After the important experiences with Siberia and Caleido, Cristiano Sbolci officially inaugurates his new solo chapter. To anticipate the album “OUT-FASHION” (out May 8) is the single “Please let me take a good look”an intense and collected track in which the minimal arrangements leave room for the breath of the words and dynamics of rare delicacy. A return that smells of great melodies, echoes of the 70s and an obsessive attention to harmonic details.
We met the artist to get into the depths of this new project and understand what it means, today, to choose the path of cultured composition.
Why did you feel the need to be “Out of Fashion” right now?
I've always been out of fashion, but only now have I had the courage to really show who I am on an artistic level.
It may seem almost snobbish, but I wanted with all my heart to make a record of songs treating the music as a cultured composition, trying to pay maximum attention to harmonic and orchestral details, leaving nothing to chance.
The album seems like a film: if you could choose the director, who would direct it?
This question is very complicated. I would like to be the director of this film, to tell the story behind this work in even more detail.
However, if I had to choose a director, I would say Fernando Di Leo, because it was precisely from one of his films that this idea was born.
What track on this album hurt you the most to write?
Definitely “Rock'n'roll”: inside there is a detailed summary of the whole story. There is the parallel between presence and abandonment, which was the key to the whole work.
The part that stabbed me the most was: “I'm dead in your world, a worm, that's all. I'm a madman; to your mother I'm nothing.”
You say that “one dies of love”: is the end of a love really comparable to mourning?
I believe that the end of a love, of a true love, is comparable to mourning, because the emptiness is the same: you go from knowledge to indifference, from presence to non-presence, and this makes existence hell. Luckily, pain stimulates thoughts and thoughts then allow us to create heartfelt and true things.
I am grateful for the pain I felt for the love I describe in the album, because it allowed me to get to know myself better.
The real life of Sebastian Knight says: “There is something wrong with love, because when it ends it leaves immense pain.” I think the same way.
What was it like having Enrico Gabrielli's saxophone for your “opening credits”?
Having Enrico Gabrielli was the fulfillment of a dream. I've always been a Calibro 35 fan and so being in the studio with him was idyllic. I will forever be grateful to Enrico.
What remains of Siberia and Caleido in this first album under your name?
Nothing is missing from Siberia and Caleido: this is a new project, with new sounds and a soul of its own.
Are you a singer-songwriter or a composer of “soundtracks for everyday life”?
I prefer to define myself as a song writer, with a passion for soundtracks.
Then, who knows, maybe in the future I will be able to change and become a soundtrack composer with a passion for songs.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
