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GOOD LUCK with your exams Lucrezia!!  :hug:

 

Love,love

me

 

 

I hope you do well in your exams. Good luck!!

 

Thank you so much :huglove:

 

 

Thank you Deb for your translation!!!

And of course Charlie for your hard work!

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The Gioia article:

 

Things I Have Learned

A new album, the tour, a book coming out and X Factor 9. After "the two most intense years of my life" and an accident that marked him, the pop minstrel has made a decision: Enough hiding himself. Now, he says, I am ready to tell (almost) everything.

 

He drums a rhythm with his long and beautiful fingers on the table in front of him. He doesn't seem nervous, rather it's like he is singing a mysterious melody to himself. I meet Mika in the office of his record label, Universal, at dusk and at his pleasure we stay immersed for a while in the dim light that puts everything in shadow, both our outlines and other things. Rarely have I seen a person who is so tired smiling so often. "I'm like this since I began to answer "yes" to all the important things. Now for me everything is 'yes, yes yesss,'" he explains to me triumphantly in an irresistible patchwork of English-Italian. His new album, No Place in Heaven, is about to come out, and he is also about to leave for his tour (first date in Milan on the 10th June, then Rome, Florence, Taormina, Cattolica and Milan again). In the autumn, there are on the calendar XF9, for which he will judge again, and the Diary of an Accidental Optimist, which he is writing and will by published by Rizzoli.

 

It occurs to me: too much stuff...

 

See, there was a moment, after the accident (which happened in 2010) in which my sister Paloma fell from a window at her house in London, in which I thought: from here and now either I begin to really become myself, or I might as well just give up. My sister was very seriously ill for a long time and even when they declared her out of danger a part of her remained caught up for a long time in a dark place. Do you say it like that in Italian, dark place? That is, she was very depressed and me along with her. Then something clicked and I realized that I had lost a lot of time, too much, worrying about consequences.

 

Consequences of what?

 

Of whatever. Everything was an effort for me, even dressing myself was torturing. I changed 20 times before choosing. In my room I wrote songs laying down on the bed, I had delusions of grandeur, and the pieces hummed there seemed very cool to me; but in other ways powerful. When I tried them in the studio, they turned out to be a giant pile of crap. Then finally I understood what the truth was.

 

And that would be?

 

The person that I was and what I appeared to be were very different from each other. So I let them meet each other. I stopped protecting myself from everything. My book then became a funny and touching diary, I have written it stringing together things that in my other life I would have refused to tell. There are stories of family, of the revolt in Syria, a playful self-portrait in which I look at myself in the mirror, making faces and reflecting on what I have become in the last few years.

 

Summing up in two adjectives: tired, but happy?

 

The last two-and-a-half years have been the most intense of my life. The first time that I said yes to XF Italia I didn't know a word of your language. When I began to study, the teach was desperate, she said to me: "You speak like a butcher, but with the accent of the Spanish ambassador's wife." I laughed a lot and went ahead. I began to speak, to do interviews and face life with candor.

 

The opposite of before.

 

I was very shy/modest, a trait that I inherited from my family. We live with the sense of built-in guilt in the DNA, we are always careful to not make any trouble or go too far, and to not invade anybody's space. But at a certain point I thought, "Why can I not say that I am gay? Why can I not say that my grandmother is a smart person, but also the worst ballbreaker in history?" Ultimately I thought a long time and I understood I had hurt people from whom I would want to ask forgiveness. I made a lot mistakes.

 

Who of us haven't made any, come on.

 

True. But I am a public personality. Don't misunderstand me: I am equal to everyone else, however, I have the privilege of choosing how to "blow up", how to leave a mark on the world. Therefore, I always worry about not crossing the line between poetry and pornography.

 

Don't worry. Your new songs stay on the side of poetry.

 

I'm happy. My album has the luxury of being emotional, like me; it is a disco-show, I have not made it according to the rules of melodic pop, but I am sure that it will find its space. The important thing, when one writes, is to not copy.

 

The lead singles are a mishmash of so many themes: one speaks of your adolescent gay heroes, of heaven and hell, of unmissable (?) parties and impending disasters.

 

Truly in Last Party, the last party, I wanted to sing about the space between terrible news and ectasy, the gray space that tells of the tension between that which we anticipate and that which happens. I like to feel as you do when you progress very slowly along the last stretch of the switchback uphill, just before you dive into the abyss.

 

You love the thrill?

 

I fear boredom. And when I am too comfortable I'm bored. Perhaps because I was born uncomfortable/troubled: I am dyslexic and before understanding it, at school, I struggled for years. Today one of the great purchases that I allow myself are audio books, I listen to them compulsively and without prejudice, from McEwan to Steinbeck to the trash stories of Donna Leon, set in Venice, where she lives. She is published in 23 languages, but she's embarrassed to make translations in Italian because it is too trashy and her themes would insult the Venetians.

 

Italy is your adopted country.

 

(Laughs) Rather, it's that my XL family is not easy to carry around. One of our typical get-togethers involved 26 people, 8 cars, 48 suitcases, a dog. In France, they saw us like a barbaric invasion, you Italians are more ready to take advantage of our arrival.

 

In accepting to be a judge for XF9, do you fear it will become routine?

 

I believe that I'll have a lot of fun with Skin. She has promised that she will make a mess and I believe her. We met in nightclubs in London, we frequented them together with Jodie Harsh, a very famous drag queen.

 

And will you miss Morgan?

 

I will miss the intelligence and the culture that he shows when he is on form, and he embodies the perfect disciple of Lao-Tzu in "The Art of War." He manages to be both prepared and unpredictable and he has the unique ability to pretend that nothing matters except what's around him.

 

Someone has said that without him the cast will be weak.

 

I don't agree. Elio is there, too, with him it will certainly not be a dead program, dicks! (he really said that)

 

Now can I ask what makes you happy?

