Femme Fatale Answers 5

Anyone who mentions Velvet Underground in an interview gets extra bonus points from me! Back in February, I reviewed Femme Fatale’s EP, “Fading Night Sounds” (link) and of course got curious about the Italian music scene. A few e-mails later (and an apology for taking a bit long to post this interview), I would like to thank the members of Femme Fatale – Mick, Rox, Dave, and Nick – for allowing us to stream "Fading Night Sounds" in its entirety and for taking the time to Answer 5.

(Photographer: Lucia Rosini)

1. Who are your musical and non-musical influences?

[Nick] Well, as a band, we clearly have some common influences that made us decide to play together; for example, we share a love for ’90’s Britpop, indie rock, and shoegaze. Besides that, it is not that often our musical tastes coincide, but I don’t think this is such a negative thing. We started from a collective base, now what we want is to keep on this way, trying to put in our music more about our different ways of being, listening to music and so go on, since we are pretty convinced that our differences are strengths!

The same about the non-musical ones: everyone has his own, inspiring things. Even if it seems a little strange, weather changes and late night hours are really inspiring for the members of a band.

2. “Fading Night Sounds” was an independent release. Could you share with us how the EP came together?

[Dave] The making of “Fading Night Sounds” has been a hard but instructive experience. When we arrived at the studio, the songs were virtually written, we only had to work more on some arrangements. Since we are all hi-fi’s sounds admirers, we rejected the idea of trying a home recording, deciding upon a recording studio in a city we’ve already visited.

We wanted to give to “FNS” the most professional feel we could, even for the artwork (which I personally think is amazing), the final product’s printing, copyright’s stuff, etc… Naturally, this process brought us through a lot of bureaucracy, and an investment of time and energy. But now we are really proud of it, since we have a “product” that can be compared even to professional [corporate] ones, and we made it all by ourselves. You can imagine how satisfied I get to see people’s positive surprise about this!

3. “Fading Night Sounds” is sung in English; are any of your songs in Italian? Or have you chosen English as your music’s language? If so, why?

[Mick] “Fading Night Sound” is sung in English and for now there are no plans on writing in Italian, but who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow.

We have chosen the English language along the kind of music we wanted to play when we begun, and we got used to it. But I repeat, we don’t want to give ourselves a limit to a specific genre or language for the future; we’ll sing in all the languages we want sing, eheh!

(Photographer: Lucia Rosini)

4. "Femme Fatale" is an interesting name for a band composed of men; why did you guys settle on this name?

[Rox] I clearly remember the moment when Dave, the other guitarist, came out with Femme Fatale. We were looking for something that could have been easily remembered by people, but with a soft “decadent” touch. Last but not least, “Femme Fatale” by Velvet Underground is one our favourite songs!

Of course, sooner or later, I’d like to hear, during a show, something like “Hey! What’s that, I was waiting for a bunch of beautiful girls!” It would be really funny!

5. Any plans on releasing more music in the near future?

[Collectively] Naturally, besides promoting “Fading Night Sound” and touring the most we can, everywhere we are requested, one of the goals for the near future is to keep on evolving our music. We’ve written a lot of material in which we really believe, even if it sounds, as I told you before, a little different than what we have done in the past. We are looking forward to recording this material, but we won’t probably seriously speak about recording until this summer’s end, or autumn, because we want to be sure to produce something even better than “FNS,” musically and technically.

Keep up with Femme Fatale at their MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you happen to be in Italia, check out the band on the following dates:
Friday, 25 March: MILK CLUB, Genova
Friday, 20 May: at the second round of Contest Torino Sotterranea, Torino

As mentioned above, here the stream of Femme Fatale's "Fading Night Sounds."

Femme Fatale - Fading Night Sounds by Femme Fatale band