Kendra: Being from a musically inclined family, did you know early on that this was going to be a path you followed and did that then take some pressure off of you when you in fact did move for your career?

Alessia Labate: I always knew I wanted to do music but wasn’t brave enough to dedicate myself fully in it until I moved out at 18. I wanted to go to Uni, but I’m glad I didn’t.

Kendra: Let’s talk about “Conversations with Myself.” Your single that dropped in March. An amazing addition to the pop realm that you penned before the world took a drastic turn last year when you were abroad. Where were you visiting and what about that location ignited a creative spark in you?

Alessia Labate: I wrote the song in Bucharest, it was my first trip to the HaHaHa Studios and I was full of energy and wanted to give my best every session. The day I wrote “Conversations with Myself” I was with Serban Cazan, he has multiple #1 hits in Romania, and I let his chords inspire me. We wrote the melody together and I wrote the lyrics by myself, it was a natural process, I really needed to put out those words.

Kendra: When it came time to record, you did so with R I V I E R A. What was it like working with them, and what do you feel they brought out in you when recording?

Alessia Labate: I actually recorded there in Bucharest with Serban, we kept the demo vocals because they had the right attitude and vibe, even though I spell a couple of words weird, like “Sorry” in the pre; we liked it like this.

Kendra: During the various lockdowns during COVID, remaining on the healthy side of sanity was hard for so many around the world. From reading to jogging to music, we all had to find something – anything – to keep our heads right. For you, it was music. Were you spending as much time creating your own as much as you were listening to records that perhaps lifted your spirits?

Alessia Labate: My coping mechanism was working like CRAZY, sometimes not eating and not taking showers for days and that helped me out in some weird way. Some records kept me alive, I started listening to foreign music a lot, especially Swedish music. My memories are not too clear though, it feels like ages ago. The more I spend time into this pandemic the more I feel I tend to forget about the past.

Kendra: By the time this interview is seen by more than our eyes, the video for “Conversations with Myself” should be out. It will feature you fighting with your ego. That scenario made me think of the impact social media has had on society, and the idea that we all have at least two sides; real life and online. With the majority of us spending so much time online in the past year, do you feel like many are going to struggle with their online egos when trying to assimilate back into reality?

Alessia Labate: That’s an interesting take on it! Yes, I feel like we struggle with ego A LOT, on-and-offline. We should learn to love ourselves deeply a little more and be a little less proud. Pride fucks up a LOT of things.

Kendra: It’s getting a little easier with the vaccine rollouts, but it’s still kind of hard to have a definite answer when it comes to future plans given the current state of everything, but as far as what you can control when it comes to your career and creativity – what do you have planned in the coming months for yourself?

Alessia Labate: I planned out a couple of things but we don’t know what the future has got in store for us. I hope I’m gonna be able to make those happen safely.

The post Conversations with Alessia Labate appeared first on ZO Magazine.

As the world watched Italy fight the pandemic earlier this year from around the world, LMNL was living it. A few months with just his thoughts and cats wasn’t easy but he came out of it and is now focused on giving the world his latest EP this month. We talked about its lead single “Moonlight Cinema,” big screen sounds (thank you to him – I will be checking out his movie mentions!), and more in this back and forth…

Kendra: When you packed up and went from Oxford to Florence, was the move based on your music career?

LMNL: No, that’s a whole other story! The comedian Henning Wehn says that people move countries for one of two reasons, either they want to broaden their horizons and experience new people and cultures, or they weren’t needed back home. I’m still not sure which category I fall into, although I suspect it’s the latter! Pretty much all I had in my car when I moved were instruments though, which tells you a lot about my priorities.

Kendra: You’ve had much success in music before this year and your August 2020 EP. Do you feel that it is based on your ability to shine in a variety of genres?

LMNL: I guess that has helped but to be honest I just like lots of different types of music and I’m interested in how they are made. Working with dance producers Glowal, I got to see how they approach writing and producing and that had an effect on this record. Also, I think with musical magpies, we get bored pretty easily and as soon as we see something new and shiny then we’re off in a new direction.

Kendra: Speaking of your eponymous EP, you did almost everything on the record. Have you always been the type of person who likes to take on the world with minimal help?

LMNL: I think that’s fair to say. I’ve found that when I try to write in a group there tend to be too many compromises and concessions, and so being able to do everything in my little home studio means that I can write what I want and work on it when I want, and that suits me. I always bring in someone else on the mixing phase though, so that we have a different set of ears in the project.

