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Imagine that you are suddenly catapulted into an "other" dimension, within a dream in which the visions that surround your gaze are the perfect combination of hallucination and concreteness.
Fellini himself said that there is nothing more sincere than a dream.
Here is "Barrì", the new album in Avincela, one of the most curious and original songwriter of the new Italian pop, released on June 9 for Leave Music.
An important, ironic, imaginative album that sees the collaboration of Folcast, Cimini, Alessandro Gori, Serepocaiontas and in particular of Pasquale Panella who wrote the text of "Barrì", the song from which derives the homonymous title of the entire disc .
The writing for Avincela is the language through which to transform the naked daily life into vision, into a set of ironic sequences to be observed through various points of view, all different, and immersing itself in the stories and turbines of emotions.
The nostalgia that pervades his songs recalls the traits of the dreamy and dreamy childhood where in summer one was lost between a playground, an ice cream, the sound of the sea on the beaches in the afternoon. There are echoes of Battisti and many sounds between the late 70s and the early 80s.
And it is precisely through all this that Avincela forwards us to the dream world of "Barrì", among his fireworks and his cans, his fever full of romanticism, the sleepless nights in which thoughts take voice.
What is the genesis of "Barrì" and where do you want to lead the listener?
Look, I start by saying that when I write I never know what will come out, in the sense that I never work by planning the goal.
However, by listening to "Barrì" I realized that he wants to bring an alternative vision on the things of the newspaper. What we live every day has a single point of view, for example a glass in reality only serves to drink, instead my idea is always to try to transform reality by making it a little more interesting.
So I think everything comes from here and that it is also the only way I have at my disposal to transform the world of everyday life. I use the music to tell about the scenes of a film that are however taken up from an unexpected point of view, always.
So the album wants to bring the viewer to this recovery on life but through the eye of someone who looks from a hidden corner and not necessarily from afar but also being close to what happens and perhaps trying to immerse yourself in these stories .
The writing process that I had and I hope that this comes out through the listening to the songs was very intrigued to me. I would like this research to be felt in wanting to see things differently.
Also through melancholy songs, for example "Glaccioli and bubbles", there is always that lightness that I believe also serves for a greater immersion and experiencing its emotions with a little more serenity.
In fact, through this album it has catapulted into a dreamlike, unreal dimension, full of floating and hallucinated images yet full of daily material. Avincela, how did this your cathartic musical approach be born?
Probably was born from this need that I have had in the last two years to escape the things that happened to me in everyday life and to move away from all this or you turn to the other side or if you write songs in a honest way try to transport them through another key , another way of looking.
I wanted to dig a lot through "Barrì", as in a session with the psychologist, especially in the closing piece that is entitled "roller shutters". It is a song that speaks a little of everyone actually and tells of a character who cannot sleep because it is besieged by the thoughts that torment him and the shutters are actually the eyelids that fall and every time, when he is finally falling asleep, here is who open again because they begin to resurface memories.
I think it is one of the most hallucinogenic songs of this album.
Furthermore, despite the melancholy trait that is inherent in your music, this album constantly maintains that of yours of yours so elegant and at the same time popular that it is not frequently found in our local pop these days, except for rare exceptions.
I am very sincere when I write. Sincerity in my songs is also present when I write about things that I have not lived in concrete terms, but even those stories are not born at the table with the hope of doing the numbers, so the desire not to be false is constantly present and to tell it sincerely , in fact, I am a very ironic person in everyday life.
I love contrasts in music, I like to tell things that are very deep for me and at the same time create a contrast with irony and lightness.
I am always the case, when I realize that I am sliding in the serious then I tend to lighten and not take me too seriously. In the end we are human beings, today we are here tomorrow we are no longer there and perhaps some of us will leave a trace to the fullest.
How much do you find it is at night "Barrì"?
Nice question. I find that it is very night and not surprisingly on the cover there is a background a sky at night. The night has to do with something particularly intimate, it is the exact moment to dig into oneself.
It is during the night that you also happen to plan wonderful things to do in the following days and maybe you also believe you have understood everything you had to understand, to have arranged any kind of problem, instead when you wake up the following morning you realize you don't have Understanding a fuck.
So for me it is like this: real life is the day and the songs are the night. Among other things, "Barrì" is a record that I deliberately recorded everything at home, playing almost all the tools alone, because I wanted it to have a very personal air.
In this way I had the freedom to do things in my own way. For example, for "roller shutters", since it is an extremely night song, I wanted to have a slightly broken voice and then I waited for midnight to arrive and afterwards I started recording.
A touch of truth that the study obviously does not allow you. In "Barrì" there were various writing experiments, for example "beds" was born from a monologue by Alessandro Gori and was a horizontal story and I transformed it according to the vertical form of the song, the song "Barrì" instead is music Applied to the text of Panella, "fever, love, cough" was written through WhatsApp and so on.
Speaking of collaborations, in "Barrì" there are many and of considerable importance. What can you tell us about it? And above all, how did the collaboration with Pasquale Panella be born?
