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If you are interested in music that may be a bit off of the beaten path, then you should check out Arya of Italy. It might not be what you would hear on the radio but that doesn’t mean it’s not good music. Find out more about Arya in the interview below.
Interview
Where have you been staying during 2020?
I’ve been staying either in my hometown of Rimini, where I’ve spent the lockdown months, or in the suburbs of Rome, where I’m working and studying. I’ve only been to the ancient city centre twice as of now, which is quite absurd considering how beautiful and historically important this city is and how uglier is the area where I live.
What have you been doing during times of quarantine?
I spent the first weeks mixing our new album For Ever, even if some of the tracks still had no lead vocals: we were recording them when the government locked us all at home. Nobody expected that period to last so long: after a while the film school I’m enrolled to, which had to suddenly close, managed to start streaming lessons, which ended up making me busy for most of the day until June. I’ve been finally able to practice my instruments more, to watch many movies and read some books. I collected information and pictures I had made for a video about the nearby Republic of San Marino, made by a Youtube channel called Geography Now. I wrote a couple of music videos for the Arya album, none of which ended up being shot for various reasons. I did some session work and, more importantly, took part in a big online collaborative album called Desert Sessions Home Edition set up by Riccardo Pasini, a really good audio engineer quite famous in the Italian metal scene. You can listen to it here: https://desertsessionhomeedition.bandcamp.com/
Have you found or re-found any hobbies?
I had way more time to watch Youtube videos on a great number of topics, including geography, linguistics, aviation and railways. It’s not really a hobby, though, it’s more like feeding with random facts the Asperger part of my brain.
What have you been listening to lately?
I usually listen to very different kinds of music even during the same day: yesterday I remember enjoying at least some old style soul music (Otis Redding, Al Green, Sam Cooke), the experimental black-metal band Imperial Triumphant and the British indie band Daughter. The day before it was for sure something completely different.
Has your songwriting process changed this year?
It hasn’t changed radically because I’ve always worked mostly on my own, thinking about musical ideas for days, recording and modifying demos of unfinished songs, before showing them to the rest of the band. What’s changed is what usually came afterwards, because meeting together to develop those ideas into full songs where everyone has created his own part has become really difficult, and we haven’t been able to do much as of now. It’s not a totally bad thing, though, as we’ve just released an album, and we absolutely don’t have to worry about having new music ready soon.
Is there any message that you would like to convey to fans or soon-to-be fans?
We know our music, and especially our newest album, does very little to court the listener, tempting it to stay, keep listening and be easily entertained. It requires patience and doesn’t guarantee anything, but perhaps it will succeed in giving a lot to someone: at least that’s what I hope and why we’ve done it, besides giving a meaning to our lives. I feel I have to deeply thank everyone who uses a little of the limited time he/she has to listen to
the deformed creations of our musical brain: we as artists have to feel responsible for that, and I’m always afraid what I’ve done is not good enough or that no one will understand it or appreciate it, but at the same time I feel obliged to make sincere music, music as similar as possible to what I’d really like to express, and that’s not acting as we were someone we’re not just to conform to what other people expect to hear. It’s really difficult to decide what to say in this context and world, as people’s taste change, and so do ours: we’ve always tried to be as spontaneous and sincere as possible in our decisions, but we can’t claim to be understood and liked by everyone, and experience has shown us we’re surely not.
What is something positive that has happened to you during 2020?
Releasing our album For Ever has been an accomplishment in itself, as we had started working on it two years ago, the writing and recording process had been really long and complicated and we weren’t sure we would have completed and released it until the very end. We composed it in a terrible moment for us personally and for the band, we decided it to be about what we were living through, and not having to care about it anymore feels like the liberation from a heavy burden. Maybe now we can think about the future instead of our really painful past.
Connect with Arya:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/aryaitaly
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4WfuNd1szecUkB9alBgTdK
Bandcamp: https://werearya.bandcamp.com