Kendra: The lead single, “Moonlight Cinema” gave me flashbacks to the wonderful world of video game sounds. Were you influenced at all by the gaming world when constructing the music for this track?

LMNL: It wasn’t intentional but now that you say that, I can hear how the melody on the synth that goes through the song could easily have been a soundtrack on the Gameboy back in the day.

Kendra: Sticking with the cinema, if you had to compare your EP with a movie from the past decade – which would be by and why?

LMNL: Well, I am a proper film bore so I’m very happy you asked this and I will try to keep my answer to a reasonable length! I’m a really big fan of Céline Sciamma, particularly ‘Girlhood’ and ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire,’ which are sensationally good films, but one that had a real influence around that time would have been ‘Eighth Grade’ by Bo Burnham. It’s a coming-of-age film based around a girl’s last week in middle school but the insecurities and doubts that she faces are something that I still feel keenly now, and what it shows is how some of these things don’t get any easier, no matter how much older you get.

Kendra: How do you feel all the events of 2020 have shaped your creativity and drive moving forward?

LMNL: I found the lockdown pretty tough, we had fairly strict controls here in Italy and so really it was just me and the cats for three months, and when you write about your own life then that’s not much in the way of source material. I think that with the virus and (hopefully) the changes that protest movements will bring about around the environment and removing barriers to opportunity for Black people, it’s clear that we’re living through historically significant times and this will inevitably have an influence on what people create as they reassess the world they live in, whether they are aware of it or not. That said, I tend to focus on smaller details in everyday life so maybe not so much in my case. Which is a long way of saying that I don’t know!

Kendra: Usually, this is where I ask people what they have planned in the coming months but with the world in a strange place right now, plans aren’t as concrete as they typically are. You can go ahead and let us know what you have tentatively planned but can you also share a song that never fails to get you through when the world around you feels like a mess?

LMNL: Ah, remember plans! I’ve got a few collaborations with producers that are already done and may or may not be coming out over the next few months, depending on where we are. I think that if you want to try and understand the world as it is now then you can’t go wrong by hearing what people like Killer Mike and Saul Williams have to say about it. If I want to escape it for a while though, “Astral Weeks” by Van Morrison never fails to calm me down when I’m stressed or angry. There’s something about the casual and natural rhythm of the guitar in songs like the heavenly Madame George that have the same effect as listening to the lapping of waves, it’s just so soothing. And I think the way that Van sounds so at home in his skin, there’s something reassuring about that.

The post LMNL: Shining in the Moonlight appeared first on ZO Magazine.

Kendra: It was a whole different world for musicians when you started back in 2003 than it is today. What significant changes in the industry do you feel have aided in the continuation of your career?

Claudio Conti: I guess the main thing that aided me is the experience. The experience of having started in a world without likes and followers, which currently really bothers me and also overshadows a lot of amazing musicians/talented artists. The experience of having only a room, a notebook, a pen, a guitar, silence, and a tune in my head. This is what mainly aided me and this is how I still work today. With the awareness of the past.

Kendra: It’s been noted that ‘Frail Boats’ is your most mature record to date. With that, how would you say that’s true when standing it side by side with our debut 2008 EP?

Claudio Conti: Well, when I started recording in a studio after years of home recordings I began to be very attentive and receptive to what was the whole process from pre-production until the mixing and post-production. I was about 26 at the time and I tried to absorb and understand as much as possible from a session. So if you put those early songs besides the ones in ‘Frail Boats,’ the difference is astounding because back then I had a lot of ideas but had to be channeled properly.

I am satisfied with how we managed to give life to ‘Frail Boats’ but I must say that being very demanding with myself, you can always get more from a song or an album, and that’s my regular mindset, that is, never being fully satisfied to get your next songs better than your past body of work. Just imagine you have to climb a golden pyramid during your time on this planet. To get to the top you must mind those narrow slippery steps and never look down.

Kendra: Where was your headspace at when the lyrics started to form for “Wrest?”

Claudio Conti: Having lived many years in big cities I’ve always wanted to depict how the buildings and the noise distract you from the soulful things that really matter. An urban context is very alluring but even if you don’t admit that you don’t really need it and it doesn’t care for you. That’s the “Wrest” concept. You know, but you lie to yourself.

Kendra: With the album oftentimes exploring existentialism, is it safe to assume you spend some of your free time with your nose in a philosophy book?

