Italian music artists EMILIANO DEFERRARI & MARCO MACHERA are releasing their debut self-titled album of free-form improvisation on November 15, 2019. Long-time musical friends, Emiliano and Marco had never worked together, but always liked each other’s music, and attended each other’s performances. Emiliano’s band Nanaue used to cover one of Marco’s great tunes “The Ugly Song.” Throughout the years, the two musicians discovered very similar taste in music, from no-wave jazz, to art rock and more non-conventional styles. So, when Marco moved to Brussels from Italy, it felt quite natural to do something together. They could have started writing songs, but eventually they preferred to start with “something completely different”.
Emiliano explains, “They call it non-idiomatic free improvisation. We don’t agree 100% with the definition, it’s a philosophical quarrel, but that is what we do. We are both improvisers, inspired by free-form music and wanted to perform together this way. The album is documenting an excerpt from two recording sessions on cold mornings in March and May 2019 in Brussels, at Monty Studio. Two condenser microphones in the room plus a dynamic one pointed on a twin reverb, to capture the sound of us on prepared acoustic and jazz guitars, baglama, violin and objects found in the studio. No overdubs, no post-production, a rough mixing and a transparent pre-mastering. The beauty of the moment without pre-ordered languages to fit into, not against but beyond rules.”
Watch the promotional video:
“We took a walk through Matonge, the Congolese neighborhood of Brussels, and had fun mixing (us Italians), with those picturesque African vibes on a cold northern European afternoon, last October. That’s the joy of living in an open city like Brussels.”
Marco says, “We have decided to release this material outside of any self-indulgent snobbery, we just decided to give something to the listeners so they could satisfy their possible curiosity. We liked the atmosphere we created, the interplay and the amount of chance which helped the development of those four improvisations. We are eager to perform live and have fun with our audience. You may also consider this album as ‘another side of us’. In fact, for instance, we realize now that we didn’t sing during the sessions, even though both of us are frontmen. We were so focused on creating the momentum that we forgot rules, roles and habits.”
From Brussels the duo will start presenting the album and performing live on November 30th at seeU, the ephemeral neighbourhood at the old ‘Casernes d’Ixelles’.”
EMILIANO DEFERRARI
Emiliano was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1977. He started playing guitar at 6 and recording his own music at 11. He played and sang jazz, rock and world music with different bands in Italy. In 2005, after settling in Rome, he produced his first solo album “SO_LO” with Rattsburg Records, with good reviews. Since then he started touring Italy with his solo show with guitar, voice and effects. Between 2007/2011, Emiliano toured as The Loop Duo with Adriano Arena, with guitars, voices and live loops, producing an album (THE LOOP DUO/BMA and Rattsburg, 2009). In 2009/2010, he produced a new EP (O.S.T./Rattsburg, 2009) and LP “LIGHT EARS” (Rattsburg 2010). Since 2008 he’s been working on the project Nanaue with Matteo Nahum. Between 2011 and 2017 they published 8 singles (Rattsburg Records and Gutenberg Music) and 1 album (Nanaue/Gutenberg Music, 2013) plus 3 recordings for tribute albums of Italian prog label Mellow Records. In 2014 Emiliano moved to Brussels, Belgium where he re-published his seminal album “Small Engines” (2002, Rattsburg) and in 2018 he released “MONTY” (Rattsburg) which received great recognition from the art-rock, prog and jazz reviewers.
PRESS for Emiliano
“Monty is a fascinating journey through the wild mind of a maverick.” – PROG magazine, UK
“Monty, the surprise of the year” – (tr.) Fabio Zuffanti’s TOP 5, PsycandProg, Italy
“Experimental and disturbing, Monty is a bold mix of jazz, world and avant-garde” – (tr.) Corto, Music Waves, France
“Nothing is impossible for one who’s ready to go all the way and make a strange land his own…” – Dmitry M. Epstein, DMME Let it Rock, Canada
“The music rises, it takes us up, and from up there, it shows us how we can be satisfied when listening to – finally – a disruptive album” – (tr.) Enrico Storti, Asterischi di Musiche, Italy
MARCO MACHERA
Marco Machera is an Italian singer-songwriter. He likes to say: “I don’t play music – I make it happen.” He released the debut-album “One Time, Somewhere” in 2012: the recording, a unique melting pot of pop and art rock, won early stamps of approval from the likes of Peter Gabriel bassist Tony Levin and ex-Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett, who praised its “interesting atmospheres and contrasting moods.” His second solo effort, “Dime Novels” (2014), is once again a uniquely fresh take on the pop song formula, and features incredible musicians Pat Mastelotto, Tony Levin, Markus Reuter, among others. A third solo record, “Small Music From Broken Windows,” was released in 2017: an intimate and reflective concept album inspired by “The Outsider,” a short story by H.P. Lovecraft. Since 2014, Marco has also been collaborating with American bassist Julie Slick (from the Adrian Belew Power Trio) and drummer Alessandro Inolti on the EchoTest project. In the ever-evolving and experimental worlds of modern progressive rock and avant garde jazz rock, their free-flowing improvisations and strongly melodic songwriting have combined to help them shape an unique identity and garner a growing reputation for their intriguing and surprising albums and their rare and captivating live shows alike.
