Click Interview with Waveshard: ‘Nothing Is Too Weird Or ‘Wrong’ To At Least Try To Play On It’
Click Interview with Waveshard
I last discovered the self-titled debut-album of Waveshard. This project is driven by Italian musicians Adriano Vincenti (synth, sampler, drum programming) and Giovanni Leonardi (synth, field recording, bass, drum programming) plus Belgian musician Izzy Op de Beeck (flugelhorn, trumpet, alt horn). They’re also involved in other music projects but for Waveshard they’ve been joined by female singer Simona Navasinskiene. The album “Waveshard” has been released by the Bulgarian label Corvus Records and revealed an impressive and authentic production; kind of mix between Dark-Jazz, Experimental music and Chanson featuring Simona’s fragile timbre of voice on top. I’d an instant crush listening to this masterpiece. I asked a few questions to Lizzy Op De Beeck and Adriano Vincenti.
(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)
Q: Tell us a bit more about your own music background and how did you come to set up Waveshard?
Izzy: Adriano and Giovanni, the main composers for Waveshard, have a background in Power-Electronics and Dark-Jazz bands and play in, amongst many others: Macelleria Mobile Di Mezzanotte (MMM), Detour Doom Project/Ensemble and Neo-Folk band L’Amara. For myself, I play flugelhorn for 40 years now in a brassband in Belgium, but also played keyboards in Belgian Black-Metal band Avatar in the ’90s-‘00s. Also I am main composer of Ambient-Industrial-Symphonic project For Greater Good. So you see, Metal, Dark-Jazz, Electronic, Ambient, Symphonic, even oriental and Trip-Hop/Turntablism, nothing is too weird or ‘wrong’ to at least try to play on it. I love a challenge, and everything is influence for me, even a simple Pop song will contain elements and traces of interesting stuff in it.
Waveshard came to happen when Adriano very enthusiastically (as he always is:) sent me a raw vocal file, recorded on the phone if I remember correctly, and this was Simona’s. ‘We need this lady to sing on a new project IZ!!! This will be the breakthrough! I feel it!’ he said. And well… he was not wrong 🙂
And because with a line-up change we always want a new name to distinguish this new project from others, Waveshard was born.
Q: So you last year released your self-titled debut-album which is clearly influenced by a Dark-Jazz format and Experimental music. What else can you say about your sources of inspiration and what did you try to achieve in the sound approach?
Izzy: For me personally I am always inspired by everything, as I stated before. I have a lot of experience playing old classic compositions, so I will always look for a main melody or sound to ‘hook’ on and play. With most of the Adriano/Giovanni project, I will try to bend toards a more Dark-Jazz feel, it just comes naturally every time. With Simona in our project, I think we wanted to make the most of her fantastic voice and make a sound somewhere between Jazzy, Experimental, and Electronic but in a more dreamscape setting without too much harsher elements. I think we did quite well for our first attempt.
Q: How do you look back at the writing and recording of the album? And tell us a bit more about the composing process? What’s the input of each member and the guest musicians?
Izzy: Most of the time our workflow is the same with all projects… Giovanni and Adriano make the main pieces, melodies and clusters of sounds, the skeleton on which we are going to drape the rest, tooters and vocals. They then send it to me and the other contributors (Simona in this case) and we start weaving a body around the skeleton. Then the song goes back and forth a couple of times between all the members until a song is finished.
This way, you will start with a more Experimental/Soundscape/Electronics setup (Giovanni and Adriano), where I will do a more Jazzy counteraction, or sometimes following the experiment with some weird noises on the tooters. Simona adds her unique husky and soft voice which in Waveshard creates an almost ethereal, dreamy layer which connects and tucks in all the elements like a soft blanket in a dark, dreary night. I have to add, thanks to Simona’s voice, my sound approach with the flugelhorn was also more soft and dreamy than in other projects I did with the guys.
Q: Adriano, how did you get in touch with Izzy Op de Beeck and what do you like in his play?
Adriano: Izzy is one of the best trumpeters and instrumentalists in the Dark-Jazz scene in my opinion. I had great experiences with him in the Detour Doom Project/Ensemble and also in Macelleria Mobile Di Mezzanotte and Senketsu No Night Club. When I think of a dark melancholic trumpet and Dark-Jazz I can’t help but think of him.
Q: How important are the vocals to the music you’re composing?
Izzy: Simona’s voice was, for me, the new element in this project and a very important factor in the atmosphere of Waveshard. Her voice adds that ethereal layer that makes this project unique.
Q: What brings the future for Waveshard and are there plans to play live?
Izzy: Knowing the guys, I’m almost sure they will send me some new bits and pieces very soon to start working on new songs haha! Live playing is something I would love to do, but with people from all over the continent trying to make that work will become a difficult and above all expensive undertaking. But never say never.
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