life.” Rolling Stone writer John Swenson, the man who penned the liner notes to Frank Zappa’s “Shut Up n Play Yer Guitar,” may have put it best: “He’s the hippie guitarist playing to another dimension.”

In 2020, Cataldi followed his debut album with a trio of acclaimed atmospheric singles, “Her Lemon Peel Raincoat – Because It’s Raining,” “Peace Within” and “And This is Their New Hoax,” a COVID-19 musical editorial featuring samples of President Trump’s most noted denials to Cataldi’s soundpainting guitars and synths. In 2021, he released “Blues for A Lost Cosmonaut,” a much-praised nine-minute plus maxi single, again in the ambient mode and “Solo Guitar Score for 2x2x4.” The latter EP is the soundtrack for a dance piece recorded live at the Avant-Garde Arama Festival in Woodstock inspired by his work with the guitar orchestra of Rhys Chatham and his love of Fripp and “White Light, White Heat”-era Velvet Underground. Chronogram Magazine called it “cool, melodic, inspired and transcendent, a wave of sonic warmth and light while Psychedelic Baby Magazine labeled it “the perfect sonic tonic for these trouble times.”

Cataldi also made more beautiful sounds with “One Act Sonix,” the critically-buzzed about 2020 debut album from his spoken word/music side project, The Vapor Vespers, with noted Alaskan playwright/slam poet Mark Muro. The duo recently followed this up with two new singles in early 2022, “Sex” and “You Changed.” Cataldi is also one half of the improvisational and ambient Hudson Valley-based guitar and efx duo, Guitars A Go Go, with Rick Warren. Their first single, a 12-minute improv opus called “The Volcano Lovers,” was a preview of the bold experimentation featured in their June 2020 CD debut, “Travel Advisory.”