A rhythmic revival: Progetto Tribale talk

Music

1996 saw the release of Progetto Tribale’s Volume 6 with Shawn Logan; the last release from the Italian group until now.

24 years later, the collaboration has been revived, this time with Italian producer Donato Dozzy in tow, and after a couple of years readying the material, Volume 7 is seeing the light of day on Adiel’s Danza Tribale imprint, complete with a remix of their ’92 hit ‘Behaviour’.

The project formed in that year under the mentorship of Giancarlino with the help of his team, Pietro Micioni, Paolo Micioni and D.RaD (Stefano Facchielli), and became an outlet for their deep rhythmic and soulful experiments, which were released via UMM and D:Vision.

Ahead of the release of Volume 7 on 30th October, original mentor Giancarlino quizzes the reformed trio of Pietro, Paolo and Donato about the history of the project, production processes and favourite memories…

How did the idea of “Volume 7” came up?

It took a couple of years to put this material together. Every so often we reminded ourselves that sooner or later we would have to do this “Volume 7”. Paolo is the one who first put ideas on the table, he proposed very interesting rhythms and slowly the group found themselves working together.

How many days were you in the studio?

7 days a week, the studio was and remains our home, we often went to sleep there after the evenings in the clubs, and then wake up and resume working on the songs left in production the night before.

Between all the tracks, why did you choose to remix “Behavior”?

The idea of remixing “Behavior” came immediately from Donato and Paolo, also for an emotional reason since it was the first track we made in 1992 of volume 1 and it was also the most acclaimed track from DJs all over the world.

Why did you choose Danza Tribale to release it?

It is the ideal destination, Alessia with her label has given a very defined aesthetic of her musical taste, strongly tribal precisely, and then has grown over the years wisely illuminated by Giancarlo. With her this record remains in the family.

What instruments did you use the create “Volume 7”?

Roland TR-808 e 909, Roland Juno-60, samples from old records and some software.

What instruments did you use in the past?

Korg M1, Roland JD-800 and something else… we’ve forgot!

How long does it take for a Progetto Tribale track to be realised?

Usually we never give ourselves a precise time, it depends on the inspiration in the moment. Sometimes we’ve worked on music for months, other times it’s taken a few days to already have tracks sounding the way we wanted.

Given the time of Cubase, can you tell us how did you used to “sample” in the past?

Let’s start by saying that in 1991/92, the year in which the first Volume was made, MIDI was the true soul of the recording studios, because all the programs of the time did not have audio management, so samplers were used. In our case the AKAI S900 / 950/1000 or the analog multi-track recorders of the time (24 Studer tracks).

Which musicians were involved in your projects?

At the beginning there were four of us playing and planning the sessions in the studio (Giancarlino, Stefano Facchielli, Paolo Micioni and Pietro Micioni). Over time we began to expand our collaborations with other musicians and DJs, up to this last Volume 7 with the takeover in the production and realization of Donato Dozzy.

The most beautiful memory you have together?

First of all, we wanted to say that in addition to the work between us, there has always been a great friendship, which we believe is a fundamental and irreplaceable condition in any story or project. The best memories are certainly in the studio, where in addition to the production work, the jokes that daily gave us a good mood were never lacking. A special memory certainly goes to Stefano Facchielli alias Drad, a great artist with whom we were lucky enough to start this adventure with, and whom we felt we needed to mention in this last work.