Claudio Conti: I’m an avid reader. I read anything from classics to poetry books, from philosophy to psychology. From biographies to astrology. So returning to your answer yes, I spent some of my time with my nose on a philosophy book. My main influences come from Italian literature and hermeticism (Calvino, Levi, Pirandello, Pasolini, Moravia, Montale, Ungaretti, Campana, Sereni) and American literature (writers such as the Beats, Mailer, Miller, Chandler, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams and poets like Crane, William Carlos Williams, T.S Eliot, Pound, Kees, Plath, Roethke, Creeley, and many others).

Kendra: Other than these bigger than life ideas, you’re also influenced by the sounds that came from LA and San Francisco during the ‘60s. Looking at those two cities today, which do you feel has maintained their musical essence most?

Claudio Conti: I spent more than a year in LA and I know those hills will always give resources to a creative person. Los Angeles has always reinvented itself; not losing its roots. In the sixties with the Beach Boys, the Doors, the Byrds, Love. In the seventies with Tim Buckley, Gene Clark, Gram Parsons, Tim Hardin, David Ackles. In the eighties with the wonderful Paisley Underground. In the nineties and in the new century with Grant Lee Buffalo, Elliot Smith, Carla Bozulich, Earlimart, Bodies of Water.

This city has never lost its dry, sandy, lysergic identity and in my personal experience, it’s got the best environment and the best vibrations to write music and reflect. Just think about Leonard Cohen’s “The Future.” He wrote the whole album in LA during the early nineties’ riots and said that this scarred city had a feeling that he couldn’t find anywhere else. I guess there’s uncanny magic there for perceptive people, myself included. I cried so hard when I had to move to London.

Kendra: Usually, this is where I ask people what they have planned in the coming months but with the world in a strange place right now, plans aren’t as concrete as they typically are. You can go ahead and let us know what you have tentatively planned but can you also share a song that never fails to get you through when the world around you feels like a mess?

Claudio Conti: This is the most uncertain time since I was born. I am now living in Italy, my native country and with this virus making new victims every day nothing can be sure. My plans won’t stop anyway. I am very positive about the upcoming radio promotion and the one with Spotify. Unfortunately, I don’t have a label at the moment so the main problem for me will be to organize a tour with a band to further promote the album. I’d love to do it after the summer but being without a manager and a label doesn’t really help me a lot.

As for a song that never fails, to remain in the LA perimeter, I would choose…“Carolyn’s Song” by Rain Parade.

The post Claudio Conti: No Wrest for the Wicked appeared first on ZO Magazine.

Since his start in photography Matteo has dealt with a lot of different types of photography, and that is where we begin this back and forth between a girl whose sole knowledge of basketball are the Monstars and a man who lives and breathed it so much, he made a career after capturing every second of it, and then some.

Kendra: How do those compare and contrast to when you’re on the court or a field with athletes doing what they do to shooting concerts and portraits?

Matteo Marchi: In my life, I think I shot every subject. I started doing press (local newspapers that meant homicides, accidents, gossip, events, and so on) and sports is really my thing. For me, I prefer to catch the moment instead of creating the moment. I have a sort of respect of what I shoot, and I don’t wanna intrude, like a sort of spectator. I get bored pretty easily so I’d like to see (and feel) action close to me: portrait and concerts are just not “action” enough for my taste.

Kendra: Color me insanely jealous because you’ve shot the Olympics, twice. Which event was the most stressful to shoot each time, and did you get to enjoy any of the games as a mere spectator or were you always working and on the go?

Matteo Marchi: The Olympics are the highest thing for people like me: it can’t be bigger than that. But when you are there, it just works, sleep, for a couple of hours every night, and work again. So you don’t “enjoy” as a spectator would do, but you still have the goosebumps of the moments you live. You see everything through the camera, but for me, it is more than enough. It is very stressful, and at the end of the whole thing you feel like you need to sleep for a week, but it’s worth every minute.

Photo Credit: Matteo Marchi

Kendra: Other than a Jordan (because even I’d pick him – Space Jam is my jam), which sports figure do you wish you could’ve shot in their heyday?

Matteo Marchi: I would have loved to shoot three different people, two in basketball and another one outside the field.

1. Magic Johnson, for me, has always been the best basketball player ever. His smile, his way to the hoop, his joy for doing that as a job. That was real showtime!
2. Drazen Petrovic, the Mozart of hoops, died too soon. As a European, he was one of the first guys who America accepted as one of their own. Probably the best Euro guy who ever stepped into the NBA.
3. Mohammed Alì. The real GOAT. No caption needed.

