Interview - MICHELE BRAVI: with "hate" I destroy my routine

Michele Bravi returns with hate (out October 27th), a song that anticipates the new album for which, he confirms, there isn’t much left.

hate, written by the young singer-songwriter and produced by Room9, it talks about emotional dependence, dysfunctional relationships, disarticulating a narrative that we are more accustomed to listening to his music, chasing his poetry.

A more physical, corporeal, erotic and more aggressive parenthesis to then arrive, along the path of the album, at a different and resolved construction of a relationship where we don’t challenge each other, but we stay alongside.

EXCITED ABOUT THE RELEASE OF “ODIO”?

I am fine. It’s nice when the whole flow of exits starts again. It took me a while to write the album and the emotion is always there, although after a while you can get used to it. This album and consequently this single, tell of a different way of working for me, because it is the first time in which the geometry of the entire album, of all the songs, are completely created by me.

There is greater artistic autonomy, but consequently also greater responsibility towards the public and towards all the dynamics that are always behind a record release.

I’m curious to understand how everyone will interpret this moment, this song and what they already expect from the upcoming album. I want to understand what it leads to in terms of emotional impact on my audience.

I’ve always had an audience that is extremely attentive to the narrative of the album, to the history of the album and therefore understanding what it adds or whether this type of story fulfills expectations is curious, isn’t it? It’s like when a writer writes a book and is curious to meet his readers… Well, for me it’s a bit the same approach. When I write a record I then want the listener to understand what he feels.

WHY DID YOU START FROM SUCH A STRONG FEELING, HATE, A FEELING THAT HURTS THOSE WHO RECEIVE IT BUT ALSO THOSE WHO FEEL IT.

It all comes from the fact that before writing an album I look for a concept. I have never managed to make a completely heterogeneous album because I always need a theme which, in the course of the songs, finds its own evolution, a sort of story.

The album, without wanting to reveal too much because, when it comes out there will be a way to talk about it, is based on and uses the relationship between two as a narrative line, not a specific relationship between two, but the very idea of the interweaving of the relationship, of contact with someone else’s body, with someone else’s soul. This describes a very large user base. But the real concept is more a theme of projections, metaphors, idealizations, absurdities in the game and so on.

When I published a record I always started from the most romantic parenthesis, from the most romantic translation of that type of narrative. This time I wanted to try to find a way to deconstruct this routine that I had created for myself on an artistic level. And so I chose not to start from the most romantic and most resolved key of that type of emotion, but to start from the most obsessive moment.

That is, breaking that narrative pattern and starting right from the moment of frenzy, where the words leave almost no room for breath, this extreme verbosity, and then understanding what happens if we start from here and then arrive at the romantic and most intimate moment. I needed a parenthesis that was more physical, more corporeal, more erotic and more aggressive in some way. In this story of the album I talk about the dysfunctionality of relationships.

In fact, when I talk about “I hate you” and when I talk about “I love you” I am just a naive reflection that in hindsight I was able to understand were the wrong words. What I felt wasn’t love, but it was need, it was desperation, it was loneliness and what I felt wasn’t hate, it was more an internal guilt of something dysfunctional that I couldn’t handle. It all starts from the concept of trying to deconstruct that narrative formula that I have been comfortable with in my latest works and see what happens starting from another perspective, and then arriving at the moment of resolution instead.

WHEN HATE BECOMES INDIFFERENCE, IS INDIFFERENCE WORTH STOPPING WITH AN IMAGE OR DO YOU LET IT GO?

In the album there will also be reflections on indifference which is actually the complete denial of love, that is, the fact that nothing anymore concerns the other, nothing concerns the other anymore.
Hate is a slightly more subtle thing, especially relationship-related hate.

In relationships between two, when the word “hate” creeps in, all you can say is to understand that it is a broken mechanism of dysfunctional stuff.

I think it’s also a little bit about a moment we’re living in. The topic of dysfunctionality in relationships is a very hot topic, and it means something if, for example, since 2013 dysfunctional relationships have entered the new addictions as far as psychological studies are concerned.

The comparison that I always make is a bit like if each of us were writing our biggest blockbuster of our lives, our Steven Spielberg film, and were wasting a lot of time writing it, doing it and then when we face the casting… the the main role is a bit like giving it to the first person who comes along. Then the shooting of the film begins and you realize that the role given to that actor was wrong, but you finish the film, or rather you insist on trying to find a way to make you like that actor, because by now you have chosen him.