PRESS for Marco
“Along the way, Dime Novels finds Marco furiously pushing at the walls of musical convention. There are moments when the album sounds like prog, others when it sounds like an ambient fever dream, others still when it sounds like something that couldn’t be farther away from either construct. Dime Novels is as challenging as it is entertaining — and a huge leap forward for Machera.” – Nick DeRiso, Something Else Reviews, US
“[EchoTest] has just released its latest album, ‘Daughter of Ocean,’ whose nine songs form one vast movement of music that weaves thematic crescendos with ominous and dark undertones. The interplay of Slick and Machera is highly rhythmic throughout, often finding peaks in melodic moments like ‘Sleep’ and ‘Tiger Races.’ […] the album is as enjoyable, wildly impressive, and unconventional as it gets.” – Jon D’Auria, Bass Magazine
To purchase “Emiliano Deferrari, Marco Machera”: Available for download and streaming on all major digital stores from November 15th https://show.co/5HhTWd9
Brussels, Belgium – “Monty” is the new album by Italian music artist Emiliano Deferrari, conceived, written and recorded in Brussels, Belgium, where he lives since 2015. The album was recorded between November 2016 and September 2017 at his Monty Studio. It was mixed in Valencia, Spain by Matteo Nahum, music composer, film scorer, and musical partner of Emiliano in their art-rock oriented project Nanaue. Finally, it was mastered in Brooklyn, NY by internationally acclaimed drummer, bass player, and sound engineer Nate Wood.
All songs are written by Emiliano with Italian lyrics. Emiliano plays all instruments heard on the tracks (piano and keys, fretless bass, drums, classical, acoustic and electric guitars, violins, pocket sax, voices, and programming), like on all his solo releases.
Matteo Nahum mixed creatively the album, indulging with some of his preferred effects and reverberations. Nate Wood mastered the album with a balance between deep bass and the subtle textures of cymbals. Great presence but no big compression, maintaining a coherent ratio between loudest and lower sounds, giving the album a jazzier listening experience. Three different masters were made for the CD/downloads, the vinyl and a special “mastered for iTunes” version. The cover photo for the album was shot by celebrated Italian visual artist Pietro Fortuna. The album is produced for Emiliano’s personal label Rattsburg Records.
Says Emiliano, “In 2016, after 1 year of life in Belgium, I started producing music with a new mood. I recorded and published 2 new singles with Nanaue, one of which, “As Love is Naked,” was featured on the English movie “Hanging In There” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3822076/?ref_=ttsnd_snd_tt). During the recordings, I realized that my last solo work was dated 2010, and I had the urgency of a catharsis from some of my deepest emotions and fears. So I closed myself in the studio for long sessions of writing and improvising (heritage of my first moves in jazz). Most of the songs came out in less than a month, and for the first time in years, I used Italian lyrics. Then I started with a work of ‘selection’, ‘subtraction’, and recording instruments playing in a less conventional way (like the deconstructed and expressionist drums in the first tracks of the album, or combined with samples and drum-machine in the second part), and forcing myself on new territories (like the extensive use of fretless bass and electric piano clusters, counterbalanced by a sparse and rare use of guitar throughout the album). I also wanted to use the voice differently, to underline the visions showed with the lyrics. The lyrics are in general brief, with cut-ups and direct speech, helping to express the two moods of the album.”