 

The sense of humor: without it one cannot make good music, not even sad music. One can't have good sex. Without humor there is no good food and no feeling.

 

What then makes you unhappy?

 

Intolerance. And passive-aggressiveness.

 

Are you in love?

 

Mika bends his head to the side, batting his eyelashes, looking at me. Then he makes a small whisper: "Here's another important thing to which I can answer yes," and he smiles.

That is really good! Thank you so much.

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Last two pages of the Wired Italy interview. I post them now since I am afraid I will forget tomorrow, as I am quite busy.

You should wait for Charlie's first half though...even if the text can also work on its own.

I like this article, but is it just me who sees basically zero connection between the text and the graphs visualizing the songs?

 

 

 

 

“In reality it is very complex. Often it is a process that you need to refine working hard, and then do it without thinking about it. You train to develop melodies, to decorate them, elaborate them, reinvent them, to find some techniques to get them, but when it happens it is automatic, because like an athlete you enter in an instinctive area: the melody comes out as it should, but  you do not remember how it happened. You remember only all the steps to reach that point”.
But there is a paradox in the creative process.
“How can an author provide emotions and surprise himself? It is a process that requires presence and detachment at the same time. In a certain way the creation of an original musical object is equivalent to be able to be tickled by yourself. It is impossible”. says Francois Pachet, director of Sony Computer Science Lab in Paris, expert in artificial intelligence and researcher in musical creativity. How can an author give emotions and surprises to himself? “Creation is similar to what monks do” says Mika.
“Some years ago I took a meditation class. I was starting to work to my second album, when something horrible happened to me. I lost 60% of hearing. I have an sensorial hypocausia (?), it happened also to others in my family. So now I have a 60% decrease at 3000 Hz. It has never been solved. At the time I went to a meditation class to try to get better. I was getting crazy, I was constantly hearing noises. Even now I am very sensitive to sounds, I always need to protect my ears” says the songwriter with libanese origins.  “During the meditation class the monk invited me to start a pattern, something familiar to me, and I replied abruptly: What the hell of a pattern?” because I really did not want to be there. He saw a coke can, and he started to repeat “Coke coke coke”.  He told me to do like that. “Say it and get it into your head”. The he used the pattern as a structure, to guide me forward and backward in the conscience. It is exactly what I do when I write: I find a pattern that puts me in that zone, and I can write”.
From the “classical” Mika writings (“words and melodies, I do not think in terms of sound”) we move to the construction of the musical object.
“This is the first album I recorded almost completely at home. In a single day, with 3500 dollars, I built a recording studio in the living room. The main part of what you hear in the album was recorded like this in Los Angeles. Almost all the voices were captured with a cheap microphone. The main part of the studio work was done on the music, but the voice and the piano were often rough. There is little voice manipulation, very little tuning”. In our model, the voice is treated as a part of the track, but the texts add several level of complexity to a piece. Mika uses often words to introduce ambiguities in a song, a dark element that is in contrast with the happy rhythms: other means to manipulate expectations.
The voice was also used is contrast with the music, to add a very physical and “breathing” element. “I have a collection of my breaths. If one is cut in the track during production, I put it back”. he says, during an electronic track.
Mika tells that thinking about our experiment with his songs he made an experiment himself during a performance: “I was singing the new songs at Webster Hall, in New York, and I was studying the reaction of the listeners for the first time. I was trying to understand how long it took to become emotional, and lower defences and feel the same joy as when they hear the songs they know. It is incredible how increasing the dynamic between verse and main melody I managed to create a more intense reaction with the material they did not know.
if I was reducing the dynamics I was becoming less intriguing, less satisfactory and so there was no space for them in the song. The second night, when I exaggerated the dynamics in my performance and the one of the band, the song suddenly opened up”.
It is music seen as a social signal, the performer seen as an emphatic communicator.
But how do we measure the audience’s reaction? “ I look at what happens. I look at the tension in the faces, I check if they tap their feet or not, or if they talk among each others or if they stare at me”, answers Mika: “there is a wonderful world in italian, which does not really have a translation in english “consapevolezza” (something like awareness). As a performer you develop an extreme form of awareness, you must do it. I always say that a musician should consider himself part of the team. The first thing you need to learn when you perform on stage is to get away from the priviledged position where you are as an author. You must become an interpreter, a provoker, and thinking of yourself as one of the team you become more receptive of what happens in front of you, you adapt and become a better performer. In this way it is easier to read the audience’s signals.”
The emotional communication with the audience is metaphorically rendered as a line of tension “It is an invisible line that goes directly to the stomach, direct to the mind, stretched between you and the audience. Your role as performer is to keep aware of this tension. It is like the heartbeat of the performance, I see it like this.
You must always keep a minimum heartbeat level, otherwise the perfomance dies. There is no need to be hyperactive on stage, you can also have a slow song. The idea is the tension, but tension is created by intention”.
As Mika said, the performance takes the identity of an intense communication act, started and directed by the performer.
It is the performer that creates a lowering of the defences, visible in the physical symptoms of the relaxation of the face and the muscles. “And when you managed to open those areas on someone, once you manage to communicate that way, you must be very responsible, you are forced to be, since you are holding them by the hand, and if they feel you are not respectful, you do not know what is happening or that you will let them fall, they will become harsh again and you will have lost them.”
According to Mika concerts are “controlled improvisations, not different from what happens in classical music”, but his idea of intention goes beyond a set of interpretations.
“As much as we try to analyse the writing process and interpretation, there is always an undeniable alchemy, and this is why we will always be fascinated by the art of interpretation and performance”, he keeps saying “it is the alchemy of someone who can do something and we do not know why. There is a person stepping on stage, a person in meat and bones that you recognise as such, but he has a power on you that you cannot justify, and your interpretation is that he has a special power.
There comes the idea of Stardust. It has nothing to do with celebrity per se. “ In practice it is like having superpowers right? Mika laughs “Ah but I don’t have them. I am more like a baker. It is hard to make good bread, it is pure alchemy.” Like music.
 

