Tiny Tide
Around The World In 80 Dates
(KinGem Records 2013)
GET THE ALBUM HERE
12 indie pop love songs and 1 lonesome alt-ballad by Tiny Tide
Written and recorded by Mark Zonda with a little help from:
Maddalena Zavatta (vocals on “Recording Sarah”)
Valeria Caponnetto Delleani (vocals on “Whishing On 10.000 Stars”)
Sara Paster (vocals on “Super Surprise”, “Present Present”, “Ikanai De Ne”, Japanese lyrics supervision on “Ikanai De Ne”, album art)
Anthony Rochester (hofner bass, hammond organ, drums, guitar and vocals on “Sleepwalking”)
Paolo Branzagia (piano solo on “Final Fashion”)
Michele Pieri (drums on “ Lucy & Schroeder”)
What’s the album about?
“Around the World in 80 Dates” it’s a journey on the universe of happy indie melody tunes crossing every colour of this music from twee pop to shoegaze through psych, lo-fo and AM-Pop. What you get it 12 choral Happy Pop songs about love and one final sour ballad about abandon and disenchantment. Here’s the tracklist:
- Recording Sarah
- Wishing on 10.000 Stars
- Super Surprise
- Present Present
- Final Fashion
- A Date
- Rebel Rebel Car
- Ikanai De Ne
- Sleepwalking
- Lucy & Schroeder
- Now Love
- Never Met
- Cyrano Last Song
This album recordings started in the summer of 2010.I can’t remember when I met Sara Paster. I was always in love with her band “Fitness Forever”, but the mystery stays. Where did I know her? It was two years ago. Was MySpace still in vogue? Anyway. First recall I have of this crazy thing was me coming back from IndieTrack Festival in UK, being so proud having received a message from Sara telling me she accepted to try and make some music with me. It was a magic summer.
We weren’t sure about the name of the project. We slided from “OISHII” (with all CAPITAL letters) to “Mr. Hearts Robots” and finally the genius pop name “Cherry Berry”, even releasing a Christmas song called “Berry Christmas” on a KinFem Festive Compilation. One thing was sure: after having recjected tracks as the punky “Farmville Freaks” and the jazzed “Theme From Sushii the 3rd” we decided that the project would have focused on something between Sarah Records productions and Shibuiya-Kei, since me and Sara were both fond on Japan and latest indie pop vogues.
And then came the songs…
I was so enthusiastic and in love with the idea of writing him/she pop music that I came with these odd couple love tunes: Whishing on 10.00 Stars, Super Surprise, Final Fashion, Rebel Rebel Car, Present Present and the Japanese Ikanai De Ne. But above all the magical “Recording Sarah”, a little tribute to Sarah Record and the track I think persuaded Sara to join the project.
Don’t know what happened. Probably Sara had too many things on her agenda with her band on it’s hype to keep on recording these tracks. I had many other albums and projects to take care of too, so it took two years to go back to those songs and get them done, adding some other tracks form another Tiny Tide album left undone called “TENNET” (“A Date”, “Sleepwalking” and “Lucy & Schroeder”). Getting back to these tracks was like travelling throught time.
Summer 2012 I had the pleasure to meet a new friend: Matteo Bevilacqua, a young movie director from Ravenna. It was a pleasure to write and shoot a music video for “Recording Sarah”. Having another DJ friend of mine owning the whole Sarah Records catalogue collection was the starting point for starting to plot on how those disks, pictures and fanzines would have fit in a video about this legendary label from the ’80s. Since Sara left the project we needed a new singer. Meeting Maddalena Zavatta was a blessing! I think it was a good alchemy. A popular radio anchorman, dj and blogstar called Enzo “Polaroid” Baruffaldi is also featured in the video as an postman.
I wrote “Wishing on 10.000 Stars” one strange day of August. I was sitting on a big arena in the middle of a very hudge crowd. So many people was looking at the stage, but I was so detached from the show. The band looked so far away, and all my attention was caught by the wide starry skies, just cleaned by the wind after a very strong storm hit the city. So many people, these legendary artists playing on stage and all I was only able to think about was just one person, so far away from me. The day after I started to write this song wondering: “Why wishing on just one star? If I had one wish for each star of the Universe my wish would just be the same, and if I would only be supposed to wish on falling stars all the lights in the sky would fade away and the stars would go in some kind of cosmic cemetery where all our prayers rest”. Strange little mind I have, uh? Then again I was so lucky to get Valeria Caponnetto Delleani to sing a song. I met this amazing girl – with such a beautiful special voice – thanks to her mother Silvana Aliotta. Silvana used to sing in two very popular bands, both in the ’70s (“Circus 2000″) and the ’8os (“Le Streghe”, produced by Shel Shapiro). I met her on an interview for a project I was running about Italo Disco.
“Final Fashion” is my attempt to write about the world of fashion bloggers.
I remember that I used to talk about “A Date” with a friend at pub on Forlì many winters ago. I was discussing about the lyrics I just wrote (I was really unsure about some lines, but this guy assured me they were really ok and suitable for pop music) while I had “Rebel Rebel Car” played on one of those very close indie weekends from a friend’s car stereo hearing him telling me it was an instant hit.
“Ikanai de ne” is my first and only attempt to write a song in Japanese. I think it’s the best track of the album. Sara was really happy to sing this one. She studied Japanese at the university so she checked both this lyric collage form songs from my top favorite bands and the pronunciation of the words in the song. So happy we managed to get this one done, while my intention to write a song in french (“Rien ne va rouge”) was left unfinished and abandoned after a very rough instrumental demo.
“Sleepwalking” is a nice collaboration with the Oceaning-American singer songwriter Anthony Rochester. This version sounds completely different from the demo. It’s so great to hear Ant playing Hofner bass and Hammond organ in this one.
“Lucy & Schroeder” has a long story. We used to play this song live for at least a couple of years calling it “LHS”. We never got to record it even though it was one of the most loved track of the band during our live show. During a previous recording session our drummer insisted to record its parts even if it was not planned to have a place into the “Febrero” sessions. Here’s its chance to shine and get a proper place in an album. I choosed to record the song using only piano parts and vocals by keeping the song a tribute to the Peanut characters. I guess this way it sounds more like Ben Fold Five rather then Belle & Sebastian meet Velvet Underground. The song appeared to me in a dream sang by Apples in Stereo. In the oniric vision it sounded even more electric and jingle-jangle rather than the final version.
“Never Met” was my attempt to write for a friend a song in an Alanis Morrisette style. It ended to get mostly a lo-fi version of Manic Street Preachers in disguise.
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