The Venus Illuminato

The Venus Illuminato was given life amid the crashing waves of the Pacific ocean in the fading sunlight of a Southern California's eve. The two guilty parties (Rob Franco fresh from a cross country motorcycle trip and eighteen days camping in the Texas hill country, and Brandon Kennedy the musical direction and lead guitarist behind a well received Los Angeles psychedelic experience) were united by a highly acclaimed writer and performance artist from New York City.
In the early autumn of 2007, the duo merged talents and took their musical tales of adventure and woe to the east coast. Well received in New York City's art and theatre community, the two returned West, and began recording "Company With Kings" in a Venice Beach loft turned studio.
The Venus Illuminato is a musically timeless vehicle of virtue and demise; the universal struggles of love, loss, God, and myth.
With a combination of lush, intricate arrangements, and simple but haunting ballads, their songs are equally at home in the sleek modernity of the 21st century, as in an opulent 17th century French sitting room, or around a campfire of scoundrels and thieves. For influences see Django Rienhardt and Stephane Grappelli, Acoustic Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, Nick Drake, Yes...as well as the literary observations of, Rilke, Hafiz, Joseph Campbell, and Tom Robbins. While the neo/psychedlic/freak/ folk movement is in full bloom, with bands like Beirut and Devendra Banhart, the Venus Illuminato brings a fresh sound in it's classical sensibility and universal tales of humanity's search for meaning and love presented almost as a musical storybook.