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Wired Italia made a really particular and interesting article/interview about Mika's album.

 

Here are the scans of the magazine

 

post-18139-0-19732700-1433591236.jpg

 

post-18139-0-44130500-1433591240.jpg

 

post-18139-0-72017500-1433591243.jpg

post-18139-0-91581400-1433591246.jpg

 

post-18139-0-19615600-1433591250.jpg

post-18139-0-47202700-1433591253.jpg

 

 

attachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 72).jpg attachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 73).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 74).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 75).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 76).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 77).jpg

 

 

Last two pages of the Wired Italy interview. I post them now since I am afraid I will forget tomorrow, as I am quite busy.

You should wait for Charlie's first half though...even if the text can also work on its own.

I like this article, but is it just me who sees basically zero connection between the text and the graphs visualizing the songs?

 

 

 

 

“In reality it is very complex. Often it is a process that you need to refine working hard, and then do it without thinking about it. You train to develop melodies, to decorate them, elaborate them, reinvent them, to find some techniques to get them, but when it happens it is automatic, because like an athlete you enter in an instinctive area: the melody comes out as it should, but  you do not remember how it happened. You remember only all the steps to reach that point”.

But there is a paradox in the creative process.

“How can an author provide emotions and surprise himself? It is a process that requires presence and detachment at the same time. In a certain way the creation of an original musical object is equivalent to be able to be tickled by yourself. It is impossible”. says Francois Pachet, director of Sony Computer Science Lab in Paris, expert in artificial intelligence and researcher in musical creativity. How can an author give emotions and surprises to himself? “Creation is similar to what monks do” says Mika.

“Some years ago I took a meditation class. I was starting to work to my second album, when something horrible happened to me. I lost 60% of hearing. I have an sensorial hypocausia (?), it happened also to others in my family. So now I have a 60% decrease at 3000 Hz. It has never been solved. At the time I went to a meditation class to try to get better. I was getting crazy, I was constantly hearing noises. Even now I am very sensitive to sounds, I always need to protect my ears” says the songwriter with libanese origins.  “During the meditation class the monk invited me to start a pattern, something familiar to me, and I replied abruptly: What the hell of a pattern?” because I really did not want to be there. He saw a coke can, and he started to repeat “Coke coke coke”.  He told me to do like that. “Say it and get it into your head”. The he used the pattern as a structure, to guide me forward and backward in the conscience. It is exactly what I do when I write: I find a pattern that puts me in that zone, and I can write”.

From the “classical” Mika writings (“words and melodies, I do not think in terms of sound”) we move to the construction of the musical object.

“This is the first album I recorded almost completely at home. In a single day, with 3500 dollars, I built a recording studio in the living room. The main part of what you hear in the album was recorded like this in Los Angeles. Almost all the voices were captured with a cheap microphone. The main part of the studio work was done on the music, but the voice and the piano were often rough. There is little voice manipulation, very little tuning”. In our model, the voice is treated as a part of the track, but the texts add several level of complexity to a piece. Mika uses often words to introduce ambiguities in a song, a dark element that is in contrast with the happy rhythms: other means to manipulate expectations.

The voice was also used is contrast with the music, to add a very physical and “breathing” element. “I have a collection of my breaths. If one is cut in the track during production, I put it back”. he says, during an electronic track.

Mika tells that thinking about our experiment with his songs he made an experiment himself during a performance: “I was singing the new songs at Webster Hall, in New York, and I was studying the reaction of the listeners for the first time. I was trying to understand how long it took to become emotional, and lower defences and feel the same joy as when they hear the songs they know. It is incredible how increasing the dynamic between verse and main melody I managed to create a more intense reaction with the material they did not know.

if I was reducing the dynamics I was becoming less intriguing, less satisfactory and so there was no space for them in the song. The second night, when I exaggerated the dynamics in my performance and the one of the band, the song suddenly opened up”.

It is music seen as a social signal, the performer seen as an emphatic communicator.

But how do we measure the audience’s reaction? “ I look at what happens. I look at the tension in the faces, I check if they tap their feet or not, or if they talk among each others or if they stare at me”, answers Mika: “there is a wonderful world in italian, which does not really have a translation in english “consapevolezza” (something like awareness). As a performer you develop an extreme form of awareness, you must do it. I always say that a musician should consider himself part of the team. The first thing you need to learn when you perform on stage is to get away from the priviledged position where you are as an author. You must become an interpreter, a provoker, and thinking of yourself as one of the team you become more receptive of what happens in front of you, you adapt and become a better performer. In this way it is easier to read the audience’s signals.”

The emotional communication with the audience is metaphorically rendered as a line of tension “It is an invisible line that goes directly to the stomach, direct to the mind, stretched between you and the audience. Your role as performer is to keep aware of this tension. It is like the heartbeat of the performance, I see it like this.

You must always keep a minimum heartbeat level, otherwise the perfomance dies. There is no need to be hyperactive on stage, you can also have a slow song. The idea is the tension, but tension is created by intention”.

As Mika said, the performance takes the identity of an intense communication act, started and directed by the performer.

It is the performer that creates a lowering of the defences, visible in the physical symptoms of the relaxation of the face and the muscles. “And when you managed to open those areas on someone, once you manage to communicate that way, you must be very responsible, you are forced to be, since you are holding them by the hand, and if they feel you are not respectful, you do not know what is happening or that you will let them fall, they will become harsh again and you will have lost them.”

According to Mika concerts are “controlled improvisations, not different from what happens in classical music”, but his idea of intention goes beyond a set of interpretations.

