Mirko: We started to play at a very early age, I was 11 when i first picked up the guitar. I was watching my  3 brothers Alessandro, Bruno and Massimo (now he is an architect) who had just started to play for a couple of weeks… At the beginning it was just strumming for fun but after a couple of months Alessandro had the idea to form a band in order to perform live. For many reasons that was a crazy idea ‘couse in those days we could only play a few chords! But after couple of months we had our first “odd”  live appearance.
It was a Christmas show, and the boss of this big hall had the great idea of dressing us as three Santa Claus.
I was just a baby boy and i remember I was really embarrassed with this red hat on!…
After this shock we formed our real first band,. we called a drummer and a keyboard player and we played a concert for a school contest.
That was a success, all ticket went sold out! Even if we were just little kids we were already really confident with instruments, and the people were well impressed! Since then we’ve never stopped playing…

Alessandro:I Mirko studied classical guitar for a couple of years and now he can read music, but basically we are all self-taught musicians. We learnt to play guitars listening to the records which I think  is one of the best and harder exercise to do.
I remember we used sometime a little cassette recorder which had a vari-pitch so we could play the song at a slow speed! Nowadays with youtube you can see and learn everything in a snap which is great, but i think you’re loosing something. Having a good ear is really important if you’re a musician.

How do you write a song?  Does the guitar riff come first?  The words?  An idea?  A mood?
Bruno: Actually it is all these things together. It could start from a chord, from a word or a riff, it’s always a different process, rarely it evolves from jam. The three of us write our own tunes and at the beginning it’s always an acoustic or a piano song.
We use digital recorders or mobile phones to fix and remember the original idea, the one that comes from the unconscious … if you’re lucky you get the whole song in ten minutes as for “Brand New life” which I wrote, but sometimes you don’t. So it ends to have your recorder full of little pieces of music and we recognize when one of these bits could be a song. In our album we put 12 tracks and an instrumental tune, but we recorded 20 songs,  It was very hard to decide which one had to be in the album

Do you then work out your parts by playing and experimenting?

Mirko: When we got the basic of the song we start to work together and record a proper demo.
This is the most exciting part of the process cause you build up brick by brick your little baby. You add bass, drums, vocals and from the rough but “precious” idea  you get a real song.
We experiment a lot during the creative process  with guitars parts, bass lines, harmonies and lyrics. You are in the situation in which you can go anywhere from there, it’s like to run in an open field, but in the end we always tend to choose the most essential and functional arrangement. If you add too much then you will probably annoy the listener and lose the freshness.

How conscious are you of your influences?  Do you wear them proudly or are they subliminal?

Alessandro: Subliminal influences are what you have listened and loved during all your life…it’s  what you have in your blood, is the music you learnt during the school days. Of course we know our influences and we know where we come from, but we write without thinking too much about it.
Sometime it’s just by chance… I remember a guy saying that “Let the Wind Blow” was sounding like a song by the Moody Blues. We heard the song and it was true, but we had  never listened to that tune before!

What reaction are you getting in Italy?  In the US?

Bruno: Here in Italy as soon as  our album was out, we started receiving feedbacks from everywhere, the radio stations and the magazines  are supporting us and the most important thing is that people like our songs and buy our cd in shops and at the concerts. We ‘re very excited of the reaction in the US! After 5 days since our album was on cdbaby, we received an enthusiastic review from Absolutepowerpop and after that many other reviews were written, many request by distributors and record labels. Our phisical cd is on sale at KoolKatMusik.com . We’ ve been interviewd and broadcast by many radios, like Radio KWVA  from  Oregon which we want to thank for their true support. But again, is people that give us the real thrill by sending private messages and buying our phisical cd or downloads.

Are you aware of other Italian power pop bands such as Thousands Millions and Radio Days?

Mirko: Yes, someone from usa  told me about the Radio Days, I heard them and they are really good, but we didn t know  these bands, actually  we didn’t even know we were a powerpop band!
We realized it after having released the album three months ago. As Bruno said before we started to get reviews from powerpop magazines and they defined us as “best powerpop band” of 2011!
We have always defined ourself as a “pop rock band”, but we don’t care much about genres, we only try to play and write good songs as much as we can, that’s the important thing to us

Have you been to the US, and when are you planning to come again?

Alessandro: Yes we ‘ve been in New York some months ago for a small tour in the most popular clubs of the city. It was a great experience, we presented the EP version of the album, we performed with an  acoustic set and the reaction of the audience was great. This positive response gave us the sensation that our album would be appreciate in the US …and this make us happy and proud.
We are planning to come over  very soon and we hope to organize a tour all over the USA

===================================================

Additional Information –  from Cirrone’s official band biography:

Immediately, upon hearing the album for the first time, you will find that there are many main tunes and the mood of the album is sunny, optimistic and always sincere. “Here Is My Song” opens the album, which is a fresh sunny ballad with a swingy feel that leaves a smile and a warm, summer-wind sensation on your face.
The hilarious and rock’n’roll style of “Uplands Park Road”, the album title track, is an ironic autobiographic picture of the band living in London, trying to get into the hall of fame without having any money in their pockets. The mood changes with the introspective and beating “I Still Remember”, a guitar is playing in a minor chord and suddenly the song breaks into a thumping and rocky chorus that is reminiscent of “London Calling” by the Clash. The epic enthralling and involving “Brand New Life”, the longest track of the album (almost six minutes), is a kind of mini-suite with differing moods and parts with a seventies groove, a fine combination of lyrics and music. In complete contrast, the vortex sound of “You’re Not Alone” underlines the versatility of the band. The last song of the album, the delicate and deep soft acoustic ballad “In The Sun” leaves the listener with the desire to put the record on, over and over again.