Personal Hotspot is out now!
Image: Ted Min.
Melbourne-based band FERLA recently shared their sophomore studio album, Personal Hotspot. To celebrate the release, Giuliano Ferla has shared with MILKY three key ingredients that go into working on a FERLA album.
“In a world where there’s so much noise — and not just social-media blathering, I mean important noise, noise about global warming, global death, global catastrophe — here I am asking you to make time to listen to my noise. Am I some kind of megalomaniac? I probably could be. But for the belief." Ferla shares of the body of work.
"But for the belief that this is also important noise. But for the belief that music has the ability to save our souls. But for the belief that art is the vessel through which collective anxiety, sadness, joy or despair can be articulated and expressed. But for awareness of ourselves and others, and the journey of becoming selves for others. There’s so much noise around already but I’m asking you to listen. Listen. If not to this music then to other music. Or art. And then share it. Because we are in this together, and the things that unite us as human beings are greater than the things that divide us."
LITTLE SHOCKS
There’s that great David Bowie quote about art making. I’m not going to look it up, so I might get it totally wrong, but I like how it sounds in my head so I don’t want it to change. I think he said that making art is like going for a swim in the ocean. You’re walking out into the water from the shore. To begin with your feet are well and truly touching the ground but as you go further you eventually reach a point where you’re out of your depth. Your feet aren’t touching the bottom anymore and you’re at the whim of the current of the ocean. The huge ocean that could carry you out to sea so that you’re never seen or heard from again, but if it gets too scary or hairy you’re still within a metre or two of solid ground. That’s where he reckons the fun starts.
As someone with a fear of the ocean this really rings my bell.
TRICKS
Every songwriter has tricks. Bowie loved singing ascending scales. Dylan often had one devastating line of poetry that the whole song was built around. Nico had deadpan delivery with energetic finger-picking. The chorus of a lot of Beatles songs happen in the first 30 seconds. Everyone’s got tricks. I like listening to artists and working out their tricks, adding them to my bag.
KEEP IT PERSONAL
Here’s another quote, this time from a JD Salinger novel. Again I’m not going to look it up. One character gives some advice to another, an aspiring writer: “One day you’re going to think long and hard about the book that you want to read, then you’re going to sit down and write it.”
So that’s now what I ask myself when I’m making stuff. What music do I want to hear? What live show see? What experiences do I want to have? Then I can go out and make it, knowing that at the very least I’m going to enjoy it.
Personal Hotspot is out now!
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