Winstons: ““Third” is our easiest album to listen to”

It is difficult to give a rigid definition of group when talking about Winstonsperhaps the term “super group” is better suited, made up of entities free to move in the musical panorama, linking their name and art to different realities.

However, when the three unite under the common name they become like three brothers: the Winstons precisely.

Roberto Dellera (bass and vocals) becomes Rob Winston, Lino Gitto (drums) is Linnon Winston ed Enrico Gabrielli (vocals, keyboards and horns) is Enro Winston. From separated the three components they boast collaborations with illustrious names such as Afterhours, Calibro 35, Pj Harvey and Iggy Pop, just to name a few. Together they have assets significant live performances and have collaborated with artists such as Richard Sinclair (Caravan), Mick Harvey (Bad Seeds) and Nic Cester (Jet). They also covered “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn” live in 2017 with Marco Fasolo and Alberto Ferrari.

Preceded by the single “Never, Never, Never” the Winstons release “Third” the third album that comes after the homonymous debut album (2016), a live (“Live in Rome”), a second work “Smith” (2019).

Roberto Dellera and Enrico Gabrielli talked to us about “Third”.

You are in three, it is the third album and it is called “Tre”. Three is the perfect number so this is the perfect album?
(Gabrielli) No, it’s rather a difficult album to make but easy to listen to. Difficult because the third job is always difficult: it represents the closure of a triangle, the apex of a prism. It was then complicated to fit the work on the album with all our other commitments, but in the end it’s the easiest Winstons album to listen to. AND also designed with the idea of ​​being listened to again, even lighter than the others, a little more immediate and usable, the previous ones were a little less so… I think. In my opinion it is the best that could be done, in the sense that it was made with all possible choices, with ideas, plans, a narrative and even gaps. I like. It’s a Winstons album that I will listen to very often, even compared to the others, which are more mysterious than this one, more characterized by progressive 60s-70s sounds. Here you can also breathe another type of horizon and this is good for the album.

On the other hand, five years have passed since the previous one, so you thought carefully about this “Third”
(Gabrielli) THE Winstons they were born technically in 2013. The first tour, however, we did in 2016 and made two records, the last it was 2019. They weren’t all years spent working on a new job but they were strange, years of a slightly complicated life. Personally, I moved in Turin for five and a half years, then I finally returned to Milan. And then there was the pandemic in the middle, which in any case destroyed an entire chain of live and night life, which was also the main lifeblood for the Winstons. We were not born as a “project”, but like three friends who have always been together in various things. With the pandemic this was interrupted and therefore forced us to stay away and the distance was not easy. Then, fortunately, we went to this studio, which is the Bach Studio, of Toto Cutugno and he was still alive. During the pandemic it was our resource, we went to make music in there, to drink, to smoke cigarettes (the ones from which we take our name). AND little by little, the new work took shape, which still required a lot of concentration.

Before you said that this album is different. How has your music changed?
(Dellera) It has changed together with us, as we have changed, and with the circumstances. We don’t necessarily have a working method, a planning of our path. Often in the studio we played with instruments that were not ours that we found there and different instruments definitely make you change the sound, but also the approach to creating musical pieces. We wrote a lot, but also discarded a lot. One song again comes from the studio in England, by Luke Oldfield – Mike’s son, where we recorded most of the previous album but most of it is recorded in studios in Italy. We ended up with a series of songs that were much more “theatrical”, more soundtrack-like, if you will. In general, there is more narration, lots of words. “Third” is a less good album psychedelic, less “Floydian”, with more storytelling, more medleys and many pieces with sudden scene changes.

Especially in the very long ones that seem like different songs linked together. Is this your working method or are these things that happen?
(Dellera) We pushed to have “Break the Seal” (an almost 13 minute song) at the beginning of the album, because in fact it is representative. The song is the result of a “merchandise exchange”. We worked on another project at Morricone’s studio in Rome. In return we had a day of work, a day of recording for ourselves, for our own things. Enrico had some family problems so Lino and I couldn’t come at the last minute we went playing with maximum freedom. We have we recorded tracks, ideas and we put it all together. Then we returned to Milan with these files and we continued with Enrico, until we declared the end and made a point. It could have become a one-hour piece, but we stopped.

It seems like a very progressive method to me, linked to the seventies.
(Gabrielli) We have made peace with the chaos, because we have a very complicated side of managing our personal dysfunctions, neurotic tics, but we are abandoned to trying to be a unique case, in this sense, because none of us is anxious, which is quite typical of those who deal with popular music in general. There is this desire to frame the boundaries, the structure; for us the current is something that is completely based on a flow, a flow of things that happen. Even the people we work with join at a certain point along the way, they adapt, they marry with us. For example Pazzi Design, exceptional graphic designers, who did all the graphic design work. There was also a desire, probably more than Lino, to get rid of our gloom. There is less material from instrumental music, breaks, fewer bubbles of extreme psychedelia, but we move more towards the 70s, from Elton John’s point of view, there is much more Elton John than Soft Machine.

And there are also the Beatles…
(Dellera) Always!

The structure of the album is strange. How come there are among the nine tracks very long songs and a series with more “canonical” lengths?
(Gabrielli) At the beginning there was vaguely the concept of the third Soft Machine album, which is also called “Third” and which had three long songs. In reality the starting idea was that of a macro piece and three small pieces. Then everything blew up because the “short” songs we were doing they were dense, full, loaded, certainly not fillers.

The final result gives the idea of ​​a lot of improvisation, a concept of jam, of expansion. Is that so?
(Gabrielli) In part. For example, let it be “Break The Seal” than “Vinegar Way” are “built” by assembling, with a very specific idea, fragments of studio sessions, of jams perhaps born at 3 in the morning in the recording room.

How much does Winston’s music reflect your personal tastes?
(Gabrielli) We are not a “fixed”, “closed” band like Verdena, Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti or many other musical realities could be. With our careers we are used to crossing paths with each other, Roby and I played in the Afterhours together for example, but also being with other artists. However, when Roby, Lino and I become Winstons we embody a soul that we have inside and which is probably one of the strongest in the world. We seem like three guys who came out of a different historical era and even when we’re live, as a power trio we embody that thing. It’s us, we also change our minds, as sometimes happens with certain relationships, like Japanese robots when they meet, merge, become one. Normally, when we are separated, we have a great capacity for reasoning, logic, thought and organisation, we are people when there are three of us we make a single brain, so we essentially change our attitude towards life, we become nocturnal, inscrutable, we become much stronger than when we are alone.

How will these compositions change live?
(Gabrielli) Uncertainty will accompany us throughout our existence, but having made peace with chaos, we know nothing, until we go on stage.
(Dellera) We will seek our faithfulness. There are selections to make, especially on Enrico’s part, there are parts in the studio where there are keyboards superimposed on the wind instruments, moments where Enrico cannot play Rhodes, organ and many other instruments together, it will be decided which one to give greater importance to. But it will be interesting to arrange because there will also be instrument changes and in my opinion, that will be the interesting part, I’ve already fantasized a bit a list, we could also do some historical evidence.
(Gabrielli) After concerts I never want to talk about what happened, Roby sometimes tries but Lino and I don’t want to know anything. Once the concert is over, life begins, we don’t care what happened. I don’t want to try to think about correcting, fixing things. Lino and I agree on this: The concert is the concert, whatever happens happens, we go down and change the scenery.