“As much as we try to analyse the writing process and interpretation, there is always an undeniable alchemy, and this is why we will always be fascinated by the art of interpretation and performance”, he keeps saying “it is the alchemy of someone who can do something and we do not know why. There is a person stepping on stage, a person in meat and bones that you recognise as such, but he has a power on you that you cannot justify, and your interpretation is that he has a special power.

There comes the idea of Stardust. It has nothing to do with celebrity per se. “ In practice it is like having superpowers right? Mika laughs “Ah but I don’t have them. I am more like a baker. It is hard to make good bread, it is pure alchemy.” Like music.

 

 

Here the first part of the translation of the first four pages of "Wired Italia"'s article/interview.

Sorry if I haven't finished the translation, but something (unexpected) came up at work and I'll post the second and final part as soon as it's ready.

Thanks a lot to stefa for her help!!  :flowers2:

 

Inside the music of Mika

 

We gets to listen to "no place in heaven", the latest album of the pop star.

we made/had a computer listen to "no place in heaven", the latest album of the pop star. The tracks have become numbers analyzed by a group of neuroscientists, who discovered that…

 

Passed in a/ put through a  data processor the last songs of the singer Anglo-Lebanese and the result is a three-dimensional map of the sound quality (the timbre) of every moment of the album

 

"I start from a (musical) motif/melody. Dum dum dum dum. I imagine a horse. There is always something visual. I see a man on horseback, I feel the pace/gait, and that is the basis of "Good Guys". It is rhythm and melody at the same time. It’s as if it were a color. I never begin by an emotion. I start to write, cold, and, if I get to be moved/touched, I know that am writing well and the emotion keeps me going." Word of Mika, met in Milan in an frantic day in April. The singer-songwriter, of Anglo-Lebanese origins, had to deliver to us in secret his fourth album, “No Place In Heaven”, long before the official release. Mika has, in fact, agreed to undergo an experiment for “Wired”: he shared with us his new songs because we could disassemble them and scientifically study their functioning. From that moment began our journey into pop music, led by the nose (or flair/intuition/knack) of neuroscientists and computer scientists, who thanks to special algorithms, allow a computer to "feel" and "understand" an audio file.The feature extraction of music audio files is essential to manage music databases, including the operations of identification of the pieces (Shazam, Spotify and YouTube Music Key use algorithms of Music Information Retrieval, Mir), but it is also a promising area of research in the cognitive sciences of music, making explicit the relations between our perception and the characteristics of a recorded piece.

The question that has driven our experiment is at the heart of the scientific challenge that tries to understand the human obsession for music.What makes it work? How can a sequence of vibrations that propagate in the air captivate us? Why a song is transformed into an object of desire/ object that is desired?

The idea is to look at the music that "works" by definition. a successful pop author, like Mika, with over 10 million records sold, is a specialist in the composition of melodies, accessible and unforgettable at the same time. And putting under the magnifying glass to his songs, we were able to reveal some secrets. But is enough a computer to identify (/detect/find) the "Mika style", what makes his music recognizable? To this subject, for example, is working the "Sony Computer Science Laboratory" of Paris. The aim of the project FlowMachines is to teach to a machine to recognize the style and turn it into a virtual object manipulated while composing new pieces. But already now we can say a lot about the new album of the singer-songwriter.

With the help of Olivier Lartillot, computer scientist of the University of Aalborg in Denmark, we have indeed discovered a very varied collection of songs.The pieces have elaborate structures, almost never reducible to a simple alternation of verse and chorus. Mika is sophisticated and, thanks to a complex instrumentation, he livens up also the pieces more naked. His secret? An high contrast ambiguity, with clashes of musical and lyrical elements. There are joyful musical chords, rhythm measured by anxious pulsations, comfortable sonorities with drastic final, pop simplicity and dark words/lyrics.

But let's start from the beginning, how the music is perceived by the brain.The model in vogue in neuroscience argues that the music works/ functions by creating tension and expectations. It leads us, using our inclination to extract regularities from the sound flow and to predict what will come later, only to tease us by violating expectations, or postponing the realization.

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Thank you so so much !! :hug:  This was very special - and something really new, to get MIKAs music and work analyzed this way!!  :thumb_yello:  :wub:  I'm so happy and proud,  on his behalf - and  hope it will reach a lot of readers!! :thumb_yello: Look forward to the rest of this  art. :)

 

Love,love

me

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Here the first part of the translation of the first four pages of "Wired Italia"'s article/interview.

Sorry if I haven't finished the translation, but something (unexpected) came up at work and I'll post the second and final part as soon as it's ready.

Thanks a lot to stefa for her help!!  :flowers2:

 

Inside the music of Mika

 

We gets to listen to "no place in heaven", the latest album of the pop star.

we made/had a computer listen to "no place in heaven", the latest album of the pop star. The tracks have become numbers analyzed by a group of neuroscientists, who discovered that…

 

Passed in a/ put through a  data processor the last songs of the singer Anglo-Lebanese and the result is a three-dimensional map of the sound quality (the timbre) of every moment of the album

 

"I start from a (musical) motif/melody. Dum dum dum dum. I imagine a horse. There is always something visual. I see a man on horseback, I feel the pace/gait, and that is the basis of "Good Guys". It is rhythm and melody at the same time. It’s as if it were a color. I never begin by an emotion. I start to write, cold, and, if I get to be moved/touched, I know that am writing well and the emotion keeps me going." Word of Mika, met in Milan in an frantic day in April. The singer-songwriter, of Anglo-Lebanese origins, had to deliver to us in secret his fourth album, “No Place In Heaven”, long before the official release. Mika has, in fact, agreed to undergo an experiment for “Wired”: he shared with us his new songs because we could disassemble them and scientifically study their functioning. From that moment began our journey into pop music, led by the nose (or flair/intuition/knack) of neuroscientists and computer scientists, who thanks to special algorithms, allow a computer to "feel" and "understand" an audio file.The feature extraction of music audio files is essential to manage music databases, including the operations of identification of the pieces (Shazam, Spotify and YouTube Music Key use algorithms of Music Information Retrieval, Mir), but it is also a promising area of research in the cognitive sciences of music, making explicit the relations between our perception and the characteristics of a recorded piece.

