Fusing laidback pop sensibility with moody cinematographic soundscapes, David’s newest album D’ANGELO is the sound of a young artist getting in touch with their roots, exploring new landscapes and freeing inhibitions. Where he channelled this journey into ambience on DCXXXIX A.C. – his debut on his own label, 99CHANTS - D’ANGELO has David deconstructing pop atmospheres while in search of his past and reforming them into something deeply moving.
He admits that while his strongest emotions have their roots in his formative years, growing up in the picturesque mountain town of Palestrina outside Rome, he never used those emotions creatively, keeping them private until now. “I had never tried to have a dialogue with myself within the music that I was making,” he explains. “Suddenly there were all these questions about identity, my childhood, and an obsession with truth. Although I was scared to confront these questions – when in your life could you fully answer them? – I had to at least approach them to keep creating.”
D’ANGELO’s spiritual inspiration is rooted in Italy’s rich and complex artistic history, and how certain artists broke boundaries, such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who mastered the art of polyphonic and counterpointed composition during the Renaissance. “I looked at the Italian culture I grew up with, that has always been present since I was a kid.” He says. “I had to start with a deeper study of these artists, composers, and writers who formed the cultural and emotional bonds I feel towards Italy.”
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio painted the realities of the streets over the ideals of the heavens, taking those who blended into the background of the streets and painting them as saints, as figures of ideation. “Caravaggio was a leading inspiration throughout this process. He was someone I looked up to all the time and had so much respect for; someone who was always trying to picture the implacable reality, and not compromising. Having his paintings on one screen – and my DAW on the other – was one part of the process. It was an attempt to soundtrack his art – his reality – in real time.”
D’ANGELO is an impassioned, melancholic album that exists in a space that is not easy to translate into words…but do the words always matter?
