10 Quick Ones with SLEEPING ROMANCE – November 2017

According to a recent press release: “Let the curtain rise on the sensual seduction of Mediterranean temptation! In one weeks’ time the fantastic new Italian Symphonic Metal outfit SLEEPING ROMANCE is ready to release their Napalm Records debut “Alba”. This is a highly explosive package of symphonic bombast centered around vocalist supreme Federica Lanna! It’s time to premiere a brand new track and audio visual for the single “Lost In My Eyes”!”  We get Lorenzo, Federico, and Federica to answer our 10 Quick Ones about new music, their influences, and more…

1. Tell us a little about your latest release.  What might a fan or listener not grab the first or second time they listen through?  Are there any hidden nuggets the band put in the material or that only diehard fans might find?

Lorenzo: I think that this album could be more difficult to be completely appreciated in only few listen, if you want to understand what it wants to communicate you have to listen to it for some times its entirety, and the concept is very important for the atmosphere we have created. Every metalhead can appreciate this album, not only the fans of Sleeping Romance!

2. What got you into music, and can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a musician?

Federico: I was 14 years old and I get my first electric guitar. I said “it will be with me for the rest of my life”. I remember the music teacher in mid-school that she said to my mother “I’m so sorry, but your son won’t be a musician, he could be anything in his life but not a musician”, so I became a musician.

Federica: My father is a lawyer and my mother works in a nursery. I thought I d have an ordinary job even if I have always been a bit unconventional. Even if I used to spend all my money in singing lessons, I was a singer in the free time only and I didn’t like that much to sing in front of other people, cause I am pretty shy, it was “personal”, it made me feel free. I have never thought to be so good to deserve a musical career and then Sleeping Romance came into my life. I had to face a lot of insecurities and fears but I also experienced a constancy and a love that I’ve never felt for anything, and studying I’ve also started to love teaching singing; music gave me my place in the world when I didn’t know what to do with myself; I didn’t make a real choice, life just shown me the way. I only followed it with my heart wide opened.

Lorenzo: I understood I could be a musician very early in my life, when I was 7 or 8 years old because I could replicate the melodies of tv shows with my small keyboard.

3. Who would be your main five musical influences?

Federico: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Max Richter, Beatles, Blind Guardian and Therion.

Federica: It’s very hard to choose only a few of them. Surely my father has been the most important person for my influences. He used, and still does, to put music on and sing along, while checking emails. He transmitted me the love for Pink Floyd, Enigma and Mike Oldfield. I always loved movie soundtracks and after crying for about 45 minutes on Edward Scissorhands main theme, I fell in love with Denny Elfman compositions; and then one day a friend of mine made me listen to Within Temptation and looking at Sharon I told myself that she was the kind of singer I wanted to be. Recently I really like to listen to shoegaze, djent and progressive metal. 7. When the band are all hanging out together, who cooks; who gets the drinks in; and who is first to crack out the acoustic guitars for a singalong?

Lorenzo: Vivaldi, Iron Maiden, Rhapsody, Blind Guardian, Therion

4. If you could call in any one collaborator to do a song with, who would it be?

Federico: should I wrote down few names? in metal music Arjen Anthony Lucassen, Anneke Van Giersbergen, Ulver and Steven Wilson. In non-metal music Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter and Laibach.

5. How would you describe your music to someone who’d never listened to you before?

Federico: well I’m not so good to put label and name to music.. I love to listen to it and I love to be involved by it. So it works if I say “Hey we are a symphonic metal band with female singer, but different from the other symphonic metal band with female singer?”

6. What’s the best thing about being a musician?

Lorenzo: I really feel satisfied when I play my bass, and the best thing is really to be happy when you’re playing. If you aren’t happy, change your job!

7. When the band are all hanging out together, who cooks; who gets the drinks in; and who is first to crack out the acoustic guitars for a singalong?

Federica: We don’t cook that often on tour, but I like to cook; sometimes I bring homemade cookies and pies in the rehearsal room and I am pretty sure I d be the one who cooks. living together with the other guys. We don’t have an acoustic guitar that often with us but we practice as often as we can also on tour. Federico usually drives, Lorenzo takes care about the band financial resources. I take care about food and other stuff for the trip and Zana well he is the drummer, and he’s our “macho man” so he usually has a lot of weight to carry

8. If you weren’t a musician, what would be your dream job?

Federico: Hey I’m doing my dream job, so it is impossible to imagine me to do something different 🙂 May I would be an astronaut? or a basketball player!

Federica: I wanted to be a writer. I still remember the very first copybook in leather that my parents gave to me, so that I could write down my horror stories. I love reading and I love Alice Hoffman books, I really wanted to follow her footsteps and career, or even open my own book shop like my aunt. Finding myself surrounded by books gives me the same sense of peace than being among animals. I have a very special relationship with dogs and I find them very pure and beautiful creatures.

Lorenzo: I would be a different kind of  artist, so if I wasn’t a musician, perhaps I would be an actor, or better a film director.

9. Looking back over your career, is there a single moment or situation you feel was a misstep or you would like to have a “do over”?

Federica: I wish I could have been more self confident and started to study music and singing earlier.

10.If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording sessions for any one record in history, which would you choose – and what does that record mean to you?

Federico: Well my biggest dream is to be during the recording session of “Across The Universe” by Beatles, in my opinion the best “pop” song written in history.

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Category: Interviews