The question that has driven our experiment is at the heart of the scientific challenge that tries to understand the human obsession for music.What makes it work? How can a sequence of vibrations that propagate in the air captivate us? Why a song is transformed into an object of desire/ object that is desired?

The idea is to look at the music that "works" by definition. a successful pop author, like Mika, with over 10 million records sold, is a specialist in the composition of melodies, accessible and unforgettable at the same time. And putting under the magnifying glass to his songs, we were able to reveal some secrets. But is enough a computer to identify (/detect/find) the "Mika style", what makes his music recognizable? To this subject, for example, is working the "Sony Computer Science Laboratory" of Paris. The aim of the project FlowMachines is to teach to a machine to recognize the style and turn it into a virtual object manipulated while composing new pieces. But already now we can say a lot about the new album of the singer-songwriter.

With the help of Olivier Lartillot, computer scientist of the University of Aalborg in Denmark, we have indeed discovered a very varied collection of songs.The pieces have elaborate structures, almost never reducible to a simple alternation of verse and chorus. Mika is sophisticated and, thanks to a complex instrumentation, he livens up also the pieces more naked. His secret? An high contrast ambiguity, with clashes of musical and lyrical elements. There are joyful musical chords, rhythm measured by anxious pulsations, comfortable sonorities with drastic final, pop simplicity and dark words/lyrics.

But let's start from the beginning, how the music is perceived by the brain.The model in vogue in neuroscience argues that the music works/ functions by creating tension and expectations. It leads us, using our inclination to extract regularities from the sound flow and to predict what will come later, only to tease us by violating expectations, or postponing the realization.

 

Here the final part:

 

The  game of prevision - surprise involves neural mechanisms of motivation and reward, which activate themselves with other stimuli essential to the survival: food and sex.

“In our species the oldest circuits, related to survival, work in synergy with the newer systems dedicated to the analysis and pattern recognition”, explains Stefan Koelsch, a neuroscientist at the Freie Universität of Berlin. A musician can play with many different items, from rhythmic variations, to the use of musical chords which sound "suspended", waiting for completion (/fulfillment, accomplishment).

Our analysis has employed/used algorithms in large part original to display and understand the structure of the songs, at different levels. The analysis has produced a map of the album that allows to quickly identify some characteristics "macro" of the pieces, from songs more danceable, from the retro disco of "L'amour fait ce qu’il veut" to the techno pop of "Staring at the Sun".

Both songs have rhythmic events in the low frequencies and regular pulsations, two characteristics that powerfully modulate the activity of the motor system, as demonstrated by neuroimaging studies and intuitions of DJs. The three indicators of danceability identify the "African" rhythmic of “Good Wife”, with much activity in the bass, and soft and dense pulsations. The contrast index grasps (/catches/captures) the dramatic movements, emotionally engaging of "Porcelain" and "Last Party", while "Oh Girl You're the Devil", which is also very danceable, has rapid, dynamic fluctuations. Every song can be transformed into a image that shows their structure, rhythm and the quality of sound.

"Promiseland," a song that Mika defines "cool and a little trashy", unites aggressive techno sections, to syncopated vocal pieces, in which the voice enters slightly out of phase in respect to the pulsation, and manipulates the uniform time of the drum machine by inducing a feeling of acceleration. The international single, "Talk About You," has a vividly (clearly) "happy" tonality (music: tonal quality, key), it’s danceable, great sound intensity, and relatively low contrast, with a stably brilliant sound.

Even if it is pushed in much more detail than one can tell here, no Mir model of tension and expectations, however, explains the entirety of the musical experience. In a pop context, in particular, the music is experienced as an emanation, and even intimate expression, of a person.

It's time to ask the author of "No Place in Heaven" how he creates his melodies.

“Everyone speaks of catchy melodies, but it's too easy to think in those terms”, Mika tells.

 

SONGS

 

01

All She Wants

Against his mother

3’39”

 

Latent sadness and a touch of humor.

His mother, his grandmother, a fake wife. (They) Who wanted a different Mika.

 

02

Talk About You

To play (it) safe

3’22”

 

Rhythmic and brilliant.Classic pop song, with a false ending:

the song resumes, but has  slightly deviated (depart - diverge)

 

03

Good Guys

A nostalgic travel/journey

3’23”

 

The Italian single.

Calm, warm, but dynamic.

A tribute to the heroes of Mika, from Warhol to Oscar Wilde

 

04

No Place in Heaven

An anxious prayer

3’20”

 

Syncopated rhythm and a beating heart, with references to religious music

 

05

Staring At the Sun

A party at sunset

3’36”

 

Energetic techno rhythm.

Midsummer/the height of summer, thanks to the final concert of crickets

 

06

Last Party

ready to cry?

3’39”

 

Melancholy by (the) end of the world.

Calm but dynamic, with a strong crescendo

 

07

Hurts

Attack of nostalgia

3’36”

 

A quiet ballad, little rhythmic and dynamic.

The effect on the voice of Mika makes it different

 

08

Oh Girl You’re the Devil

Let's Dance!

2’51”

 

A vocal counterpoint, playful and dynamic.

Go with the bass.

 

09

Good Wife

To be moved/touched

3’18”

 

A rhythm in African style.

A (music) drama by the sound warm and comfortable, with a violent final

 

10

Rio

To cheer (themselves) up

4’08”

 

The song of the escape, thanks to joyful chords.

Energetic, enthralling and aggressive

 

11

Ordinary Man

The end of a love story

3’46”

 

Emotional and nostalgic ballad, quiet and warm.

No percussions, there is no dancing here.

 

12

Promiseland

Next single?

