Le Folli Arie become a reality in 2012. The band is made of four musicians living in Milan that have a huge live experience. They all have worked in various musical projects and share a common love for music from the 70’s (Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, PFM, Banco di Mutuo Soccorso, Area,…). They have also been influenced by grunge, pop, latin, funk, jazz, heavy metal. The clash and melt of all these musical influences gave birth to Le Folli Arie’s unique style.
The process of making the band sound whole and unique required 2 years of labor-intensive work..Once you listen throughout the album you can perceive the binding that gathers the 13 tracks together. The listener is able to experience many extremely different atmospheres and emotional episodes and to appreciate a deep sense of coherence throughout the entire listening experience.
That’s why defining Le Folli Arie’s style is not a simple task: it could be prog music dressed as pop or the exact opposite. In a world dominated by media where the key word is appearance, Le Folli Arie take a brave and anacronistic choice: you will be able to see them only during their live shows.
There will be no official photo shooting sessions, they will not appear neither in their video clips nor on their cd booklet, promotional posters and so on… They would rather release written interviews or be interviewed on the phone whenever that is feasible. The utopic point behind this choice is to communicate with their fans through their artistic means only avoiding any other interference as much as possible.
There will be no void in the visual compartment though. Matteo Compagnoni, (www.facebook.com/MatCompArt) already responsible for the CD artwork, will tell Le Folli Arie world, through his surreal and visionary, evocative and disturbing drawings.
“Le Folli Arie”, Simone Corazzari (lead vocals, guitars, author and producer), Massimiliano Masciari (bass and steel drum), Francesco Meles (drums and percussions) and Marco Antonio Cerioli (keyboards and vocals) trusted the mixing and mastering of their album with Lorenzo Cazzaniga, one of the best italian producer (Claudio Baglioni, Lucio Dalla, Fabrizio De André, Ray Charles, Sting, Mina, Pfm, Pooh, Vasco Rossi,…). Lorenzo is the last and most precious piece of the complex puzzle which is Le Folli Arie’s sound. (here you can find CD credits: www.lefolliarie.com/doc/credits.pdf).
Making their own way through echoes of Jeff Buckley, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Porcupine Tree, Lucio Battisti, PFM (and many more…) Le Folli Arie’s first work is a true musical voyage you could easily get lost into, that gently flows with no discrepancies; sounding almost “concept”!
Why did you select this song as your current single?
“It’s not easy” is one of our favourite song. It’s a sincere and delicate ballad that we really enjoy!It’s the song closer to pop style and it’s the easiest on the ears. It was the perfect first single.We just had to choose it. The English version video clip was published the 30th of march and it’s faring very well on YouTube. (https://youtu.be/Ed7dYLn-ToE ).
How does this single relate to the rest of the Album, EP or Mix-tape?
“It’s not easy” is the simplest and immediate song of our first album “Le folli arie” (https://lefolliarie.bandcamp.com/releases ). The disc is heterogeneus and varied, a true musical voyage where one song gently leads into the next. The challenge was elaborate the music we collected through the years and give birth to a first album that could summarize our career paths, creating a new contemporary but contaminated language. Going from pre-production to real production took us 2 years of work. Each member of the band listens to many different music styles and we spent much time in order to have the disc sound “whole” and “coherent”. Listing all our listenings is an impossible task ! They space from jazz to metal! Going through grunge and progressive rock… Since I’m both producer and author of the songs you’ll mainly hear my influences in the disc: Jeff Buckley, Ben Harper, Dave Matthews, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Yes, Porcupine Tree, PFM, Lucio Battisti… The 13 tracks of our disc are a nice synthesis of our listening and our different career paths, going smoothly throw different worlds of sound tied together by the same thread of style. This production is the result of the encounter of very different experiences that interlace to create prog masked as rock (or rock masked as prog) with shades of grunge and latin/funk, all incredibly balanced!
What was the writing process for the song?
There is no rule! It’s always been a misterious process not to be dug too much! Sometimes you get a refrain melody, sometimes a verse melody, sometimes a word…. sometimes a whole song. Then you work on it until everything sounds perfect which by the way it’s not really possible…. It’s an infinite chase of a state of perfection that doesn’t exist. In this specific case I started from “it’s not easy”.
What does this song’s lyric mean to you?
I wrote this song for the girlfriend I had at that time. It tells about a love that wasn’t easy to live between light and darkness, difficulties and the will to go on in spite of everything. But we don’t want to give you too many clues. We think that it’s better to leave to anybody’s imagination the possibility to understand, see and feel what they want to without influences by the author.
What would it be like to see you in person performing this song?
Well, what can I say. You should ask our fans. 🙂 We always put a lot of passion and energy in it and they seem to enjoy. On You Tube you can find some live performances of the song (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdd4cdya6zb1kdem5UP8GIA ) This can give you a better idea on how it is like to see us in person.
Could your fans summarize who you are as an artist by this song?
Surely yes. This is the most representative song of the whole project in which you can find all the main influences of the band and our ” prog-pop” approach. Anyway, I believe that to better understand our music is essential to listen to the whole record. And come to see us live on stage to get our real nature as musicians (on our YouTube channel you can find some abstracts from our concerts: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdd4cdya6zb1kdem5UP8GIA ). We have so much fun on stage: there’s more rock in our sound than in the record, we improvise, we interact with the public … our songs come to life every time in a new way and there’s a lot of energy. We also play covers we choose from our different musical influences to always offer something new to our fans. No two concerts are the same, guaranteed!
Is there a video planned and or completed and if so, what was the idea behind the video?
Yes, there is a video (https://youtu.be/Ed7dYLn-ToE ). We have tried to find the idea for this video for a long time, together with director Filippo “Pax” Pascuzzi. We wanted to go beyond the meaning of the song and give the idea of the search for redemption from demons and madness of each character of the story. We ended up with this script that being masterly produced and shot really excite us. We are fully satisfied with it.
In a still journey 5 different stories take place in the same hotel room but they never come across to each other. Someone sees the room as a means of escape from their ordinary life, someone sees it as a prison. Someone has fun, someone has a transgressive experience, someone has some romance. Everyone was given by life a personal point of view and a kind of madness and although everybody has found their own way to fight this madness, “it’s not easy”…
One last question, what is your motivation behind your music?
We have always been doing music, the four of us. It’s our reason for existence, a natural choice, a passion, an obsession, an illness and our job. We live to do music and of music. As far as I am concerned, writing songs is a natural need, a way to overcome difficulties in my life, to heal my soul, to create beauty, to create something good from bad experiences to share with others.
Social Media:
www.lefolliarie.com