Photo Credit: Matteo Marchi

Kendra: Thinking back to where you started and where you are today, how do you feel you’ve grown as a photographer?

Matteo Marchi: Every single day you grow. And you know what? I always feel like I haven’t been grown enough. This sort of feeling is a sort of curse, but also a blessing because it forces me to push and do my best every single night. When you start feeling like you are at the top, or better than anyone, you stop creating. You stop the hustle, your work is gonna get south. At that point, sell your stuff and change job. It’s time to go.

Kendra: Being based out in New York City, what borough would you say is the most photogenic?

Matteo Marchi: I live in BedStuy, Brooklyn, and my borough is by far the best one. Every corner, in his way, can be photogenic. And it’s getting better every day.
I don’t go out and shoot stuff like that, I think there are enough NYC photographers on Instagram, so no one needs me, but this city, and especially Brooklyn, offers countless opportunities to find great corners and magic locations for your shoots, of whatever subject. You just need to find yours!

Kendra: What do you have going on in the next few months in terms of photography?

Matteo Marchi: Working for NBA, the season is almost over. In mid-April, the regular season comes to an end, and I look forward to maybe shooting some playoff game. In September I will be in China for the FIBA Basketball World Cup. I am very excited. In the meantime, I really hope I will have the chance to spend some time home, in Italy, for a couple of projects that I’d really like to follow on my own. Some of them aren’t really related to photography, but who cares? I am also pursuing the idea about doing a book with my work, but nothing serious yet. I need to find the real inspiration!!!

The post Catching the Moment with Matteo Marchi appeared first on ZO Magazine.

A child born into a military family, Anna G went onto become a lawyer. Today she’s painting portraits with her favorite water-based paints in a small Italian town, but that’s not all. Find out about her decision to walk away from a traditional career, her refugee work and more in this conversation across seas.

Kendra: It wasn’t surprising to learn that you went into law after being raised in a military family. Do you feel like art was your way of breaking away from the expected? Was there any push back from your family when you walked away from law to pursue a career in the arts?

Anna G: Yes, I’d say so. It was a chance to find my own pat and to challenge myself and to explore another culture. Changing profession and countries are life rocking experiences. You leave behind (cultural background and its values, pressures, and expectations) for the unknown perspectives, freedom, and exhilaration, but also fears and insecurities.

In the beginning, It wasn’t easy to convince my parents to let me go. In the end, it was them and my friends who supported and helped me in every way. It would have been easier for them to have a daughter nearby with a safe and predictable job. However, being good parents they understood my nature, creative spirit, and nonconformist personality and gave me the opportunity to try. Now that I’ve got my own children, I understand how difficult it is to make this choice for a parent, not keeping daughter for themselves, but giving her wings and encouragement to fly.

Kendra: You went all in and moved to Italy at 23 to study art. Was there anywhere else in the world that you were thinking about heading?

Anna G: In those days I was not even certain what I wanted to do. I didn’t know if it was fashion or art that would be my future profession. The real difficulty is understanding what you really want to do. So I started looking for fashion institutes. The choice was between New York, London, Paris, and Milan. I had never been to any of those places before. Europe was closer geographically but Italy was cheaper than London and seemed warmer and more welcoming than France to me. I’d been suffering cold in Russia and dreamed of a milder climate. In the end, instinct drove me, as always. The same instinct led me from fashion versus art direction later.

Kendra: Has your favorite medium always been watercolors?

Anna G: Watercolor has been my favourite medium since early childhood It is very common in Russian schools. Since the days of nursery, we are taught the basics of this medium. I think for this reason there are lots of very good watercolorists in Russia. It was an immediate love story with the watercolor.

Kendra: You take photographs and transform them into the most beautiful watercolor pieces. Many revolve around couples which makes sense to me because watercolors have a way of looking romantic. Do you agree with that?

Anna G: Thanks a lot! Yes, the photographs are a great help as references, they are the bases of departure. Sometimes I use mine, very often they are customers to send me their photos.

Watercolor is romantic, delicate, lively, vibrant, spontaneous medium, it lends itself to painting people. Especially children and lovely couples in my case. Watercolor’s natural luminosity seems to be perfect to duplicate the skin’s translucent tones, getting soft and joyful wedding day atmosphere.

Kendra: Where was your art before you joined Etsy in 2017?

Anna G: I’d been working in the fashion industry before, doing illustration. I wasn’t sure I’d become a portrait painter before. I used to paint watercolors to decorate the house, so people began to ask me for paintings of their families and friends. It was a natural process of growth in this direction, one portrait after another became quickly a full-time job for me.