2’59”

 

A collision between funky syncopated voices, instrumental and techno parts.

Sexy meow on the final

 

13

Porcelain

A mystical journey

3’19”

 

Calm and dramatic in the dynamic.

Falsetto voice. The sound more "deviant" of the album

 

14

L’amour fait ce qu’il veut

Retro disco

3’25”

 

Funky in French, with a crescendo that stays in your (/the) head/mind

 

15

Boum boum boum

Go with the Latin (Hispanic) rhythms

3’28”

 

Sad chords, typical of Spanish music.

Rhythm more complex, warmer sound

Edited by charlie20
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Wired Italia made a really particular and interesting article/interview about Mika's album.

 

Here are the scans of the magazine

 

post-18139-0-19732700-1433591236.jpg

 

post-18139-0-44130500-1433591240.jpg

 

post-18139-0-72017500-1433591243.jpg

post-18139-0-91581400-1433591246.jpg

 

post-18139-0-19615600-1433591250.jpg

post-18139-0-47202700-1433591253.jpg

 

 

attachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 72).jpg attachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 73).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 74).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 75).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 76).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 77).jpg

 

So this is the entire translation:

 

 

Inside the music of Mika

 

We gets to listen to "no place in heaven", the latest album of the pop star.

we made/had a computer listen to "no place in heaven", the latest album of the pop star. The tracks have become numbers analyzed by a group of neuroscientists, who discovered that…

 

Passed in a/ put through a  data processor the last songs of the singer Anglo-Lebanese and the result is a three-dimensional map of the sound quality (the timbre) of every moment of the album

 

"I start from a (musical) motif/melody. Dum dum dum dum. I imagine a horse. There is always something visual. I see a man on horseback, I feel the pace/gait, and that is the basis of "Good Guys". It is rhythm and melody at the same time. It’s as if it were a color. I never begin by an emotion. I start to write, cold, and, if I get to be moved/touched, I know that am writing well and the emotion keeps me going." Word of Mika, met in Milan in an frantic day in April. The singer-songwriter, of Anglo-Lebanese origins, had to deliver to us in secret his fourth album, “No Place In Heaven”, long before the official release. Mika has, in fact, agreed to undergo an experiment for “Wired”: he shared with us his new songs because we could disassemble them and scientifically study their functioning. From that moment began our journey into pop music, led by the nose (or flair/intuition/knack) of neuroscientists and computer scientists, who thanks to special algorithms, allow a computer to "feel" and "understand" an audio file.The feature extraction of music audio files is essential to manage music databases, including the operations of identification of the pieces (Shazam, Spotify and YouTube Music Key use algorithms of Music Information Retrieval, Mir), but it is also a promising area of research in the cognitive sciences of music, making explicit the relations between our perception and the characteristics of a recorded piece.

The question that has driven our experiment is at the heart of the scientific challenge that tries to understand the human obsession for music.What makes it work? How can a sequence of vibrations that propagate in the air captivate us? Why a song is transformed into an object of desire/ object that is desired?

The idea is to look at the music that "works" by definition. a successful pop author, like Mika, with over 10 million records sold, is a specialist in the composition of melodies, accessible and unforgettable at the same time. And putting under the magnifying glass to his songs, we were able to reveal some secrets. But is enough a computer to identify (/detect/find) the "Mika style", what makes his music recognizable? To this subject, for example, is working the "Sony Computer Science Laboratory" of Paris. The aim of the project FlowMachines is to teach to a machine to recognize the style and turn it into a virtual object manipulated while composing new pieces. But already now we can say a lot about the new album of the singer-songwriter.

With the help of Olivier Lartillot, computer scientist of the University of Aalborg in Denmark, we have indeed discovered a very varied collection of songs.The pieces have elaborate structures, almost never reducible to a simple alternation of verse and chorus. Mika is sophisticated and, thanks to a complex instrumentation, he livens up also the pieces more naked. His secret? An high contrast ambiguity, with clashes of musical and lyrical elements. There are joyful musical chords, rhythm measured by anxious pulsations, comfortable sonorities with drastic final, pop simplicity and dark words/lyrics.

But let's start from the beginning, how the music is perceived by the brain.The model in vogue in neuroscience argues that the music works/ functions by creating tension and expectations. It leads us, using our inclination to extract regularities from the sound flow and to predict what will come later, only to tease us by violating expectations, or postponing the realization.

 

 

The  game of prevision - surprise involves neural mechanisms of motivation and reward, which activate themselves with other stimuli essential to the survival: food and sex.

“In our species the oldest circuits, related to survival, work in synergy with the newer systems dedicated to the analysis and pattern recognition”, explains Stefan Koelsch, a neuroscientist at the Freie Universität of Berlin. A musician can play with many different items, from rhythmic variations, to the use of musical chords which sound "suspended", waiting for completion (/fulfillment, accomplishment).

Our analysis has employed/used algorithms in large part original to display and understand the structure of the songs, at different levels. The analysis has produced a map of the album that allows to quickly identify some characteristics "macro" of the pieces, from songs more danceable, from the retro disco of "L'amour fait ce qu’il veut" to the techno pop of "Staring at the Sun".

Both songs have rhythmic events in the low frequencies and regular pulsations, two characteristics that powerfully modulate the activity of the motor system, as demonstrated by neuroimaging studies and intuitions of DJs. The three indicators of danceability identify the "African" rhythmic of “Good Wife”, with much activity in the bass, and soft and dense pulsations. The contrast index grasps (/catches/captures) the dramatic movements, emotionally engaging of "Porcelain" and "Last Party", while "Oh Girl You're the Devil", which is also very danceable, has rapid, dynamic fluctuations. Every song can be transformed into a image that shows their structure, rhythm and the quality of sound.

