Name: C'mon Tigre
Nationality: Italian
Current release: C'mon Tigre's new album Instrumental Ensemble - Soundtrack for Imaginary Movie Vol 1 is out via CMT.
Recommendations for Bologna, Italy: Visit hidden courtyards in Bologna—silent spaces tucked behind ancient walls. The city reveals its secrets slowly; just walk in without a map and listen.
Topic we rarely get to talk about: The hidden choreography of urban pigeons—their seemingly random but perfectly synchronized flights, forming fluid patterns above crowded streets. I often wonder if they're secretly orchestrating an aerial ballet no one else is noticing.

If you enjoyed these thoughts by C'mon Tigre and would like to stay up to date with the band and their music, visit their official website. The band are also on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud. 

For a deeper dive, read our earlier C'mon Tigre interview.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

It emerges from curiosity, an itch to explore territories we haven't fully mapped yet.

Impulse isn't fixed; sometimes it's a visual spark, sometimes a fragment of conversation overheard. Dreams, politics, relationships—they're all there, but it's never linear. Inspiration often arrives disguised as accident.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

Concrete ideas help, but we prefer starting with a question rather than a vision.

We leave enough space for chance to do its magic. It's less planning, more setting up the playground and inviting accidents in.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

We do research like archeologists: collecting sounds, images, bits of dialogues. Preparation is like tuning instruments before improvisation—necessary but open-ended.

There's no ritual set in stone—sometimes we rearrange furniture until their shadows align just right. Not the truth hahahah, but it sounds poetic :-)

For your latest release, what did you start with? If there were conceptual considerations, what were they?

We began by creating a narrative to synchronize our individual explorations, allowing us to simultaneously work on multiple tracks independently.

This story was partially written by us, partially by an AI trained on the writings of Raymond Carver. It was a lengthy yet surprising process—motivated by the desire to engage with the present and to explore a possible creative harmony between human and artificial intelligence.

The concept revolved around fragmented communication, the beauty hidden in misunderstandings. Early sketches were minimal, skeletal—then layers of complexity and texture emerged naturally.

Tell me a bit about the way the new material developed and gradually took its final form, please.

Songs evolved organically, each adding their own voice to a dialogue. Pieces took shape in the tension between minimalism and intricacy.

Like sculpting marble: it's about discovering what's already inside.
 
Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

We trust intuition, but control isn't our enemy—it's more of a dance partner.

The best narratives aren't forced; they appear by following the thread rather than pulling it.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

It's immersion. Not exactly spiritual, more like a lucid dream or a dive into deep water—everything becomes hyper-present.

 You're there but slightly removed from yourself.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

Distance clarifies. We often step back, listen again later—no obsession, I mean ... ok maybe sometimes we get obsessed :-). But it's healthy, an obsessive curiosity rather than anxious perfectionism.

The important thing is to never lose sight of the original spark; refinement is welcome, even necessary, but only if it sharpens clarity and deepens emotional resonance without sterilizing or suffocating the spontaneity that made it interesting in the first place.

How do you think the meaning, or effect of an individual piece is enhanced, clarified or possibly contrasted by the EPs, or albums it is part of? Does each piece, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

In this particular project, every track needed to remain intimately connected to the initial narrative we had created. Each piece amplifies the emotional essence of the story fragment it refers to.

Here, cohesion was essential; we wanted it to feel like a single, continuous flow, with every note and lyric tied organically to the larger story, without sacrificing the independence and unique voice of each song.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? In terms of what they contribute to a song, what is the balance between the composition and the arrangement (performance)?

Production shapes emotional resonance. Mixing and mastering aren't cosmetic—they’re narrative tools, subtle sculptors of meaning.

The arrangement is the bones; production is the blood and flesh.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

Emptiness comes from closure; it's natural yet potent and inevitable. The deeper the creative journey, the more profound the void that follows.

It demands careful attention because sometimes it lingers far longer than expected. Silence after release is necessary—it's a pause, not paralysis, but the intensity of the void can be overwhelming.

Eventually, curiosity resurfaces, gently coaxing us back toward creativity, though sometimes patience is required.

I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about or the impact it had on them – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

Sometimes interpretations surprise us, revealing dimensions we hadn't consciously intended.

Misunderstandings can be enlightening—they remind us meaning isn't ours alone to dictate.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Making music and cooking share precision, timing, and intuition, yet music allows us to articulate emotions cooking can't quite reach.

Both processes involve careful preparation, experimentation, and sensory engagement, but sound offers nuances and depths of feeling beyond the flavors on a plate.