It took just under three weeks – this is the time that has passed since the publication of Panorama Oliviathe debut album of Coca Puma – to ensure that the Roman musician born in 1998 conquered a large part of the specialized press (in addition to the public who flocked to her release party at the Monk in Rome). On the other hand, it was somewhat to be expected given the excellent premises of his first long-distance test, a captivating mix of nocturnal sound design, nu-jazz (Porta Pia or Late) and clubbing atmospheres (Night And Rug) which also betrays his great passion for the audiovisual. We talked about it directly with her on Zoom on a gloomy Monday afternoon.
After (shyly) saying she was very satisfied and surprised by the great warmth she has received from listeners so far, Costanza retraces the steps that led her to sign her solo debut for the famous Venetian label Underground Discs (that of Post Fog, Gazebo Penguins And Planet Opalso to speak) and the newborn Roman recording company ODD Clique. He tells us about when he had a band with a strong international imprint – born in Rome, the formation which also included students from the famous Berkeley in Boston recorded the first EP in Valencia – and he still wrote the lyrics in English.
The members' paths then split and the singer decided to turn towards the Italian language, founding a new solo project from scratch. If at the beginning the objective was to position itself in the wake of contemporary pop (“it's a sort of failed pop album”, jokes the musician), experimentation has led her towards a decidedly more heterogeneous result, as much as she likes to continue to classify it as such. On the other hand, the boundaries of music popular they are decidedly elastic and open to contamination with the most disparate musical genres.
Focusing for a moment on the lyrics of the album, one cannot help but notice how closely it is linked to the metropolitan imagery of the capital. If Porta Pia and in. are specifically mentioned in the first single Wolf Volkswagen Corso Francia appears is because the musician has always lived in Rome, passing through those places firsthand. Even if – as she reveals – the reference to Porta Pia is a sort of excuse, a place like any other to meet which has no value as such for her.
Speaking, however, of the instrumentation used to paint the ten sound frescoes of Panorama Olivia, the musician tells us how the key instrument of this work was a trusty Nord Stage 3 digital keyboard, bought with money given to her by her grandmother, which was joined by other instruments lent by friends such as the Moog Sub37, the Juno- 106 and the Organelle, as well as the DIVA soft-synth. The powerful engine of the instrument which also appears in several of the album's promotional photos allowed her to experiment with synthesis in ways previously unthinkable when playing live with the Yamaha Reface CP driven by a MIDI controller.
The album consistently manages to distance itself for a few episodes from the nu-jazz of the first singles, bordering on techno on a couple of occasions. Costanza tells us how this sonic dualism was born in a very natural way from her passion for electronic music, thus influencing the plots of the songs in an extremely natural way. But not only that, he surprises us with a secret: a piece at 130 beats per minute (which sooner or later could see the light) was excluded from the tracklist of his first album precisely because it would have risked shifting the balance too much towards the synthetic soul of the record at the expense of the more organic one.
Given these premises, it was almost obvious to expect that the young musician's (varied) influences were to be found outside national borders. If the press kit underlined her love for Brazilian music and psych-rock bands like I Tame Impala, Coca Puma helps us even more to connect the dots of his ratings by mentioning names belonging to the indie scene such as Crumb, Archy Marshall (that is to say King Krule) or Man I Trustbut also electronic artists such as Photay, Max Cooper, Ela Pettigrew, Jan Jelinek or ambient like Ana Roxanne.
It is impossible, given the sophistication of some formal solutions, not to deepen the connections with the audiovisual world. A modus operandi, that of working through images, which clearly shines through in the use of field recording And found sounds sParsi throughout the album. For the musician it was a way of transporting part of her life into her compositions, juxtaposing something more organic and “real” to the electronic textures of the songs. After having worked on advertising jingles and some documentaries, Costanza Puma is ready to make her debut as a composer of feature films: in fact, she has been working on the soundtrack of Almost Homefilm by Carolina Pavoneformer assistant director of Nanni Moretti. One of the films that inspired her the most, she revealed to us, is Emma (2019) by the Chilean director Pablo Larraínset to music, not surprisingly, by his fellow countryman Nicolas Jaar.
We conclude the conversation by trying to test the waters regarding the existence of new recording projects. Even though it is obviously too early to have clear ideas, Costanza says that she really loves the idea of recording an album inspired by Brazilian music, perhaps after having been able to experience it first hand on a trip. If there's one axiom that often turns out to be true, it's that the second album is the most difficult one for an artist to make. Coca Pumahowever, doesn't seem to be too worried about it, given that the soundtrack she's working on will be signed with this stage name, relieving her of the pressure surrounding the sequel to Panorama Olivia. Now all she has to do is conquer clubs all over Italy with her captivating blend of nu-jazz and electronica. We are sure that she will succeed in the undertaking, as emerged from the conversation she has the right attitude (and determination) to do it.
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM