Name: Adele Altro aka Any Other
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, producer
Current release: Any Other 's stillness, stop: you have a right to remember is out via 42.
Recommendations:
1) Tim Bernardes - Recomeçar
2) Serani Poji - MERRY GO ROUND JAILHOUSE

If you enjoyed this Any Other interview and would like to keep up to date with their music, visit them on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I’d say there’s no fixed way, even though when I do it with my eyes closed I tend to imagine space and colours. But my favourite thing is feeling still, kind of in between time and space.

Do you know the Japanese concept of 間 (ma)? It’s about the negative space in art – it’s short, you need emptiness to feel the fullness. That’s something that I really feel in my body, sometimes.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?

To me, it has a lot to do with communicating with each other and building a sense of community, not necessarily in a verbal way. It doesn’t have to be forever, it can also last only a few minutes.

But to feel (and to make someone feel) part of something it’s really important to me – I’d say music is just one way to do that.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience?

I actually started playing music pretty late (around 18 years old, with the guitar) and I had a pretty random approach. Around five years later I started playing the saxophone.

I can’t properly rate anything because I go through the same cycle every time: I’m not satisfied with the way I play, then I want to learn something new, I learn it, I don’t feel satisfied again.

Is this imposter syndrome? Maybe. But that’s the way it is.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

I remember listening mostly to 90s music – Elliott Smith, Fugazi, Pavement, Bright Eyes … Well, it was all white men, lol.

Jokes aside, when I was a teenager, music really helped me feel less lonely, and I was feeling very lonely! Growing up, and especially after music became my job, I often (but not only or always) have both a more “rational” approach, in which I try to learn from what I listen to, and a more “light” one, where I simply just have fun and enjoy what I listen or play.

I guess it’s mostly because I don’t feel that lonely anymore.

How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment?

So, I haven’t grown up rich, like at all. I don’t want to say poor because I’ve always had a roof and food, but things like buying new clothes or going on holidays were a privilege I usually didn’t have. This being said, I think it influenced my take on buying and having stuff, and as a consequence it impacted my relationship with gear.

I do not have a lot of stuff and I try to make the things that I have work until they just don’t work anymore, but even at that point I kind of have to “force” myself to upgrade.

It’s something that I’m working on though, because my ears can tell me when it’s time to let go of some specific instrument, so I have to trust them.

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?

I’d say a mix of different “inputs”: personal life above all, but everything gets filtered through what I experience in a wider sense.

I mean, I myself am a mix of what happens to me and how I process things.

Are you acting out parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

I used to think I needed to express every part of me in my music making, then I began to think that I needed some boundaries in order not to get “lost” in the artist persona.

Now I’m kind of in the middle of the two things: I’m trying to be as open and transparent as possible, but also to protect myself from giving literally everything. In order to give it all, you need to keep something to you. Otherwise, you just get consumed.

I know it sounds distorted, but it makes sense in my mind, somehow.

If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings?

I love that music can be both verbal and nonverbal, which gives us way more options than a “normal” language in communicating emotions, feelings, etc.

I don’t know if you can actually misunderstand music, I think that every listener’s experience is true, in its being subjective.

From a certain perspective, it doesn’t really matter what the artist's intention was, not anymore.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with?

It’s not easy, especially when music is your job and a lot of boring things come into the conversation. But to me, getting to play with my best friends is the first step in order to get surprised every time – everyone grows differently, so we can keep influencing each other and learn new ways of seeing music, while still keeping a sense of familiarity.

It’s also really beautiful to meet other musicians and artists, and get to see how people you don’t know experience music.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

One of the sounds that I love to listen to the most is my dog breathing (and sometimes snoring!) when she sleeps at night. It moves me so much and it’s the sweetest thing ever – to see and hear someone so beautifully calm, breathing in their own rhythm … So precious.

There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?

Well, I don’t think numbers themselves give or take away anything from music and its beauty – to me, they’re just a way to describe tangible things, both in music theory and in less poetic fields (data, music business, etc).

But honestly I don’t really have a specific take on this.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

As I said before, I try to be as transparent as possible. This means first of all being honest with myself about my emotions and how I navigate through life. So I guess I try to make music according to how I live and vice versa.

This being said, music can always help figuring out how to overcome obstacles, I think.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

Silence is something that I really need to be immersed into sometimes, even though it’s never a “full” silence.

But it’s the same as I said in the first answer – you need the emptiness in order to experience the fullness. A constant stream of perceived sounds doesn’t really get to a point, to me. There’s no climax in the constant presence.

Do you feel as though writing or performing 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?

I’m not sure it is inherently different. Making music is still a product of people!

And if listening to music makes you feel good, making it is an act of care as making dinner for someone – it’s just on another scale and tied to different circumstances, I guess.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I’m not interested in development at all costs, and I also think that everything there is, is already here – maybe we just haven’t seen it yet.

What I honestly wish for, is that the music industry becomes more and more open to differences, more accessible and less euro / anglocentric. If we can all start doing something in our bubble, it can be something already.