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Not too long ago Daniele Liverani answered my questions about Prime Suspect, now the new Twinspirits album Legacy is out. Time to talk about Legacy!
It's been just about 18 months since the release of The Forbidden City - and you worked on other projects too -, did the positive feedback gave you a creative boost?
I always have a creative boost, it comes from inside me actually. Of course good responses help, but in my case, writing and producing music, it's more like a real personal passion. I always keep myself busy in music, it's my life style.
It's the second album with Göran Nyström, glad you could continue working with him?
Of course, Göran is a great singer and a great discover! He's very versatile, powerful and also has his own style, which is very important to develop the style of the band also. I hope that this line-up will be stable as much as possible.
You promoted The Forbidden City live, did the touring help you to grow together? To intensify the band feeling?
Touring has been extremely beneficial, we had the chance to play live many gigs during the promotion of The Forbidden City in 2009 / 2010, and that live experience has given us more strength, tightness, and you can really hear in Legacy, in my opinion. We improved. It sounds more natural and every members is more comfortable with their role. Playing live is so important, and we're continuing to do that as much as we can!
Legacy is split in to two parts, a collection of songs which aren't connected and The Endless Sleep. Let's talk about the first part. A song like the catchy Over And Over Again combines progressive sounds with 80's hard rock.
A bit like Twinspirits with some Prime Suspect in it... Combining 'your' two musical worlds?
The first part of Legacy is a list of 6 songs with a more straight to the point feel, still progressive though. Over And Over Again is indeed a song that has some flavors of the 80's hard rock, you're right. When I write I throw in all my influences, and even if it's different environment and styles it's always me, you know. Sometimes you can hear my style applied to different situations, but it's still me and I'm glad you recognized that. I think that Twinspirits is a very versatile environment, and you can really touch all styles and throw in all influences with a band / team like this, very talented and versatile musicians indeed. So the result has a main progressive metal sound, but you can find a lot of additional influences and moments in the albums, from hard rock to heavy metal to prog / rock metal.
Slave To The World you choose for a video. Why this one? Tell us a bit about the video shooting!
Well, Slave To This World is a perfect song for a video and for a single. It's probably the straightest song of the album, with some neo-classical touch and a very fast. You know... The video must be short and straight to the point.
Also I think there's a great guitar / keys duet on the song and it's perfect for many reason for a video. We decided to use that song with no doubts, especially we thought that Göran was great on this song. You can hear in this song the versatility of Göran on vocals, he changes a lot of styles during the 4 minutes of the song. The shooting was a lot of fun, it's been directed by Salvatore Perrone, a well-known video maker from our area that's really gaining a great reputations lately. He's an amazing director.
We shot it into a big empty room, that was perfect for that kind of video. We decided to make an easy video that could point into our playing, so to present the band and the musicians this time. Our first video Fire was more like a short movie, this new video is more a straight playback.
With The Endless Sleep you created a mini metal opera. What gave you the idea for the story?
Well, I had in mind the concept behind The Endless Sleep suite for years, it's been a story that I had in my mind for a while. It's a visionary story I developed where a young person, due to a premature ending of his life, gets the change to discover and meet a superior entity that approaches him in the afterlife and gives him the chance to get back to the real world for a limited period of time with a mission to accomplish that could lead to ease the pain and all the suffering of the current world... Very difficult to explain all the concept and the story in a few words, but what's nice in my opinion is that you can give different interpretations to what you read in the lyrics, I tend to write in a very open way, poetically, without explicit connections to specific religions, politics, real events, remaining very visionary and abstract to give a sort of freedom to the listeners to create their own idea of what's behind some concepts / story I wrote, whatever are their life styles, ideas, profiles.
I decided to record a pre-production of the whole suite (30min) and I found out that it was very inspired and I really liked the result. That's why I decided to go ahead and include that song in the new album. I knew it was a challenge, but I think it's a well-structured multi-part suite, and we're experiencing that it's working very well live and it turned out to be the favorite song of all band members!
So the first 6 songs are more straight to the point, even if still progressive in many ways, to balance the complexity and long journey of the second part of the album which is more dramatic, intense and needs more listens to get into. The Endless Sleep is been one of the most demanding compositions of my life, and I'm so happy about the result and how all band members gave life to it...
Never thought about doing a whole concept album? Did the story been 'big' enough for a whole album?
Well, actually I did many in my career. The Forbidden City is actually a concept album where all songs are connected. Also the 3 episodes of Genius are all connected into a big concept story. The Endless Sleep is more like a multi-part suite, and it needed those 30 min. to be accomplished, not more.
That's why it's been added to the album together with other 6 independent songs.
(CE: Sorry, I should have phrased this differently. I know that The Forbidden City and the Genius releases are concept albums. I meant about doing a whole album of The Endless Sleep, but in the end you answered it anyway.)
Beside the overture The Endless Sleep the songs can all stand on their own. Never thought about choosing one of the tracks for a video? Or are they are simply too long?
It would be cool to make a video of The Endless Sleep, but really it would be very long indeed, also making a video of only one part would not make much sense, since it's a whole concept song that runs for about 30 min, part by part. It would become a short movie to make a video of a the suite...
At your YouTube channel you posted some videos of your live performance in Corallo. Giving your fans outside Italy the chance to get an idea about Twinspirits live?
That was the main goal of those amateur videos. I always have my camera with me on the live shows and I record all shows for my personal archive. I decided then to share some of the best moments with fans around the world publishing on YouTube some clips of the shows. I'm currently updating the YouTube channel with some other nice live appearance, it's a good way to offer a live perspective to fans that can't actually come to shows.
Any plans to tour outside your home country?
We recently did a show in Switzerland and the release party in Venice, and we're planning more shows in Italy, including cities like Bari, Caserta, Reggio Emilia, Vincenza.... Would be great to have some chances to play outside Italy... Let's see what opportunities will arise!
You also posted some 'Making of' videos of The Forbidden City, why no videos of the making of Legacy?
I'm currently working on that actually, I have a lot of footage of the Legacy recording sessions, hopefully it will be online on our YouTube channel soon!
It seems you write music all the time... Any projects you are working on? Can you tell us something about?
I'm working on a new guitar solo instrumental album that will be called Eleven Mysteries that will be hopefully ready within 2011. And it will feature new young talents from Italy and outside Italy, so I'll be back to guitar soon for my 3rd guitar release (after Viewpoint in 1999 and Daily Trauma in 2004). I can't wait to get back to guitar, it's been a while since I've been focusing on guitar. I'm pretty much involved in keyboards lately.
Anything I should have asked? Something you want to add?
I'd like to thank you and all the Ice Vajal for the support and for this interview, and I'd like to thank all readers that will take their time to read this! Take care!!!!
I really hope that Twinspirits get the chance to tour more - and that they get invited to play ProgPower at both sides of the Atlantic ocean. With Legacy they delivered another great album and it sounds like we can expect a lot more from Daniele Liverani and the bands he's part of.
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