Here you can read an interview with Pietro of http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=3869 - CORAL CAVES

Thanks to James Russel (Finnforest) for the help...

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file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - - Please, could you tell us something about Coral Caves beginnings?

file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - Coral Caves were born in winter 2001 on my initiative and of the first drummer of the band (Stefano Bartolomei). We were both coming out from different musical experiences and, to tell you the truth, we hadn’t a clear idea of what we wanted to do, the only things we were sure of were: giving up hard rock to take a musical path that sooner or later would lead us to compose our own music. So we decided to form a tribute band dedicated to Pink Floyd: in Palermo nobody else used to play their music and they were one of our favourite bands. I contacted Dario who introduced to me Salvadores and Lucio... Along with us, many bassist and drummers came and went in the line up, until Massimiliano joined us and I decided to play the bass in addition to my singer role.

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file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - Our main influences come from all the music of the period from the mid sixties to 1977, in my opinion the golden age for music in general, not only for prog. We used to listen to Genesis, Deep Purple, ELP, King Crimson, Camel, Queen, Yes, Credence Clearwater Revival, Doors, Quatermass, along with Italian musicians such as PFM, Lucio Battisti, Le Orme or Il Balletto di Bronzo... Then, as far as I am concerned, I have never denied my great love for Frank Sinatra! At the moment we are trying to pay more attention to the music broadcasted by the radio stations... Sometimes it could be an appalling experience but we do not like do be “musical hermits” and every now and again (although not really so often) we can find something good even in “modern music”.

file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - - file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - - We love progressive more than any other rock subgenre, but we do not like to be labelled in any way. We do not write music with the aim to play progressive, we are just trying to compose music that mirrors our personal taste, without any constraint. We do not believe to “invent” our pieces... In some way it’s like they already exist and we just remember them. For this reason we are not ashamed to write a piece that lasts 3 minutes or another in a conventional song form, we do not follow canons nor rules... All in all progressive was born to break rules, wasn’t it?

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file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - - Could you briefly describe the content of your lyrics?

file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - - If you ask this question to Salvadores he would answer that some of them are love songs while others tell about Pietro’s crazy fancies! To tell you the truth some are really love songs because we are anyhow romantic and we live the shivering of our young age... Anyway the other lyrical contents swing from “philosophy” (like “Il dolce canto della terra” and “Mitopoiesi”) to politics (“Sorridi”, “Tenochtitlàn”) to storytelling (“Torno a casa”)... I wrote all the lyrics on “Mitopoiesi” except “Senza di me” that was written by Dario. Like the music, I do not think to “invent them”, it’s the music that inspires the words to me. -   file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml -  

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file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - - Who produced the album? Did someone help you during the recording sessions in studio?

file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - We self produced the album but our sound engineer Renato D’Anna helped us very much during the studio work along with Al Dilio, an experienced Sicilian musician who also made a present to us composing especially for us a little musical pearl on “Mitopoiesi”. What a wonderful present! In studio we have always accepted with constructive attitude their advice because we think that a detached and objective opinion coming from someone who isn’t involved like us in the song-writing is very important, especially when the work is almost finished. 

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file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - - How did it start your collaboration with Mellow Records and what was exactly Mellow Records role into the album release?

file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - - In 2006 we had already recorded four of the nine tracks of our album on the “Promo” (later remixed along with the new tracks), and we started to send our CDs to some labels to find out what they think about our work. I think that Mellow Records was the first one we considered because of its great tradition and because of the renowned professionalism and competence of Mauro Moroni. We were pleased and honoured to know that Mauro had appreciated our songs and, once collected enough money, we went back into studio to record the other five tracks. After the recording sessions, Mellow Record took charge and didn’t disappoint us thanks to the high quality of mastering, print and supports. -  

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file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - Our videos are born just for fun... We had been contacted by a student organisation called “Giovane Sicilia” that was organising a TV program dealing with culture and topical subjects managed only by students at the Palermo University. They thought to give us some space in the programs and we made the videos that you can watch on our website just because there were too many technical problems to play live in the studios. We had much fun with this experience and we have to thank director Claudio Palazzolo who worked hard for free to release the videos. At the moment we have no plans to release a DVD but we like the idea. Anyway we would prefer a live DVD with these videos as “bonus tracks”, preferably remixed and edited in some parts.

file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - - file:///C:/DOCUME~1/Jim/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_filelist.xml - - In Sicily there are a lot of people playing wonderful music and we are happy of that. However there is a shortage of places where to play original music and it’s really hard to go on. In some way we are able to play live in our city planning by ourselves our live activities but we are looking for a good manager or an agency doing it for us... Our dream is to play abroad, in places where our music could be well received.

Enjoyed reading the interview Andrea, nice one!