As for the album’s concept, Emiliano explains, “The album describes a slow descent into hell, followed by a slow resurgence in search of a balance between the diverting forces, attitudes, and wills of a man. It is evidently an autobiographic representation of common states of mind of mankind. As always the place in which the album is recorded affects the music. The recording studio is placed inside the old Brussels cinema studios Sonart, in a room which still keeps the original audio isolation and some of the equipment. It was a great place to concentrate and listen to your deafening silence, in search of some of your monsters. After an experience like that, it is crucial to find your balance, to reset your mind and body. Meditation helps, but the tendency of building infinite layers of superstructures makes your exercises hard and frustrating. The last resort is surviving in light of this indispensable instability.
“Over the album sounds and instruments perform specific and recurrent characters of the play (the acoustic drums represent the human unpredictable touch, while the drum machines represent the mantras we use to fine-tune our weighted minds; brasses represent Brussels, or more precisely remind of the band’s parade of James Ensor’s ‘Christ’s Entry Into Brussels’. After all, it is quite easy to divide the album into two parts, the first musically jazzier and apparently improvised, while the second is mainly more rhythm driven, with recurrent chorus and mantras bringing to the last song ‘Fuoco’ (fire), the musical zenith of the album. There is also space for improvised drones (the short intro ‘Aria’, made with looped guitar effected with mellotron-like sounds), and a classical guitar piece, the eponymous ‘Monty’ (disturbed by field recordings of a tram).”
Everything was recorded and premixed by Emiliano in solitude. Tracks were passed to Matteo Nahum in Valencia, where he spent November and December 2017 mixing creatively. “He knows me very well, as we work together since 2008, and he could get the best of the tracks. I credit him in every song for his work at the mixing desk, as it was crucial for the album, like an added musician. As well crucial was the master by Nate Wood. I had already listened to his great masters of the albums of Donny McCaslin, Kneebody, and Tigran Hamasyan, so I am honored he accepted to work for ‘Monty’.”
When it came to finding a name and a visual identity for the album, “I had my studio in mind, and Monty is the nickname of Montgomery, the area of Brussels where the studio is. I wanted the cover to show what I could see every day from the window in front of the recording booth. Pietro Fortuna was so nice to shoot a photo for the cover and the Italian film-maker Alessandra Populin directed the video-clip of ‘Fuoco’.”
Emiliano was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1977. He started playing guitar at 6 and recording his own music at 11. He played and sang jazz, rock and world music with different bands in Italy. In 2005, after settling in Rome, he produced his first solo album “SO_LO” with Rattsburg Records, with good reviews. Since then he started touring Italy with his solo show with guitar, voice, and effects. Between 2007/2011, Emiliano toured as The Loop Duo with Adriano Arena, with guitars, voices and live loops, producing an album (THE LOOP DUO/BMA and Rattsburg, 2009). In 2009/2010, he produced a new EP (O.S.T./Rattsburg, 2009) and LP “LIGHT EARS” (Rattsburg 2010). Since 2008 he’s been working on the project Nanaue with Matteo Nahum. Between 2011 and 2017 they published 8 singles (Rattsburg Records and Gutenberg Music) and 1 album (Nanaue/Gutenberg Music, 2013) plus 3 recordings for tribute albums of Italian prog label Mellow Records. In 2014 Emiliano moved to Brussels, Belgium. In September 2017 he re-published his seminal album “Small Engines” (2002, Rattsburg).
2018 is the year of “Monty”! In support of his new solo release, Emiliano will work hard to perform the album live, recruiting a small group of talented musicians, able to improvise and to recreate both the brooding atmospheres and the uprising against the brink.
The video clip of “Fuoco”, the last song of the album, by Italian film-maker Alessandra Populin was filmed at Monty Studio and around in a “mad day out” in Brussels
Here’s what the press has said about Emiliano:
“For his debut, Genoese multi-instrumentalist Emiliano Deferrari, based in Rome for his musical activities, shows on more than one occasion brilliant skills as composer and performer, skills he could cultivate in his important past experiences…the voice works, the guitars work, the rhythms work, the mix works in this personal reflection in the form of music. Inspired, humble, really pleasant.” – Rockerilla
“You listen to the first song and you feel like falling down on an enchanted land between Genesis’ “the lamb” and the first Gabriel. With Gilmour’s Floydian guitars. Unknown land, sinuous and fascinating. Nanaue is a duo of composers and multi-instrumentalists, often active in completely different musical contexts, but when they go for art-rock, they adhere strictly to what it should be: a memory of a unique past melted altogether with the sounds of the future.” – Il Manifesto
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
