Oproiu navigates the thunder and rain of romance with his debut single Need Your Love — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
The incessant, groove-oriented rock pastiche finds Toronto singer-songwriter Mark Oproiu snarling over a tribal beat while guitars are ablaze. The band — Chris Tondreau (lead/rhythm guitars, production); Calvin Beale (bass guitar); Michael Farina (drums/percussion); and Joel Joseph (keyboards) — perfectly emulates the raw emotion and drive that Mark dreamed of as a child.
Oprpiu discovered his calling when he received Queen’s The Works and KISS’s Creatures Of The Night albums for his eighth birthday. “I couldn’t stop listening to Creatures Of The Night,” he recalls. “(KISS) were not just any rock band, but one that would ultimately become mentors as I began my journey as a singer-songwriter and entertainer … I was transfixed on how music made me feel, and I wanted to make others feel the same.
“I started teaching myself how to play the guitar with instructional videos and a lot of practice. At 17 I started taking private vocal lessons, and continued until I was 21.” It was then that he started playing in bands and playing in clubs. Then grunge exploded and nearly wiped out hard rock as a genre. Oproiu’s bandmates at the time soon got married and had children. “In 1997, upon the completion of our second LP — a hard rock album — I too made the decision to walk away and have a family. And so that’s what I did.”
But it wouldn’t be the end of his musical vision, “It was in my second year of university that I met Orlando Cicchello. He had graduated from the Music Institute of Guitar in Los Angeles at the top of his class … We built a 16-bit home studio, and started recording together. Orlando would lay down riffs and progressions, while I arranged them and wrote lyrics and melodies, and off we went. We worked like this for the better part of 18 years. Having an archive of material and desire, now more than ever, to step out and make some noise as a rock artist just feels right.”
Check out Need Your Love above and below, and find Oproiu at his website.