"Promiseland," a song that Mika defines "cool and a little trashy", unites aggressive techno sections, to syncopated vocal pieces, in which the voice enters slightly out of phase in respect to the pulsation, and manipulates the uniform time of the drum machine by inducing a feeling of acceleration. The international single, "Talk About You," has a vividly (clearly) "happy" tonality (music: tonal quality, key), it’s danceable, great sound intensity, and relatively low contrast, with a stably brilliant sound.

Even if it is pushed in much more detail than one can tell here, no Mir model of tension and expectations, however, explains the entirety of the musical experience. In a pop context, in particular, the music is experienced as an emanation, and even intimate expression, of a person.

It's time to ask the author of "No Place in Heaven" how he creates his melodies.

“Everyone speaks of catchy melodies, but it's too easy to think in those terms”, Mika tells.

 

SONGS

 

01

All She Wants

Against his mother

3’39”

 

Latent sadness and a touch of humor.

His mother, his grandmother, a fake wife. (They) Who wanted a different Mika.

 

02

Talk About You

To play (it) safe

3’22”

 

Rhythmic and brilliant.Classic pop song, with a false ending:

the song resumes, but has  slightly deviated (depart - diverge)

 

03

Good Guys

A nostalgic travel/journey

3’23”

 

The Italian single.

Calm, warm, but dynamic.

A tribute to the heroes of Mika, from Warhol to Oscar Wilde

 

04

No Place in Heaven

An anxious prayer

3’20”

 

Syncopated rhythm and a beating heart, with references to religious music

 

05

Staring At the Sun

A party at sunset

3’36”

 

Energetic techno rhythm.

Midsummer/the height of summer, thanks to the final concert of crickets

 

06

Last Party

ready to cry?

3’39”

 

Melancholy by (the) end of the world.

Calm but dynamic, with a strong crescendo

 

07

Hurts

Attack of nostalgia

3’36”

 

A quiet ballad, little rhythmic and dynamic.

The effect on the voice of Mika makes it different

 

08

Oh Girl You’re the Devil

Let's Dance!

2’51”

 

A vocal counterpoint, playful and dynamic.

Go with the bass.

 

09

Good Wife

To be moved/touched

3’18”

 

A rhythm in African style.

A (music) drama by the sound warm and comfortable, with a violent final

 

10

Rio

To cheer (themselves) up

4’08”

 

The song of the escape, thanks to joyful chords.

Energetic, enthralling and aggressive

 

11

Ordinary Man

The end of a love story

3’46”

 

Emotional and nostalgic ballad, quiet and warm.

No percussions, there is no dancing here.

 

12

Promiseland

Next single?

2’59”

 

A collision between funky syncopated voices, instrumental and techno parts.

Sexy meow on the final

 

13

Porcelain

A mystical journey

3’19”

 

Calm and dramatic in the dynamic.

Falsetto voice. The sound more "deviant" of the album

 

14

L’amour fait ce qu’il veut

Retro disco

3’25”

 

Funky in French, with a crescendo that stays in your (/the) head/mind

 

15

Boum boum boum

Go with the Latin (Hispanic) rhythms

3’28”

 

Sad chords, typical of Spanish music.

Rhythm more complex, warmer sound

 

(And the stefa's part of the translation - Many, many thanks again to her !!  :flowers2: )

 

 

“In reality it is very complex. Often it is a process that you need to refine working hard, and then do it without thinking about it. You train to develop melodies, to decorate them, elaborate them, reinvent them, to find some techniques to get them, but when it happens it is automatic, because like an athlete you enter in an instinctive area: the melody comes out as it should, but  you do not remember how it happened. You remember only all the steps to reach that point”.

But there is a paradox in the creative process.

“How can an author provide emotions and surprise himself? It is a process that requires presence and detachment at the same time. In a certain way the creation of an original musical object is equivalent to be able to be tickled by yourself. It is impossible”. says Francois Pachet, director of Sony Computer Science Lab in Paris, expert in artificial intelligence and researcher in musical creativity. How can an author give emotions and surprises to himself? “Creation is similar to what monks do” says Mika.

“Some years ago I took a meditation class. I was starting to work to my second album, when something horrible happened to me. I lost 60% of hearing. I have an sensorial hypocausia (?), it happened also to others in my family. So now I have a 60% decrease at 3000 Hz. It has never been solved. At the time I went to a meditation class to try to get better. I was getting crazy, I was constantly hearing noises. Even now I am very sensitive to sounds, I always need to protect my ears” says the songwriter with libanese origins.  “During the meditation class the monk invited me to start a pattern, something familiar to me, and I replied abruptly: What the hell of a pattern?” because I really did not want to be there. He saw a coke can, and he started to repeat “Coke coke coke”.  He told me to do like that. “Say it and get it into your head”. The he used the pattern as a structure, to guide me forward and backward in the conscience. It is exactly what I do when I write: I find a pattern that puts me in that zone, and I can write”.

From the “classical” Mika writings (“words and melodies, I do not think in terms of sound”) we move to the construction of the musical object.

“This is the first album I recorded almost completely at home. In a single day, with 3500 dollars, I built a recording studio in the living room. The main part of what you hear in the album was recorded like this in Los Angeles. Almost all the voices were captured with a cheap microphone. The main part of the studio work was done on the music, but the voice and the piano were often rough. There is little voice manipulation, very little tuning”. In our model, the voice is treated as a part of the track, but the texts add several level of complexity to a piece. Mika uses often words to introduce ambiguities in a song, a dark element that is in contrast with the happy rhythms: other means to manipulate expectations.

The voice was also used is contrast with the music, to add a very physical and “breathing” element. “I have a collection of my breaths. If one is cut in the track during production, I put it back”. he says, during an electronic track.

