February

"February Sessions" (t.b.d.) is my second attempt to work on an album with english songs, giving the World the marvellous chance to get in touch with my oughful E. pronunciation. The first experiment was called "Feel The Blank" (1999), and it was my naif attampt to celebrate youth in a concept lo-fi scenario where a foreign guest (Yuriko) came out of the blue visiting the town of Uranopoly (Life).

When I started working on the new album it was actually January 2007. I wanted to talk of the most inspiring thing I was through in that period... and that thing was a japanese movie by Hideaki Anno called "Love and Pop". I found the movie partucularry enancing because of the catchy photography... and the lack of subtitles!
And I tought:"... wouldn't it be nice having a proper sountrack for that nice movie?"

So I started with "February", basically a song divided in two part dealing with a girl apparently drowning in a pool and the very moment before this tragic situation and a chour that is an hymn to... TOMMY FEBRUARY6!

The name behind Tommy is Tomoko Kawase, leader of the former Japanese band "The Brilliant Green", one of my beloved bands of ever. She not only decide to have a 80's pop sinth alter ego instead of being a former popoular dj leading one of the most famous brit-jap-pop band of the land, but she actually killed that new persona to incarnate the brand new "Tommy Heavenly6", id est Avril Lavigne meets GreenDays. Tomoko chosed the name Heavenly to stand between a joyful adjective of peaceful happines and... well... death.

I was in the middle of the writing of that" melodically plane" (that means "boring" for my taste) composition when I tought:"Mmmm... February/Heavenly... what a nice ryme...". And the hell of a ringtone-tune came out!

The first demo of "February" took almost three full days of recording, including programming the drums, the female voice of the sinth in the very start of the song, sampling sounds from the movie "Love & Pop", playing guitar, harmonica, glockenspiel, keyboards and doing singing and choir. In the end what came out was a baroque melange with a hell of Smithian pizzicato (that was supposed to recall "Lullabay" from Cure in the very beginning) and soft spaced melody in a "The G., The B. & The Q." mood. A shamed that that version was horribly mixed, and the voice vanish behing all these sounds.

Simona teach how to sing properly in some kind of private accademy. She use to give me singing lessions. I asked her opinion on the song, and she tought the sung would have been better if raised of half a toned. She wanted me to try to sing it right away while showing me how the song was supposed to be sang. Gee! That was something. Our eyes met after few seconds and we probably tought at the same thing: our voices was matching perfectly. So, with the help of Wild Heart (who mixed, rearranged and played the new version), we got the second version of the "February" demo, in wich the voice of Simona appears.

Of course Tiny Tide version is so far better, had an hell of a piano intro and it blows away the earlier versions. I guess we look something like "Dire Straits" meet "Coldplay" with Costello on volcals. At least in my immagination :)