Novembre pour l'album "Ursa"

1. Hello Carmelo! You can't imagine how I'm glad to have this interview with you for the release of your 8th album. Almost 9 years of awaiting! A few years ago I feared never to hear anything about the band again... But this is it, one of the greatest news of the year: "Ursa" will hit the stores on April 1st. I suppose you must be impatient to support it so how are you today and how was these last weeks?

Thank you very much, it's been great. We have been rehearsing for the last week, all day long and yes we cannot wait to support this album live.


2. As I said, there's a gap of almost 9 years between "The Blue" and "Ursa". Why did it take so long? Do you want us dead?

No, I didn't want you dead it's just that many things have happened. Things that led us to the decision to take a break which eventually lasted too long. Basically we weren't so amused about the CD Market crisis that was having its peak in 2008. As soon as you had a promo CD sent off to the press it was leaked online and unfortunately that had an impact on the sales and that was not so amusing. We decided which was the best thing to do between doing an album after the other without not much happening, and wait! But hey, here we are again! Things have gotten better since, and labels found ways to protect themselves and us from piracy and all is good.


3. "Ursa" should have been released last year and I have to say I was disappointed to hear that the release date were moved to April 2016. What went wrong?

Nothing went wrong. It's that the mix of the album lasted longer than we expected. We finished recording everything a little too late and the details to take care of during the mixing were too many, and we wanted everything to be perfect, so we decided to move the release date a little bit.


4. Before talking about the music, you wrote that the artwork made by Travis Smith (once again!) would be fantastic and it seems to be quite interesting indeed (I haven't seen the entire work yet). Did you give him a working direction? What is your interpretation of his drawings?

Yes, we worked together on this. I gave him the title, lyrics and music and he developed some ideas and then I came up with this idea of a sort of Botticelli Venus coming out from ice, holding a baby bear, a thing that has many deep and symbolic meanings. The artwork itself looks to me as if it's a sacret painting like the ones you find in Rome at St. Peter. Looks like the symbol of a new religion or something, perhaps based on even more humane laws for the animals... laws that would forbid us to feed on them and exploit them in any way. Perhaps it's time to adjust our laws accordingly and protect this defenseless creatures from the evil that we so bluntly and proudly make.


5. "Ursa" contains 10 strong tracks with different moods and styles and some of them (like "Agathae") are very surprising - the good way ;). Were they all written in the same period? Are you the only one to write or are you helped by Massimiliano?

I always wrote the music by myself, and with Massimiliano, but not in this album. For this album I wrote it all by myself because I wasn’t in touch anymore with the others and that's kind of a shame because I sort of miss his touch on the songs.


6. I listen to "Ursa" for some time now and I feel something different from the natural evolution "Novembrine Waltz" / "Materia" / "The Blue". Even if the music contains a lot of clean vocals, it reminds me the Novembre of the old days, from "Wish I Could Dream It Again..." to "Classica" with stronger heavy guitars, harsh vocals and death metal feeling, along with the famous Novembre's nostalgic touch for sure. Do you feel that way?

Yes I totally feel that way. You actually mentioned the two albums that I think URSA is more related to. I don't know why but I kind of got back to our earlier works balance, which I felt we lost a little in the following albums.


7. This title "Ursa" is an acronyme for "Union des Républiques Socialistes Animales", the french translation of a book by George Orwell called "Animal Farm". You wrote that this album is a new step in your life and as a consequence in the way you write I guess. I also read that there was a few concepts behind the lyrics. Can you tell us more about all that?

We actually never write explicit lyrics. I write everything in the usual poetical, cryptic way, and in this album I sometimes expressed my most political ideas in a little more obvious way and I try to go over issues like the fact that something is seriously wrong with human's DNA and we are nothing alike to our fellow Earthlings. This is pretty much the sum of the ideas behind the album.


8. Is there a song that touches you particularly in this new album? Why?

I kind of liked very much the whole album and it came out exactly as we wanted it to be. Perhaps the one I'm most attached to his ‘Oceans of afternoons’ but there's many others like it, for instance ‘Bremen’ which has a very touchy ending, or ‘Australis’ which is a typical Novembre calm/harsh song. I also like those two extra tracks on the ‘Annoluce’ EP, that is ‘Venere’ and ‘Negative Luna’.


9. Last year I spent some time on your facebook page to take some info about the recording progress. I might be wrong but I felt it took more time for this one. Can you tell us more about the recording? Was it different than before?

Maybe we took more time but that was only because we didn't want to pressure it. Everything was more relaxing and we went at Massimiliano Studios on daily basis for a couple of months, and we could record all the string instruments. After that we went to Fabio Fraschini (bass player) studios to record drums, vocals, keyboards and various effects.


