Southwest Sounds: Allesandro Rotondi finds inspiration in everyday things
CBC
Afternoon Drive's local music segment Southwest Sounds is back, featuring local musicians and their stories.
In this edition of Southwest Sounds, we hear from Allesandro Rotondi, a University of Windsor graduate who creates "sunny-sounding" tunes that span from pop to lo-fi.
Rotondi joined CBC's Afternoon Drive host Josiah Sinanan for this conversation about highlights of his musical career and the inspiration behind his music.
Well, Gentle Giant, it was quite an interesting project.
It started in my parents basement, then my wife and I, we got married and we moved into an apartment together. It started with more of an acoustic setting with real drums and stuff, and then by the time we got to the apartment I was using a beat pack as I had less space to work with ... and I had a couple of friends, Colin Button and Eric Vanier, helping me out with certain instruments.
But it was a labour of love between myself and my wife did all the artwork, Ashley, she's fantastic. It was a really fun project to put together over the course of about a year, yeah.
What kind of music inspires you when you go about writing a song or creating music?
I listen to everything, honestly. I mostly love indie pop and indie rock, but I listen to anything from Chet Baker to Alvvays from Toronto.
I just love indie pop production. I love getting behind the board and dialling in the tones.
Interesting. I like that. So what keeps you driven to make music? What's that driving force that spurs you on?
It's kind of an everyday thing. Sometimes if the weather is a certain way or somebody says a certain thing, it just makes me feel like I want to create a tune around it. It could be anything, it could be a person, it could be a picture, anything.
How would you describe the sound of your own music?
Well, I consider it to be a fairly sunny sounding type of music.
I think it's for feeling happy. It's upbeat, it has a lot of guitar, a lot of harmonies. You could listen to it at the beach or in your bedroom late at night ... So just music for good living I think.
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