Coez: “The DC Fontaines inspired my new album”

Coez takes a jump back to make one forward and dare again. The singer -songwriter, four years after the solo “fly” and two from the joint with Frah Quintale “Lovebars”, on Friday 13 June, publishes “Summer 1998”, a record that draws from the sounds and imagination of the 90s, inspired by the music, life experiences and the stories that accompanied the adolescence of the Roman singer -songwriter. A pop album, as a return to melody, dense and granitic from the sound point of view on which texts agitated by a shiny melancholy are inserted. From November onwards it will present it live with a tour in the buildings. “Summer 1998”, for his processing and for how he will be presented on stage, has several elements of novelty for Coez’s career, who has never wanted to follow the trends, but on several occasions he dictated them.

Often your pen is exalted, but there is also an important musical work in this project. Where did you start from?
This is my first disc without a real unique producer. Let me explain: all my albums have always had a figure that in the end packed everything. At this tour, after working with several producers on the trail of the new album, I thought: who could find the‘amalgam? In the end I decided: I am so proud of these sounds that I will be that figure. It is the first time that happens, I had never held this role as “artistic director”.

The roots of this corposian pop-rock sound from the 90s from where do they come from?
“Flying” and “Lovebars” with Frah Quintale, in which I had to find a balance with his way of making music, are two records closest to the rap world. Of course, everything is filtered in my way, but they are certainly more rap. After the work and the tour with Frah, I felt the desire to return to the tools. The concept came towards the end of the disk processing, I realized that we have drawn since the 90s, by a sound that I have always loved, but that strangely I had not yet pulled out. With the Boom of the Indie, in reality, we were more related to the Italian 80s song. Here instead I look abroad and the following decade.

There is not only a sound new, but also of writing: you have collaborated with several authors.
Yes, it wasn’t a record that I worked completely alone. I like to call it “the choral album of a soloist”. There are many people who have joined me and entered “my mobile study”, I have in fact taken various locations in different places to write the project. I set up real writing teams that served me and attended names such as Dargen D’Amico, Davide Simonetta, Jacopo Ettorre and others. My idea has always been to make different records and in this case, also from a structural point of view, not only of the sound, I respected the mission. It was a long job that lasted more than a year.

There is on the use of the authors Always a heated debate. The risk, which some underline, is to create Frankenstein pieces. Your experience?
Take “in smoking”: I wrote up to a certain point, then I had a block. In the past I would have forced myself to close the piece. At this tour no: I took him home with Simonetta. There are those who maybe suggested words to me, some of the melodies, but in the end it was always the ones who have the last word. For me to work with the authors was very useful, if you create the right synergy they offer added value and you can work without making the Frankenstein piece. For example, I immediately been clear: I was introducing hats, I explained where I wanted to go and what to do with the song.

The most surprising aspect?
Who helped me the most in the intimate and personal pieces than in individuals. With hectorre and Okgiorgio, with whom I had never worked, for example we did “Mr. Nobody”, in which I tell my path. It is a song that takes up an old piece, “Nobody son”. I carried on, on a narrative level, the story of my story, I did it pride as if to say: “This is me and I don’t be ashamed of it anymore”.

This record is a concept like it was “I do a mess”?
Yes, if you mean from aesthetic point of view and Vibe. “I make a mess” was an album that blew the genres: rapper came to sing and the singers of rapping. “Summer 1998” is another type of project, but it certainly has an aesthetic and sound pasta concept. It is necessary to understand if there is the right container for such a project. Let me explain: when the Indie exploded, my music was finally appreciated because the right container was created. But I didn’t do anything different than in the past.

How would you define “Summer 1998”?
A suicide (laughs, editor’s note). The market is going on the other side.

Abroad, sounds such as those of “summer 1998” actually work. The container could also arrive here in Italy and in any case the task of an artist is not also to create that container, without following the currents?
And you tell me? I agree. A band like the DC Fontaines, which has been among my references on this project, or Yung Lean, with its Rap-Rock, show that something is actually happening. The fontaines are perhaps the most pussy thing around today. I have always wanted to have different experiences because if you get bored the audience it is a problem, but if it loses the desire to dare the artist is really over.

What matters more than everything?
The career. Look back, see your different albums from the other. This is why I always want to do things I have never done, without losing some of my peculiarities such as my multiple identity.

What will this album be like?
We played it in a small club in London to the old woman, without sequences, without double rumors. Directed as the 90s sound. Do you know that even in the buildings I would like to bring it like this? Played, with the real battery and with the band. I, who grew up with rap, never totally appreciated the sound of the real battery, I always liked to manipulate it. Instead, in this lap I really think we will do this: concerts all played practically in every aspect, from start to finish.

Is “Summer 1998” a disk on loss?
Yes, in some situations it is definitive. There is also talk of death. The title track speaks of a person I have lost in the most brutal way. I had promised myself not to make a song on this event. A bit like when I said: “I will not make a song about my mother”, but in the end “and Yo mom” came out. They are those people, personal, who do not need too many explanations….

“Summer 1998” is your “heaps” of 883?
Yes, the theme is that (drug addiction, editor’s note). But I do not explain everything, I don’t enter so deeply on the matter, because in the end the protagonist of this song is a person that everyone at least once in his life could have met, we could be that person. The piece speaks of those who leave. My song, unlike “heaps”, remains “open”, explains nothing by thread and by sign. For me the songs must be like this.

“Rome at night” with Franco126 and Tommaso Paradiso is a sort of hymn to your city?
In “flying” I got closer to the rappers that I have always estimated, from Noyz Narcos to Gué. Here I got closer to the songwriters and those artists with whom for some time we were united by the “indie” label. When you are too inserted in something, something comes to exhale. Now, however, nobody finally talks about Indie anymore. And then we went back to collaborate together.