10. There are some guests in this recording: Tatiana Ronchetti (female vocals), Paolo Sapia (saxophone) and also... Anders Nyström for a great guitar solo in "Annoluce". How spent the collaboration with all of them?

That was really easy and relaxed. I am friend with Tatiana from a very long time and she has a very unique and delicate voice and she gave an amazing touch to ‘Oceans of Afternoons’. In the same song there's a saxophone part witch makes that track one of my favorites. And then there's Anders Nystrom from the mighty Katatonia, which turned ‘Annoluce’ into one of the greatest tracks, and I can never thank him enough to take his valuable time away from the recording of the new Katatonia album which is coming next month.


11. "Ursa" is the first album without Giuseppe as a drummer. I looked for the reasons of his departure but I couldn't find any. Can you tell us why? Are you still in touch with him?

I think he decided to take care of his side-projects and focus on those alone, and then his recording studio.


12. Giuseppe has been replaced by David Folchitto and I must say it's quite strange to hear another drumming style after all these years. I found he brought something different to Novembre, a more heavy touch as the songs are. How was it working with a new drummer? Did it change the way you felt your music?

Well David was quite full of work during that period so he had to study the drums of 12 songs in a very short time and I guess he would have done much more if only he had the time. But that was okay with us and the man was really, really available to change parts when we asked. He recorded everything very quickly, he just took three and a half days to record 12 songs and if you’re a little confident with drum recording times you will know that it is real fast.


13. Novembre is mostly associated to you and Massimiliano, probably because of all the line-up changes in the band and the early departure of Giuseppe. Do you think you found a stable line-up with Fabio Fraschini and David Folchitto this time?

As you mentioned the official lineup as of now it's just me and Massimiliano. Fabio have always been an external member of the band and so is David, and so are two other guys that are going to tour with us. Let's see how things go and I'm always open to broaden the lineup.


14. Is there a tour planned to support this new release?

Yes indeed we are going to tour Italy starting by the 9th of April and we are going to visit a bunch of cities from the north to the South, and then probably in Autumn we're going to tour Europe. Nothing is set for sure yet we will inform you guys later.


15. Giuseppe is now a member of the gothic doom band The Foreshadowing. The band will release its 4th album at the end of April and I can say that it's a great advantage to have such a drummer! Do you know their music? Did you get the chance to listen to his work with this band?

Sure, I like this band and I like a lot the singer. He has an amazing voice.


16. As a fan of Novembre I couldn't miss the tribute "A Treasure to Find" which contains some interesting versions of tracks from your discography by different artists (mostly Italian) - especially the "Valentine" of Lenore S. Fingers almost as great as the original. I guess you listened it too, no? Were you involved in the making of it? And do you know these artists, are they friends of you?

No I wasn't involved in that and I was very happy and flattered to hear about it. I want to thank the bands that took part in it. Only recently I met the guys from Shores of Null with whom we're going to play a couple of gigs together next month and also I know Alba di Morrigan.


17. I always wanted to get a few words from you about your discography. If you don't mind, could you tell me what's in your mind about all your previous albums:

- Wish I Could Dream It Again...: It's a great album. It has great songs in it, we were very inexperienced but I still love it.

- Arte Novecento: that is a very cold album. I don't feel very attached to it right now but I have been more in the past. Sometimes I listen to some of its parts and they are still amazing.

- Classica: I'm real proud of it. There’s finally good musicianship and production. The result was great.

- Novembrine Waltz: it’s great too but I'm not so crazy about the mix of and sometimes a bad mix can make you hate the album, but I still love the songs.

- Dreams d'Azur: that was kind of a revenge for being so inexperienced in the first album.. We re-recorded all the songs with the skills that we had developed in the years. 

- Materia: it has amazing moments but there something off with that album. I know people love it and i do too, but just at times.

- The Blue: The Blue is an album that I really like but mix is pretty much too over distorted and that was done too quickly. So many details weren’t taken care of and it was such a shame.


18. What are your plans for the next weeks and for the future? I wouldn't mind if you could release another album before I get 40 ;)

I don't know when you're going to be 40 but I can assure we are already thinking to do something new which will probably be a mini album. This time it will be written together with Massimiliano and I actually can't wait. That said, we are getting ready for the coming tour that I mentioned before.


19. What are you listing to these days? Anything great to recommend to our readers?

I'm listening to random music, pop and rock songs from the 80s. Sometimes I'm on a binge for Pink Floyd, or Dead Can Dance, or Iron Maiden, early Metallica but not at this moment.


20. Thank you very much for taking some of your precious time to answer these questions. The last words are yours.

Thank you for this fantastic interview and I hope to see many of your readers somewhere on the road.