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MICHAEL LOVISA – EMPTY EP

MICHAEL LOVISA – EMPTY EP

Michael Lovisa, born in 1987, is an italian composer/producer who likes to experiment creating delicate and soft moments with simple melodies. His music is a mix of acoustic instruments and…

A Conversation With Valerio Matola

A Conversation with Valerio Matola

Valerio Matola Pianist and Composer originating from Italy, was born in a musical family and by the age of 7 wrote his first compositions. He later came to Athens and studied Classical Piano and Composition at the Greek National Conservatory.
Wrote several works for Films / Video art / Theatre and contemporary dance plays. Valerio you composed your first song at the age of five. Are you from a musical family? Yes, my father was a guitar player and singer and his grandmother was a well known opera singer.At the time I was born my father was working as a musician for the king of Jordan. We stayed in Amman for some years and then we moved to South Italy which is my father's native country. When I was 8 years old we came to Greece where I am living right now. -- So you took piano lessons in Greece? You have studied at the National Greek Conservatorium. That was you first encounter with classical composers? Well actually yes. My parents did not listen too much classical music so the first time I listened Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Prokovief, Liszt to name some of the composers that have inspired me a lot was at the conservatorium. My teacher was Russian, a student of Tatiana Nikolayeva and he introduced me to Russian composers mainly. I studied with him for a couple of years and then with another teacher but soon found out that I wanted to write my own music. -- That's why you are an accomplished piano player. Your interpretations receive very good comments as well as your compositions. So tell me how is your life now? I live in a suburb near the sea. I have a passion for nature and especially for free diving. So I have the chance to dive two to three times per week . Ideally I would like to move to an island and be able to work with my music and dive every day. -- Do you find inspiration in nature? What inspires you to write music? Yes, nature fascinates me. The colours of the sky, the changing shapes of the clouds, the mist in the air, the depth and the mystery of the sea. But a big part of my work comes also from incidents that have happened to me. From the way I look at things.
In Conversation With Endless Melancholy

In Conversation with Endless Melancholy

After the amazing 4 hour set he provided for us we spoke to Oleksii Sakevych to find out more about Endless Melancholy. Read the full interview inside. 1.What is Endless Melancholy? During the first months of the project existence it was fun for me to describe Endless Melancholy using a Wikipedia quote, edited by me and semi-serious: “Endless Melancholy - (from Greek μελαγχολία - melancholia, "endless sadness") , in contemporary usage, is an endless mood disorder of non-specific endless depression, characterized by low levels of both enthusiasm and eagerness for activity”. Later I changed it into - “Endless Melancholy is the solo-project of self-taught musician, Oleksii Sakevych, from Kiev, Ukraine, started in November 2011. Endless Melancholy was launched to express the passion and love to minimal piano and ambient music.” Basically, it says everything one needs to know about the project. It’s not meant to be neither pretentious, nor innovative. It’s just a reflection of my personality in simple instrumental tunes. 2.Which part of the world are you from and what's so good about it? I am from Ukraine, a country in Eastern Europe, but I never wanted my music to be tagged as Ukrainian. This definitely does not mean that I don’t love the place where I live, it’s just because music should not be limited with anything, especially geographical borders. As for Ukrainian independent music scene – there are tons of good musicians of various genres here, but only few of them have enough eagerness, dedication and luck to get recognition. I won’t list any names, maybe in a year or two you will hear all of them. 3.Where is you're favourite place to find new music. website? magazine? Aaaaaand, the first place goes to…. Last.fm! Seriously, I remember myself being a child and recording weekly charts of my favourite tracks and artists on pieces of paper. Who knows, maybe that’s how last.fm was born. Its creators have just put into life the ideas they have been dreaming of since their childhood. Number one website for discovering new music and promoting your own. Bandcamp.com is quite good for these purposes, too. I also like reading about albums, not only listening to them. There are myriads of great music blogs on web - A Closer Listen, The Sirens Sound, to name just a few. Sorry for not listing all of them, because it would take forever. 4.What's an exciting or interesting thing your working on at the moment? Well, there are a couple of them. First one is a collaborative EP with a Polish musician, recording music as Lights Dim. This is not the first experience of collaborating with people from other countries for me, but definitely the most exciting one. As I noticed, we share some common views on music, that’s why I expect this EP to be many times better than stuff I could have ever produced on my own. And working on internet, sending each other recordings via mail is interesting experience, too. The other thing I always dreamed to try is running my own label, making physical releases. You know, physical release is a kind of fetish nowadays. It is not necessary to own a CD to listen to it, you can easily download it in digital, either legally or illegally (everyone choses his own way). Buying a physical release has become a way to show your support to the musician and to what he is doing. I am among those people, who cherish sounds in physical, and especially some limited editions in original handmade packaging. That’s what I totally love, and that passion was the incentive for me to launch Hidden Vibes, my own small physical releases label. First two releases already scheduled and hopefully the debut one will see the world late December. Another work in progress is a new solo album for Endless Melancholy. Have no idea, when it will be done.
In Conversation With Madeleine Hanover

