Welcome to a feature where we sit down and talk to bands and artists about their latest albums to find out all about it. Today we speak to Damien about the album For Those Who Care.

Hello Damien, nice to meet you, tell us about yourself!

Hi and thanks for having me! I’m a singer-songwriter from Padova, Italy, and I’ve been around for more than a decade now. I started on YouTube making covers while playing loads of cover gigs in Italy, and after some videos took off I began travelling more and more, reaching over 500 shows in 15 different countries. I’ve always been independent, probably because I’m too protective of what I create and I can’t find people I trust enough to let them work with me.

Besides making music, I love visiting new places, watching movies (even though I can’t remember anything after watching them), and going on road trips.

Tell us about the new album?

“For Those Who Care” is my 3rd studio album, and it comes 3 years after the second one, “FRAMES”. I feel like as I’m getting older I’m going back to simplicity. It takes the same amount of time, in most cases, to make a simple but effective production for a song as it does to make a very complicated one that sounds good but might end up feeling old within a year. So with this philosophy in mind, I produced the whole album.

The lyrics were written at different times and during moments when I felt a bit lost — moving quickly through relationships, tours, and life in general, without taking the time to analyse or plan things in order to make steps forward instead of going in circles.

Favourite track on ‘for those who care’, and why?

If you asked me this question in a month it might be different but at the moment my favourite track is “Inner Flame”. There’s a lot of honesty in that song’s performance, it’s raw and there’s almost no vocal comp (meaning it’s just switching between two vocal takes). I also love how the banjo at the end sounds because you can hear the room, and every time I listen back to it I can picture myself in that moment playing that part.

It’s a song I wrote during Covid and it originally had a completely different dress, there was a lot more production, but when I read the lyrics again I realized that the vocals needed to be very dry and “in your face” in the mix. Inner Flame is about missing someone who lives far away so I like the fact that the vocals sound as close as possible to the listener while the electric guitar is watery and distant.

Tell us a bit about the recording process, was it fun to do?

This album wasn’t recorded in a proper studio or following the usual paths. I studied sound engineering at university, and after the pandemic I moved my studio to my house to work less and less with other artists and more on my own productions.

I live close to a busy street, so I had to record guitars and some vocals at night, or during the day but not during rush hours. Most of the drums were recorded by my drummer Paolo Masiero in his home studio, while the bass and some guitars were recorded by Riccardo Loriggiola and Luca Lago at my place.

I love producing and experimenting with sounds, but I’m not a huge fan of spending days in a studio trying to get the perfect take — especially because I believe some of the emotions in these songs are connected to my home, and recording somewhere else would have changed my performance.

What inspired the album name?

There isn’t a single concept behind the whole album, so instead of focusing on the tracks and searching for a name that could connect all of them, I tried to focus on the people who I’d like to be the perfect listeners of my music.

Care is a word that has many different meanings, but in this case it’s not meant for people who care about my music — it’s for people who know how to take care of something or someone, who understand that good things take time to be created, and that caring for someone isn’t easy. It’s basically meant for people with a good heart.

Tell us about the idea behind the album cover?

The photo was taken in Miami FL, in the backstage of the Miami Bandshell, just before performing. The original picture had cold blue tones that fit the mood of that moment but later in postproduction, we added a second image of me from the same moment, but in warm orange and red tones. This creates that kind of double exposure effect, almost like showing another side of me. One side is for people who just see things on the surface; the other is for those who look deeper.

What one of your songs on the new album do you think will be the most difficult to rehearse for a live audience?

Interesting question. I’ve already played live most of the songs in the album, but I think “Years and Years” it’s not an easy one. The band has to be very tight and it’s a fast song, which means the all the instruments have to play their part correctly or it’s gonna sound pretty messy. I also need to rearrange it for my solo tour next year.

Why should people listen to ‘for those who care’?

It has some great songs in it and the mood of the album is a perfect balance of sad ballads and up-tempo anthems.

Besides getting to know me better through some personal songs, I think there are many self-improvement messages that can help people navigate their lives From a sound perspective it’s an album for folk lovers that want something more and for rock lovers that are looking for something different.

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