Etsy announced a new professional phase with customers from all over the world, especially from the United States. A fantastic opportunity for an artist based in a small provincial Italian town to get the visibility and an international showcase. Something unthinkable 15 years ago! I am very enthusiastic and grateful to all my clients and creative friends on Etsy and Instagram, who help me to realize my passion, who inspire me and give me the strength to continue with their comments and feedback.

Kendra: You’re not only making an impact on the lives of your customers with your art but are also helping refugees. Can you tell us more about that?

Anna G: This is another advantage of living in a social era. Some tragedies are no longer invisible, there are people who make testimonies, help those in difficulty and invite others to help them with their example. The drama of the refugees is one of the most tragic of our times and we must talk about it, and not ignore the problem. It is very felt in Italy, which welcomes immigrants every day, with a thousand difficulties that there are already in this country. The Italian people are very supportive and ready to help those less fortunate even when their resources are very limited.

I follow UNHCR non-profit organization supporting and protecting refugees. Many of them are women and children. Anyone can help through simple donations on their website (depending on own possibilities). I believe even a small donation can save someone’s life, especially if we’re in many to offer helping hands.

Kendra: What is going on for you and your work in 2019?

Anna G: My goals for the next year are simple. I want to make as many portraits of people as I’m able to do, help as many people as I can, and teach my children kindness, generosity, love, and humility. This is what our world needs.

The post Anna G Arte: Welcoming Wonderful Watercolors appeared first on ZO Magazine.

Kendra: Do you feel the music scene in Italy is as grand as the foodie one?

Carlo Barbagallo: Ahah! Oh no! There’s no comparison in my opinion. Italians do much better food than music for sure! In these times there’s a lot of native song-based or electro-pop shit sung in Italian that is very cooly popular in Italy, but I’m not interested in it! This Italian music for me is like could be the food at a regional Italian patriotic version of Mcdonald’s (and all we know that good marketing can sell anything).

And the indie scene related to this music is too much polluted by some business mechanisms derived by the major ones and suggested by the people that worked around music; the fact is, in my opinion, that there’s a lot of musicians that want to be under high lights and so they use the money from their first job to load a sort of a fake business instead of creating new scenes and ways of making and living music.

But this is just my view and for sure just a portion of what is the music scene in Italy: for me the good things are in the underground where the real musicians, labels, and venues acts, apart from the genres. But maybe this underground music scene belongs more to the entire world, not a single country.

Kendra: What inspired you to get experimental with your sound?

Carlo: I’m almost self-taught in music, as a musician, composer, and sound producer too, so I always experimented with every sound making thing since I was a child. It’s an intuitive approach: trying to make sounds with everything I have in my hands, trying all the ways I could imagine, building my own sound visions mixing every kind of influence from what I live, listen and see.

Kendra: If you had to compare your latest release, 9, to a classic Sicilian dish, which would it be and why?

Carlo: Mmmmm…CAPONATA. A lot of vegetables, a lot of oil.

Kendra: You dropped a cover of one of Chris Cornell’s song this year. Was the because of his death?

Carlo: Yes, I feel that I had to homage him with one of his song I loved, “All Night Thing” from his project Temple of the Dog.

Kendra: Was he someone you looked up to musically?

Carlo: Cornell’s music with Soundgarden was one of my favourite listenings throughout my teenage years and I think they had a great influence on me as a songwriter. Even if today I don’t listen daily their music, once a week some song from Superunknown brain-wormed me! At the same time, I don’t like anything he has done after 1996; I think he could have to quit music there or just after his first solo effort.

Kendra: With the new album out, do you have any other plans for the year? Touring perhaps?

Carlo: Touring everywhere is for sure one of the greatest goals for this year and the next and the next and the next…But there’s a lot of other things in progress, some of these but not all: a release for electric guitar and live electronics, the composition of a couple of mixed-media performances with E<->CB, the writing of an album of 20 short acoustic songs with algorithmically generated lyrics by Andrea Valle, etc. etc. There is also the activity with my other projects as LBB, Suzanne Silver, CoMET and I would like to support in some ways the release of a couple of albums I curated as a sound producer during the last months that I fell in love with…

Carlo Barbagallo’s Favorite Place: Born To Grill (Recording Studio) in Monte Renna, Sicily

The post Carlo Barbagallo Serves The Alternative appeared first on ZO Magazine.