Lovexpress - Wave-pop alchemies

In our battered country, luckily, there are also small musical outfits capable of stirring up considerable interest, like Lovexpress from Pavia. The trio - made up of Luca Collivasone (vocals, synth and prepared guitar), Lorenzo Chiesa (synth and vocals) and Daniele La Barbera (drums and vocals) - amazed me three years ago with an intriguing and original debut album titled "Stars". Its 35 minutes of music simply left me breathless, thanks to the trio's ability to range from orchestral moments to psychedelic suggestions, using noise- and industrial-tinged sounds alongside clean, seductive guitar and synthesizer parts.

Hi guys. First of all, thank you so much for your time. How did the band come together? If I'm not mistaken, Luca is the one with the most experience, having already been active back in the '80s with Aus Decline, while Daniele was part of the Iarballe project.

Daniele: The band actually grew out of a musical partnership with Luca, which stemmed from other projects. Together we started laying the groundwork that would eventually bring us here. Lorenzo joined at just the right moment, shortly before we recorded our first album.

Lorenzo: The band initially started with Daniele and Luca, who already came from various musical collaborations. They began laying the foundations of the Lovexpress project a few years before I joined. I came on board in 2015, adding a new electronic element to the lineup. Shortly after, we turned those early sketches into concrete songs, which became our first album, "Stars".

Luca: Lovexpress started as an idea of mine and Daniele's. At first we rigged up Daniele's drums, triggering the various elements and running them into a sampler, then I added a monophonic synth and started playing guitar laid flat on a table, upending its traditional use and experimenting with unconventional tunings. Lorenzo joining let us add another monophonic synth with analog sounds. The idea was to produce material that favored a live approach and experimentation.

I was lucky enough to listen to and review your second album. How is "The Million Year Girl" doing?

Daniele: The record has been very well received pretty much everywhere so far. I have to say the reviews have all been positive and in line with what we wanted to express in these songs.

Lorenzo: The album has received excellent reviews that have often really nailed our way of composing and grasped the ideas behind how the songs came together. It's been positively reviewed by all the major Italian music magazines, and has also drawn some interest beyond our borders.

Luca: The record is making its own way in the world. I like to let go of finished work, and from the reviews I'm glad to see it's living up to its potential.

Has anything changed in your awareness as a band, and in how you write songs, between the first and second album?

Daniele: On the first record, writing the songs took a long time, due to various lineup changes within the band. Because of that process, we probably lost something in terms of pure improvisation. For the second one, though, after a few years of playing together, we realized how easy it had become to lose ourselves in just a few notes, improvising and layering songs starting from very simple melodies and rhythms. Lorenzo, the only one in the band with a good memory, managed to piece everything together during later rehearsals. From there, it all fell into place.

Lorenzo: From the first to the second album, the chemistry between us during the writing process definitely grew a lot. The improvisation in the "The Million Year Girl" sessions came out extremely naturally. Starting from a Daniele rhythm, a Luca guitar part, or one of my synth riffs, we came up with the first sketches of the songs, which were then developed and refined in later rehearsals. Then, once Luca's vocal lines were added, the sketches quickly turned into finished songs. At that point the puzzle was complete and ready to be recorded.

Luca: When we started writing material for the band's second chapter, I proposed, more or less explicitly, a different approach. We worked on 12 compositions at the same time, whereas usually you spend a lot of time on each single piece, trying to finish it before moving on to the next one, and so on. This time, at every rehearsal, the band spent just a little time replaying the initial sketch of whatever sounded appealing, paying close attention to whether anything new happened, and then immediately moved on to run through the remaining eleven sketches. We applied the same process at every rehearsal. That way, each time we listened our ears were more or less fresh, not worn down by exhausting repeated run-throughs of a single song to improve and tweak it. If it worked when we played it and sounded good, then we'd hold on to what we'd done and record those new arrangements and the parts that worked. Otherwise, if nothing new happened or the result wasn't pleasing, the piece was put on stand-by and picked up again at the next rehearsal, with the chance it could be abandoned altogether for lacking "spontaneous growth".

One of the things that struck me most is your ability to reshape a kind of pop, transfiguring the song form into an "other" dimension. Was that really your intention?

