PLAN DE FUGA
– interview –

The new great music reality mixing rock with grunge and pop, has a name tipically spanish and lyrics in english, despite they’re coming from the north of Italy.
Plan De Fuga, from the words of Filippo de Paoli, voice-guitar and main author of the band, chatting with me about “In A Minute”, Nirvana, Mars Volta & The Cure (and much more), italian music scene and the hope of escaping from the daily realiy, through music.

Your biography reveales that you formed in 2005, and only after lots of gigs, and a demo (2006), it’s in 2009 that you’ve spread out your first album, “In A Minute”. Why not before?
FDP:  We’ve been working a lot on our songs, on our live set and our sounds.
We’ve always been very instinctive and we needed to bring order to our ideas.
We’ve been searching for our own style, in order to give to our Italian touch an “international usability”.
We all wanted our music to be as personal as possible but we also wanted to let everyone know where our inspiration comes from, our musical background.
We started from musical history, always trying to give our interpretation of it.
We decided to learn how to produce a record, from the recordings to the mastering process, it took a lot of time and energy but it was worth it.
In Italy if you play Rock music and you sing in English you have to be much more than just “believable” to actually do something. 
– And what about the creation of the songs of the album, and the evolution of your writing and recording sessions in that 5 years?
FDP:  Now we really know each other, what we like and what we’re able to do together. We all work on sounds and arrangements and everyone of us is important in every single step of our production process. We all have a temper, so we needed to learn our way.

– You’re italian, but with lyrics in english…
FDP:  I write lyrics in English since when I was very young, it is a very natural thing for me, even if I know my limits and I don’t pretend to be a native English or American speaker.
Our dream is to spread our musical message as far as possible, language is a mean.

– Rock influences, mixed with catchy-pop, dark attitude and post-grunge echoes…
FDP:  We’ve all been listening to a lot of music in our life. We all have different tastes and we love to “mix our souls”. Our music is a crossover of moods, colours and sounds.

– And what are the artists that have influenced you most, and the ones you’d love to collaborate with?
FDP:  It’s actually very hard for us to answer this question. We’ve always been listening to a lot of different styles of music. We love Music in almost all its forms. I could try and mention:
Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Doors, Black Sabbath, Bob Marley, The Smiths, The Clash, The Cure, The Queen, Nirvana and “Grunge” in general, Motorpsycho, Deus, Marlene Kunz, Faith no more, Guns and Roses, Metallica, Jeff Buckley, Beastie Boys, Almamegretta, At the Drive In, Curtis Mayfield, Chemical Brothers, Afterhours, Iron Maiden, Nine Inch Nails, Lemonheads, Manchester Orchestra, The Frames, Tv on the Radio, Astor Piazzolla, Mars Volta, Dave Matthews, Radiohead, Stereophonics, Pantera, Ani di Franco, Massive Attack, Damien Rice, Paolo Conte, Fabrizio De Andrè, Paolo Benvegnù, Vinicio Capossela and many other Italian songwriters, Nick Drake, Bad Religion, Karate, U2, Trail of dead… but we also love Dance, Classical, Black and Popular music.
In our own small way, we try and blend different styles, so we’d like to collaborate with many, many, many musicians.

– 5 albums at the bases of Plan De Fuga’s inspiration…
FDP:  Impossible. More likely 50…

– What’s your opinion about today italian music scene? Do you think it’s possible to define the independent scene or not? And how, in your opinion, the media (from magazines, to music tvs and webzine, for example) can really influence people in listening or even loving some artists and not others? And do you think there’s really a lack of music culture in common people, so?
FDP:  The Italian music scene is very rich and fruitful but fragmentary in my opinion. We all should unite to get more attention from the media. Actually there is a lack of musical culture, that’s why artists and musicians should try and claim more visibility from National tv channels and big networks. The web works very well among people who have the time and desire to search for something, but it’s not enough to reach the mass of people and try to actually change something.

– You’re 4 men involved in music, from Plan De Fuga project, to working as author, with other bands in the past or with other artists in their recording sessions and also for tv and movies: what about this versatility? And how the combination between you 4 is so functional to your project?
FDP:  Versatility is at the basis of Plan De Fuga’s work. We all feel like we need to learn as much as possible to be really “independent” and always more professional.
The combination of everything we like leads inevitably to chaos but from chaos, in time, comes beauty.

– Art, music & cinema in today’s society: what must be done?
FDP:  For what concerns Italy…definitely more confidence, more interest, and much more money.

More info:
www.plandefuga.it
Video:
“Twice” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov9LG2I1AnY

by Ilaria Rebecchi

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