GIANLUCA FIRMO

💿 Hi, it’s a pleasure for us to have on Hardrockheavymetal GIANLUCA FIRMO!! You’re Welcome!!

Thank you! The pleasure is all mine. It’s always great to have a chance to connect with people who love this music and share this passion!

💿 “REHAB”, your new solo album, is “hot’n’ready” and will be available from Oct 19th! Can you tell us somethin’about its composition process and style? We have the privilege to listening to it in preview and we were very impressed!

Well….the composition process hasn’t been very much different than usual.

I mean…the basic idea for a song pretty much comes to my mind in the most unexpected moments of the day so I learned to use vocal memo app on my phone to record all those that seem good to me. 

Then minutes, or days or even weeks later, i listen again to them and if one still sounds good to me, I start working on the basic harmony with my keyboard. 

And then on the full arrangement.

Lyrics usually arrive something in the middle of all of this, when the song is already complete, but the arrangement is not, cause i like to give the last touch to it only when the final singing is in place. The style, on the opposite, is very different from Room Experience.

It’s still melodic rock, but approached by a different perspective

Mainly because my voice is different than David’s, but also because it would make no sense to make different records with same exact approach.

What I’ve tried here is to keep the sound very wide, and very natural, using very little compression, to let instruments breath out of it.

Nothing wrong with compression and a loud punchy sound, but nowadays, every record seems to go in that direction and I start missing the little shades and the depth of sound that compression takes away from dynamics. 

So I tried to bring that warm feeling back. 

Maybe it could be done in different and better ways than those I’ve chosen, but hey…I’m very satisfied with the result.

💿 Can you tell us somethin’ about your early days in music world? Which bands or artists have influenced you?

I’m still in my early days in music business, actually! Even if I’ve always been a greedy listener of music, and even If i write songs since i can’t remember, I began working with a professional team only back in 2014, when we started the recordings of Room Experience, and it all started with no warning, as a consequence of a lucky meet with Dave Rox, so I don’t have a real story behind my shoulder to tell you how hard it is and what I had to do to get there. 

Until now I can tell you that I’ve had the luck to work with very good people. and so the journey has been nothing but fun. 

It takes a lot of time and passion, but it’s all been worth the efforts. About my influences: some are obvious to me, but not so obvious for the listeners, so you will tell me which ones you feel are stronger in my songwriting. 

I would say Bon Jovi, Europe, Savatage, Helloween, Iron Maiden and all those awesome bands that radios used to broadcast back in the eighties….but also Roxette, Belinda Carlisle. 

Basically, everything i like become an influence and my listening range is very very wide, even if my favourite style is, by far, rock.

💿 This new album is out via STREET SYMPHONIES RECORDS; Can you tell us somethin’about the birth of relationships with them?

Pierpaolo Monti introduced me to Stefano Gottardi at a festival while we were still working on the first Room Experience album. 

It was actually the very first label I talked to, and the record wasn’t even finished. We become friends since then, anyway, and when Stefano heard the demos of the songs I was planning to include in the solo record that I was about to start, him and Oscar Burato offered me they support in order to record it and release it.

 It was quite an easy choice to work with them, also because their label is from my hometown and this made every part of the work much easier. It turned to be also a very lucky choice, because at the moment I became part of their roster, Street Symphonies was a label by itself, while a few months later it became part of a larger group with a some great partners to support the artists in many ways and, even more important, they teamed up with Plastic Head, Soundtrek and Anderstein Music to build a capillary distribution net.

💿 We love the cover of REHAB! Who made it?

I love it too! Starting from the colours, to the subject. 

The artist who made the artwork is Antonella Astori (Aeglos Art) but the kid on the bench is a picture of my 7 years old nephew, who I’ve slavely turned into an actor for a day. 

And I was surprised by how good he acted: sometimes kids don’t want to, or just can’t, do something by command.

 He’s been very fun to watch, instead, and that photoshoot is one of the funniest I’ve took part to! And no worries….there’s no subliminal messages about getting young kids drunk: he’s holding a milk bottle! And he’s just enjoying the serenity of childhood. 

That kind of rehab we all should, be able to get back to, sometimes.

💿 In this moment you’re a well-appreciated studio musician and composer; will be there in the future the chance to see you live again?

Hard to say: for sure it’s easier to plan live dates for my solo record, since the musicians all come from my area and rehearsal would be a minor problems, while for Room Experience musicians come from everywhere in Europe and that makes it more difficult. But also, since I’m not a full time musician there are other problems that come in, like having the time to tour, getting feedbacks about the record when it’s released: would make no sense to put on live dates for a record that doesn’t even have good feedback. 

💿 ROOM EXPERIENCE:..Can you tell us somethin’in preview about the new chapter of this amazing project that involves, among others, DAVID READMAN as singer?

Oh…usually everybody says “this is gonna be the best record I’ve made”…well sorry, but no. Or better…maybe. But only those listeners will be able to state that. What I can say, instead, is that it’s gonna be different, even if it will keep the same features people loved in the first one and we obviously tried to improve.

 This time the songs (except two) have been written appositely for David’s voice, so he can express even better. 

We added a super bass-player like Simon Dredo to the basic lineup and he gives the song a very nice rocking attitude because this time there will be more rocking songs and less mid-paced or ballads… But also this time there will be a big variety in the mood of the songs: from very dark to very cheerful….lots to find out and hopefully love!

Enough?  💿  Thank you so much for your time! See you soon on Hardrockheavymetal!

Nothing but a pleasure, Giovanni. 

Thank you very much again for this interview and thanks to all of you, dear readers that read until the end. See you around with your horns up! P.A. BURNING MINDS GROUP

#FIRMO