In Conversation with Madeleine Hanover

Maddie Hanover the Australian born composer amazed us with her compositions, entertained us with her mixtape if that's not enough she then answered a few questions for us. Here's the results. Whats your name? Madeleine Hanover Where do you currently reside, live? Melbourne, Australia How long have you been composing and how did you get into it? I've been writing my own music since I was small. I learnt the piano on and off throughout my childhood, but classical repertoire never interested me too much - I was much more happy listening to music that I loved and learning to play it by ear on the piano. This then translated into composition, as I wanted to be able to play the music I heard in my head all the time! I had a break from the piano for 8 or 9 years when I formally learnt the flute, but I came back to the piano and began to play more seriously and frequently. I was a bit of a movie buff when I was younger, and I loved listening to the scores. For me, scores make more sense musically and emotionally than classical music. Looking back, I think I composed in this way because I lived in my head a lot. I had so many creative ideas for music at such a fast pace that film music, which can be quite fragmented, was a perfect fit. What inspires your best music creation moments? When I sit down at the piano, I usually just start playing whatever comes into my head. Sometimes I'll walk past the piano and just think I'll quickly play something - and then I'm there for hours. Often I will go on and on repeating things or changing from one piece to the other. I'll suddenly realise that I'm playing something new or different and have no idea how I got there! What was the thoughts behind your track choice and placement for your playlist? I tried to create a playlist that flowed well. I’m a huge Thomas Newman fan, so I included a lot of his work. I wanted a strong opening, and ‘Orchard House’ is a beautiful, joyous track. I wasn’t conscious of creating any particular narrative or story, but I wanted each piece to flow on from the previous one in a way that made sense musically. A lot of the music I’m fond of is very minimal or subtle, or has its own ascent and descent, beginning and ending on a pensive, thoughtful note. I tried to work up to a peak point around the three-quarter mark with some faster-paced music, such as Hans Zimmer and Clint Mansell, who both combine electronic elements with classical instruments really effectively. I then wanted to come down from the extreme tension in ‘Summer Overture’ and release some emotion with ‘Locke’d Out Again’ (anyone who is a Lost fan will understand just how heart-wrenching that track really is!). Then ‘Finale’ works up again but in the last 30 seconds or so just releases all that tension and finishes with that beautiful Vaughan Williams-like theme that we heard earlier in ‘Balloon Music’. It wasn’t as hard as I expected finding places for my pieces in the tracklist. ‘A Call to Open Spaces’ worked well in between ‘Cathedral’ and ‘Angels in America’ as they all have religious themes in their composition or context of the films/scenes they’re from. I placed ‘Submergence’ following ‘The Cannery’ because there is a strong water theme running through the ‘In The Bedroom’ soundtrack and I felt they fit well together. Finally I put ‘On the Shore’ as the penultimate piece because it’s very meditative and pensive – working really well before the last bit of excitement in ‘Finale’.
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