Daniele: Luca, after years of musical experimentation, has the ability to interpret every note in a way that takes you into a parallel world that brushes up against many musical genres without ever settling into any of them. By now, playing this way is just part of his DNA. On this record we felt the need to soften things up a bit, pushing ourselves in a more pop direction.

Lorenzo: Yes, exactly. The intention was precisely to bring in typically pop ingredients within an innovative song form that no longer followed the usual verse-chorus alternation. Those were the elements that gave rise to "The Million Year Girl", a kind of musical journey through eight different parallel dimensions.

Luca: For a long time now I've pursued the goal of integrating a "lighter" side into more experimental, exploratory work. My point of reference is the work of composers and musicians who've managed to layer their work across multiple levels while keeping intact the idea of pleasure and satisfaction in listening, without demanding any particular effort from the listener. The effort is there, and it's considerable, but only on more hidden levels — no less important for being less visible. On this record, perhaps more than in other work of mine, I managed, with Daniele and Lorenzo's help, to bring that concept into sharper focus and actually pull it off.

Was it hard to choose which tracks to put on the album? Maybe you've got other great material that got left off the record. 

Daniele: The really hard part was cutting the tracks down to fit on the record, since every song had a longer arrangement. As for other tracks that got left out, let's just say we might put out another album soon…

Lorenzo: As Daniele already said, the toughest choice was having to shorten some of the instrumental sections within the songs. Since we recorded the album playing everything as if it were a live performance, without overdubbing any track, we wanted to keep the broader improvisational parts, pushing the dynamics as far as we could. Unfortunately, though, during editing we had to make some cuts to fit within the LP's runtime.

Luca: I was already ready for a double album… The wound is still open.

Tough question, I know… but a necessary one. What do you think of the current Italian scene, and how do you live with your "relationship" with Spotify, which many see as the absolute enemy?

Daniele: We're going through a peculiar time for music: there are few live shows, and the younger generations seem disinterested in music. It seems like the trap scene is what's keeping the Spotify system afloat, and it really is very convenient for listening to music. Personally, I use it a lot.

Lorenzo: I'll start with the second part of the question. In my opinion, Spotify is a great, convenient tool for listening to music. I have some doubts about whether it actually lets you discover new artists or showcase emerging acts that are in line with your own listening habits. As for the Italian scene, we're going through one of, if not the toughest period ever for music, because of Covid-19. In a time without concerts, it's inevitably the most media-friendly music that keeps the system going. In this context, it's the trap scene (which by now I'd call pop) that calls the shots.

Luca: When it comes to the music scene, I can't really answer. As for the means of distributing music, I still think that work of real value makes its own way regardless, and is able to cross generations no matter the format. The old wax cylinders with Jelly Roll Morton's compositions have made it down to us, and you can even find them on Spotify. Other music has more or less been lost because, frankly, it had no real value. If we're talking about marketing, though, that's a totally different matter, and I don't think I've formed a clear opinion on it yet.

What are you listening to these days, and which bands/artists have been an inspiration to you?

Daniele: Les Claypool's Frog Brigade, Matt Elliott, Xtc, Eels.

Lorenzo: I have to mention The Flaming Lips, MGMT and James Blake.

Luca: Actually, I don't listen to much these days. I let myself be struck by ideas I pick up here and there: experimental, classical, electronic, rock and more. There's a lot of music that piques my curiosity, but I no longer have the time to dig deeper…

What are Lovexpress's plans for the future?

Daniele: To take the new album live as soon as possible.

Lorenzo: The urge to take a just-released album on the road is definitely huge. But given how difficult, not to mention absurd, this period we're living through is, that option, unfortunately, still seems like a distant mirage. What's definitely more concrete is the idea of getting back into the studio as soon as possible to start working on the third album. We've got one bold goal firmly in mind: the third album will be a double vinyl.

Luca: Writing new material and playing live.

Thanks again to Lovexpress for their generosity and passion, I hope there will be a chance to catch their live shows as soon as possible, and that they don't make us wait too long for this third album. Whether it ends up being a double album or not, in the end, isn't too important, as long as the trio keeps writing and playing music with this incredibly high level of compositional quality. If you love twists and turns that are never predictable, rhythms that are both solid and inventive, but you think an Italian band could never pull off something like this, listen to Lovexpress and you'll be pleasantly surprised. We desperately need bands this smart and this capable in our troubled boot of a country.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google