aaamusic | On 16, Feb 2015

Who are you and where are you from?

We are Casa Del Mirto, an electronic/pop band from the north side of Italy. Everything started in 2005 when Casa Del Mirto was a solo project of producer and composer Marco Ricci. After a couple of years dedicated to other bands, Marco met Luigi (bass player) and they decided together to revive Casa Del Mirto with a new ‘dress’. We met in 2010 and since then we’ve released three official albums and tons of EPs.

What inspired you to get into music?

It’s not easy to explain why we make the music we do, every time we start a new piece, we try to reset our musical habits, and spend a lot of time looking for new creative inspiration via other music old and new. We need to find the right way to give our feeling the right ‘outfit’. To answer your question, we started to play together because we love the same bands (and of course we love the same drinks!). We have been influenced by bands such as: Underworld, Massive Attack, My Bloody Valentine, Radiohead, Pet Shop Boys.

What have you done?

As I wrote previously, we’ve released a ton of music, our iTunes library counts ca. 300 songs of Casa Del Mirto. We’ve released three official records (since 2010, before 2010 Marco published two full length albums) and a lot of free downloadable music. Our first release, as a full band, was in 2010; it was a free EP called The Eternal. It was very well received, especially on the west coast of the USA, a lot of blogs started to talk about us, putting us in the chillwave current (Washed Out, Neon Indian, Toro y Moi). We had the same impact releasing our first official LP 1979 – we had a wonderful audience and a lot of great reviews. Later, we decided to change our sound – In 2011 we released a double LP called The Nature that we gigged around for almost a year. After that we took a little rest from live shows, and we released some new free music (EP Taxus Baccata in 2012 and a full length techno album called Love Inc. in 2013). During 2014 we recorded Still’  which was released in UK on January 26^th.

We are very proud of all of our releases (even if sometimes we feel we should do better!), and we are really proud that we got back home safe after our tours and gigs, and I assure you that this is the hardest part!

What are you like live?

Our live shows are set up as followed:

Marco: Voice, Synth and Sampler

Raffaele: Synth

Luigi: Bass and Voice

Our live show is a wave of mixed emotions: we have contemplative moments and then the show rises to a climax where the entire audience starts to dance. We took three tours around Italy, which were all a ton of fun, but I feel as though the gigs we are doing now, for our new album ‘Still’ are the best we’ve ever had!

We’ve had a lot of gigs and we’ve supported a lot of bands, but we are particularly proud of sharing the stage with The Rapture and Toro y Moi in Milan, Rome and Padova.

What makes you different?

We don’t need any looks or tricks in order to bring attention to our selves; we like to let our songs speak for themselves. We think that our sound is unique because it’s always changing, every time there is something new and every time we put a part of our heart and our soul into it. What we do, what we play is who we are. It’s always hard to find the right words to describe our sound, but we used to say that our sound is like an electronic cocktail brimming with mixed emotions. We play music that touches your soul, instead of screaming in your face.

Physical vs Downloading vs Streaming…How do you listen to music?

We listen to music via all these vehicles! However we especially love physical supports Vinyls, CDs and Tapes (we’re almost fetishist!), but lately we’ve been listening to music via streaming, since there are so many productions and we need to listen to an album to make sure we like it before buying the physical support. You know, in the last 10 years we’ve changed the way we listen to music, so it’s not easy to say yet whether streaming is the ‘devil’ or not. Sure, making money in this business now is harder than in the 90’s and it’s a bad thing that musicians don’t earn much, but at the same time there are more chances for the emerging talents to be listened to!

What have you been listening to?

Our latest discovery is a band called The Acid, we really fell in love with their sound, and the voice of the singer is simply amazing. The album is called Luminal, it’s our new trip and we are listening to it all the time!

What are your aspirations for the future?

We are touring Italy at the moment which should keep us busy for a while, but we are working towards organising some gigs in Europe and the U.K., which we hope we can play soon! Our new album Still is out now, and we hope we’ll be able to play it around for a while! Anyway, we’re already working on some new stuff, so maybe sooner or later we will come over with something new!

Questions answered by: Luigi (bass) of Casa Del Mirto…