Certainly there have been very interesting collaborations. Through "Barrì" I had the opportunity to work with people I respect both humanly and artistically and this is a trait that I care a lot and I don't say it to be the poet of who knows what but because I really think that the important thing is not doing music thinking to listening but to do it well and with people you are with.
Then, of course it is also nice to get to an audience because in any case the music is sharing and therefore we must also take this into account, otherwise it sounds inside the house and ends there. For me these collaborations are important above all because I like to start with a story and subsequently see the other point of view, always on the same issue. As for the experience with Panella, I have to thank Morgan there.
Everything was born during the 2020 edition of Sanremo Giovani in which I participated as a competitor and Morgan was in the jury. Immediately after my performance I approached me by filling me with compliments but we did not exchange the contacts and some time later, a friend in common who is the journalist made us in touch and so Morgan included me later in this group of work where each of us interiors chose poems taken from the book of Morgan himself, in fact, transforming them into songs.
The poetic collection is entitled "Words of Amorgan" and Panella, from which at the beginning it was to write the preface composed poetic comments for all the poems inside. So every poem written by Morgan corresponds to a poetic comment of Panella and is crazy as a thing. T
Ra these I chose "Barrì" and I asked the two of them if I could put it on the album and so it went, then he also liked it. Among other things, I felt it the first time on the phone half an hour from the stroke of the New Year, it was a crazy scene because I was at home and at a certain point my cell phone rang and I saw that it was him , at that point I closed myself in the bedroom and we went to speak while outside there was an absurd mess between the barrels, the fireworks, the delirium.
It was a surreal scene like the texts that writes.
To hear your story, the cover of the album comes back to me. There too there is a New Year, or a carnival perhaps ...
Yes, it's true. Among other things, I have to thank Federica Berti who pulled this beautiful collage cover out for "Barrì", starting from the idea of showing a non-place that contained elements taken from the songs and in fact the elephant, the icies, the iclets are portrayed sea, the cans. He also liked Panella who saw us a quote at "Here are the shops", the song he wrote for Battisti.
This year you had the opportunity to be among the guests of "Stramorgan", the crazy and night program of Morgan and Pino Strabioli on Rai 2 who has achieved considerable success. In addition, you had the opportunity to sing with Morgan just the song of Battisti-Panella mentioned above. How was the experience? Have you influenced, somehow, on the construction of "Barrì"?
In reality yes, this happened. In the period in which I was transforming these poems into songs I had not yet finished the album and this Panellian surreal Futto led me to write things with a different vision for some songs that are "roller shutters" and "love at sea".
The latter is a very surreal song, a sort of Truman Show that tells of this character who finds himself living in a totally fake world and who is actually his head, in which he must find his love that has not seen for much time and try to talk to us. Now that you made me think, I really think this song is born thanks to the Stramorgan experience.
So yes, he helped me a lot for "Barrì". It was a journey that obviously struck me a lot and more than positively. One thing that not everyone says is that going on television is really cool, I don't know why it often has to pass as a message the opposite, I want to say there is not nothing wrong?! Then it was a further demonstration of esteem that Morgan towards me, since he called me to participate and then, bring Battisti written by Panella on television ... only he could do it.
It is a courageous operation and of a really high level. Morgan and Strabioli did a great job. I think this transmission, beyond the beauty, was precisely important for the cultural service it has provided and I realized, concerning it, that it was so long that I did not see a program in Italian television in which it was so much and from live.
If you think about it, we don't have all these programs in which you really play as much as if it were a concert. Then, the way he has to dig into songs has nobody has it and when he did it for "emotions" was an extraordinary moment.
In a period in which we try to be as current and social as possible, demonstrate that you are an artist out of time. In this regard, Avincela, how does music do to resist what we call time?
In my opinion it resists over time because everyone can live it differently. The song is not static and is transformed despite the fact that it is recorded, because at each listening it is different. This is the power of music, its being rarefied.
It is different from the other arts, which does not mean that it is better or worse, but that it is the most abstract of all. In front of a picture you can see changes but something is always linked to the visible, instead you can imagine the songs and therefore they are always different. This I believe is the reason why it resists over time.
After all these years you have ever wondered who Avincola is?
Very difficult question I struggle to answer because I can difficult to define myself and I don't even want to repeat the same things that I have already said before.
Who is Avincola? Let's say I am one who tries to see things from a different point of view, despite my being in life even cynical, pessimistic or realist since things are quite connected, but that through the songs I try to conclude my thoughts with A drop of hope. So Avincela is one who tries to immerse yourself in difficult things.
I would like to be artistically a courageous storyteller. Here, probably I could frame Avincela.
"Barrì", we have already said, is an album linked to dreams. In this regard, what dreams do you have for your future following this important exit?
Look, I usually never make predictions. In life I have a very punk and also rather risky vision because it is not that I come from a rich family. So I try not to think too much about the future, strictly living the present. Not surprisingly, even my songs are constantly linked to the present unlike Panella which speaks to the remote past.
So I, Simone Avincela, only move in the dimension of the present and for me the future does not exist.
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