What inspired the name of the band? What are your influences and are they the same as when you started out?
Our name Violet Blend combines our origins and our passion for exploration. Violet is the color that represents our city, Florence, Italy, our traditions and our background, the place we call home and that make us feel safe. It’s also the color of creativity and it’s the combination of two opposites, a cold and a warm color, like two sides of a coin. Blend suggests our need to go further, to go over the limits and the safe places, the pleasure to mix and therefore to blend concepts, styles, experiences, forms and genres in our music, the desire to be a person with million different faces.
We describe our music as a kaleidoscopic world of different influences, musical genres, forms and styles in our music. We always try to paint a musical discourse of clear sonic eloquence with the right expressive power to describe and dissect feelings. The sound system, enhanced by the frequent dynamic and rhythmic leaps, leads along a tortuous path of feelings and confessions, under the guidance of the vocal melody which leads the listener towards heterogeneous atmospheres. I can say that the base of our music is rock, but you can hear echoes of classical forms, jazz chords, metal riffs and punk attitudes, it combines different musical genres and unravels between them. I listen to everything and I’m influenced by everything. I have two college degrees in musicology, I’ve studied different instruments (saxophone, piano, guitar) and different genres, I’ve been playing classical music since I was a kid and this resonates when I write songs. Every time I listen to music I learn a new technique, a new way of communicating and I translate it according to my sensitivity. I started with classical music, then went from gothic metal to grunge over the years, the drummer Michel Agostini loves classic metal and art rock, the bassist Ferruccio Baroni is into prog music, we arrange songs together, so all our different backgrounds and tastes shape the songs. Our songs may seem simply catchy, but an attentive ear will discover many harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, dissonant and semantic nuances. There are so many elements that blend and play hide and seek in our music, each song is conceived as a puzzle in which every instrument, every sound effect, every word and every atmosphere must fit perfectly serving the general meaning. We want our music to reflect and represent who we are.
How and why do you write what you write?
I write almost all of my songs in one go, I sit at the piano and then words and notes come naturally in relation to my mood, the feelings I’m experiencing at that moment and the thoughts I’ve in mind. I try to speak honestly in my songs, to be real and true, both in the music and in the lyrics, that’s the real me without any mask to protect me. This is the most important thing when I write a song, to be authentic and tell things for what they are. Our songs are about fears, anxieties, broken dreams, aspirations, joys and hopes of our life. We also speak about the importance to stand and react against everything that hurts you. When people listen to our music I want them to feel understood, that they’re not alone, we all have dark moments, but we have to find a way to live well. Music can heal wounds, that’s what it does with me. The music we write just reflects what we are, what we think and what we like.
To write music it’s like an atonement for me, I feel immediately better. It heals me like nothing else can. I often write music when I feel sad, angry or frustrated, it’s a way to exorcise my fears and negative feelings. I was lucky enough to study and play different genres in different situations, classical, jazz and rock, experiences that blend together in my life. It’s very natural for me to write music the way I write it, as I said before, I sit at the piano and write what I feel the way I feel it.
How and why do you write what you write?
I write almost all of my songs in one go, I sit at the piano and then words and notes come naturally in relation to my mood, the feelings I’m experiencing at that moment and the thoughts I’ve in mind. I try to speak honestly in my songs, to be real and true, both in the music and in the lyrics, that’s the real me without any mask to protect me. This is the most important thing when I write a song, to be authentic and tell things for what they are. Our songs are about fears, anxieties, broken dreams, aspirations, joys and hopes of our life. We also speak about the importance to stand and react against everything that hurts you. When people listen to our music I want them to feel understood, that they’re not alone, we all have dark moments, but we have to find a way to live well. Music can heal wounds, that’s what it does with me. The music we write just reflects what we are, what we think and what we like.
To write music it’s like an atonement for me, I feel immediately better. It heals me like nothing else can. I often write music when I feel sad, angry or frustrated, it’s a way to exorcise my fears and negative feelings. I was lucky enough to study and play different genres in different situations, classical, jazz and rock, experiences that blend together in my life. It’s very natural for me to write music the way I write it, as I said before, I sit at the piano and write what I feel the way I feel it.
How do you decide what to perform live?
We always try to give our best during our concerts and make the people who come to see us happy. It’s always difficult to choose a set list for live shows and inevitably have to exclude some songs from the concert. We focus on the audience and what they probably expect to see because our first goal is to entertain people and leave them with a good memory of the concert. The live setlist never lacks all the singles we have taken from the albums, they are usually the songs that people have listened to most frequently and therefore it is an obligation to include them in the performance. Aside from this must-have, we like to change things up and each concert’s setlist varies a little and has different songs. We often return to venues and to the same cities several times over the years and therefore we want to give the public an always different show for those who come back to see us. We also try to vary the interpretations of the songs for this reason and sometimes it happens that someone tells us “last year you interpreted this song differently”, it’s nice and fun. The live album “Live and True” that we are about to release is an example of our live interpretation and how we choose and manage the live setlist.
How do you decide what to perform live?
We always try to give our best during our concerts and make the people who come to see us happy. It’s always difficult to choose a set list for live shows and inevitably have to exclude some songs from the concert. We focus on the audience and what they probably expect to see because our first goal is to entertain people and leave them with a good memory of the concert. The live setlist never lacks all the singles we have taken from the albums, they are usually the songs that people have listened to most frequently and therefore it is an obligation to include them in the performance. Aside from this must-have, we like to change things up and each concert’s setlist varies a little and has different songs. We often return to venues and to the same cities several times over the years and therefore we want to give the public an always different show for those who come back to see us. We also try to vary the interpretations of the songs for this reason and sometimes it happens that someone tells us “last year you interpreted this song differently”, it’s nice and fun. The live album “Live and True” that we are about to release is an example of our live interpretation and how we choose and manage the live setlist.
What plans do you have for the future?
We’re about to release a new album called “Live and True” on October 27th, 2023 and we’re very happy about it. It’s a live album, our first one and contains a full concert that we performed here in Italy in 2022. The concert has always been one of the fundamental experiences and part of our work, an important piece to fully understand our music. During the performance, a deep connection is created with the audience and a synergy that cannot be reproduced in the recording studio. For this reason we decided to release a live album, to share this experience with all our fans around the world. The album include many of the songs from the “Demons” album and some from our debut album “White Mask”, 17 songs in total. The performance is real and we wanted to leave it as raw as possible, “Live and True” is exactly the mirror of how we present ourselves to the public on stage. It is an important step forward for us and we are proud of it.
We’re planning a UK tour in 2024, we’re very looking forward to it. We’re also writing new songs and there will be a new album next year, lots of things, you will see!