I think this could be a bit of a metaphor for dysfunctional relationships. We all have this need to entrust this feeling of love, of belonging to someone, to someone else. The problem is that perhaps we waste a little less time doing castings and therefore we end up entrusting it to someone out of necessity. There is so much need to belong and belong to oneself that this thing is explosive and therefore the reflection I make on hate and love refers to this. I believe that love in general looks at you from the side, when it is in front of you and challenges you with its gaze, then that is dysfunctional. To get to talking about that love that is alongside, I first started from the look in the look, that is, from understanding what happens when you look into your eyes and why it is better to have someone who looks in the same direction as you.

WHAT IS YOUR APPROACH WHEN SONGS BECOME OTHERS? YOU WHO GIVE SO MUCH POWER TO WORDS, DO YOU RELIEVE A LITTLE BIT OF THOSE WORDS AND THAT IMAGE OR DO THEY ALWAYS REMAIN YOURS?

I don’t have that possessiveness over songs, the things I write I rarely bring to me. I know a song is ready to be released the moment I don’t remember writing it. If you ask me what I was experiencing when that thing happened, when I wrote it and I no longer remember it, then it means that it is no longer mine and that it has its own independence.

When I recognize that the songs are autonomous, that they don’t need to be justified by the fact that I wrote them and sing them, then they are ready. I never had the fear that they were others or that they could then belong to a moment in someone’s life. Indeed, that is a wish I have for songs, that is, the fact that they can describe someone else’s life, unconsciously. I speak and start from my private experiences. When the song is autonomous it means that that particular situation has managed to become universal and everyone can put their own dedication, their own places, their own flavours, their own people.

THE TITLE OF THE SINGLE “ODIO” IS WRITTEN IN LOWER CASE, AS TO WEATHER THE WORD. IS IT A INTENTIONAL CHOICE?

It’s intentional. Since this song was born halfway through the writing process of the album and since this song sits in an album that is a continuous story, there is no point, no reason why it needed to be capitalized. It’s right that the whole album is experienced as if it were a stream of consciousness without punctuation, without the need to capitulate the letters in some way.

WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE OUTCOMING RECORD?

I always say that the record is finished in the sense that the writing part is finished, that is, the songs exist. Then there is the whole process that leads to the finalization of the album which concerns the production and arrangement. Fine copy, let’s call it that, takes a little time. Now I needed to reconnect a little with my audience who have been waiting for a long time, who have shown patience for a long time. I’m not known for publishing quickly enough and so I wanted to create – and I say this without wanting to sound arrogant – a taste of what the album will be.
Not much left.

MUSIC, TV, CINEMA… ARTISTICALLY HOW DO YOU ABOUT YOURSELF TODAY?

Artistically it is obvious that my eye is mainly on music. Because it’s my main artistic outlet, my job. I know I live in multiple camps and all the camps where I live are lived in an extremely respectful manner. I’ll give you an example… the television parenthesis comes at a time when I’m given that opportunity. I have known Maria De Filippi for some time, but then working with her face to face in her home, in her world, was a great lesson for me. For me she remains the greatest professional I have ever met. The same thing happens in cinema. The fact of being able to enter into the creative vision of, for example, Saverio Costanzo, who is one of the greatest Italian directors of today, is a great moment and therefore I like to think that my work meets multiple environments from the television one, to the cinematographic one and then music, which is my main artistic field.

Since I was a child I have always hated the tower game and the question “do you knock this down or do you knock that other down?” he always made me paranoid because I never knew what to choose.

The fact that my work in the field of creativity, which is so vast and does not need too many perimeters, allows me to navigate from TV to cinema, to music and in any case find my own homogeneity is beautiful for me, it is a value. I hope I never have to choose. Creativity arises precisely from the continuous stimulation of anything. Cinema influences music, TV influences cinema, TV influences music. It’s a mix of things. The fact that the television parenthesis, for example, put me back in touch so much with that kind of hunger you have when you start, with that need to be listened to, was also an added value for this album and the fact that cinema made me taught me to leave the helm of an artistic direction that rightly belongs to the director, to someone other than me, these are all exercises in empathy that return to the writing even in an unconscious way. I never see too many boundaries between one thing and another. Cinema, TV and music are all different languages, but they are not distant from each other.