Mika tells that thinking about our experiment with his songs he made an experiment himself during a performance: “I was singing the new songs at Webster Hall, in New York, and I was studying the reaction of the listeners for the first time. I was trying to understand how long it took to become emotional, and lower defences and feel the same joy as when they hear the songs they know. It is incredible how increasing the dynamic between verse and main melody I managed to create a more intense reaction with the material they did not know.

if I was reducing the dynamics I was becoming less intriguing, less satisfactory and so there was no space for them in the song. The second night, when I exaggerated the dynamics in my performance and the one of the band, the song suddenly opened up”.

It is music seen as a social signal, the performer seen as an emphatic communicator.

But how do we measure the audience’s reaction? “ I look at what happens. I look at the tension in the faces, I check if they tap their feet or not, or if they talk among each others or if they stare at me”, answers Mika: “there is a wonderful world in italian, which does not really have a translation in english “consapevolezza” (something like awareness). As a performer you develop an extreme form of awareness, you must do it. I always say that a musician should consider himself part of the team. The first thing you need to learn when you perform on stage is to get away from the priviledged position where you are as an author. You must become an interpreter, a provoker, and thinking of yourself as one of the team you become more receptive of what happens in front of you, you adapt and become a better performer. In this way it is easier to read the audience’s signals.”

The emotional communication with the audience is metaphorically rendered as a line of tension “It is an invisible line that goes directly to the stomach, direct to the mind, stretched between you and the audience. Your role as performer is to keep aware of this tension. It is like the heartbeat of the performance, I see it like this.

You must always keep a minimum heartbeat level, otherwise the perfomance dies. There is no need to be hyperactive on stage, you can also have a slow song. The idea is the tension, but tension is created by intention”.

As Mika said, the performance takes the identity of an intense communication act, started and directed by the performer.

It is the performer that creates a lowering of the defences, visible in the physical symptoms of the relaxation of the face and the muscles. “And when you managed to open those areas on someone, once you manage to communicate that way, you must be very responsible, you are forced to be, since you are holding them by the hand, and if they feel you are not respectful, you do not know what is happening or that you will let them fall, they will become harsh again and you will have lost them.”

According to Mika concerts are “controlled improvisations, not different from what happens in classical music”, but his idea of intention goes beyond a set of interpretations.

“As much as we try to analyse the writing process and interpretation, there is always an undeniable alchemy, and this is why we will always be fascinated by the art of interpretation and performance”, he keeps saying “it is the alchemy of someone who can do something and we do not know why. There is a person stepping on stage, a person in meat and bones that you recognise as such, but he has a power on you that you cannot justify, and your interpretation is that he has a special power.

There comes the idea of Stardust. It has nothing to do with celebrity per se. “ In practice it is like having superpowers right? Mika laughs “Ah but I don’t have them. I am more like a baker. It is hard to make good bread, it is pure alchemy.” Like music.

Edited by charlie20
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What I have to say, has already been said. This is an interesting perspective, one I've not read of any other artist's work. Thanks for the translation, it is MUCH appreciated in this little corner of cyberspace.

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Once again: Thanks a million, fantastic MFCers, for all your work with this amazing and interesting art.!! :) I'm deeply thankful, and I'll print it, and keep it together with my deluxe version of the alb. once I receive it - cause this's really deluxe art.!! :)

 

Love,love

me

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Wired Italia made a really particular and interesting article/interview about Mika's album.

 

Here are the scans of the magazine

 

post-18139-0-19732700-1433591236.jpg

 

post-18139-0-44130500-1433591240.jpg

 

post-18139-0-72017500-1433591243.jpg

post-18139-0-91581400-1433591246.jpg

 

post-18139-0-19615600-1433591250.jpg

post-18139-0-47202700-1433591253.jpg

 

 

attachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 72).jpg attachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 73).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 74).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 75).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 76).jpgattachicon.gifWiredItaliaGiugno2015 (Page 77).jpg

Thanks for sharing!!

 

I want to ask about the map of songs.

 

I can see little Italian that pics,because I don't know Italian, so I couldn't search what the map meant.

 

Could you tell me about the item(?) of the map?? (for example, timbro etc..)

 

This article is very interesting! 

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SKY uno http://skyuno.sky.it/skyuno/news/2015/06/10/mika-nuovo-album-no-place-in-heaven-presentazione-intervista.html

Mika: nuovo album paradisiaco!
10 giugno 2015

mika-francesco-prandoni.jpg

 

Mika alla presentazione stampa del suo nuovo album "No Place in Heaven", tenutasi a Milano il 10 giugno. Foto di Francesco Prandoni
La quarta fatica della pop star più celebre delle sette note e dello schermo, No Place in Heaven, uscirà in digitale il 15 giugno e con il disco fisico il 16. Un nuovo Mika inedito che abbandona il falsetto e opta per una celestiale semplicità
 

di Camilla Sernagiotto

Se non un posto in Paradiso, di certo Mika si è guadagnato un posto nell’Olimpo dei mostri sacri della musica pop.
E non aveva certo bisogno di conferme ma, a riprova di quanto detto sopra, in casa Virgin/Emi/Universal Music è stato affisso un fiocco azzurro che annuncia la nascita di un nuovo grande capitolo della rosea carriera dell’artista.
Si tratta del suo nuovo disco d’inediti dal titolo No Place In Heaven, in uscita in digitale il 15 giugno e con il disco fisico il 16, quarta fatica che arriva dopo due anni intensissimi di lavoro creativo dell’artista.
Un album maturo, diverso dai precedenti come ci racconterà Mika stesso nella seguente intervista (rilasciata in occasione della presentazione del disco in anteprima alla stampa tenutasi il 10 giugno a Milano).
Prodotto in collaborazione con Gregg Wells (produttore di Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, Adele e degli album precedenti di Mika), No Place In Heaven è una miscela esplosiva di doti vocali da urlo (e da urletto) e di rievocazioni di grandi classici del pop targato anni Settanta, da Billy Joel a Elton John fino ad arrivare a Todd Rundgren.
Ma, nonostante le quindici tracce del nuovo disco risaltino forse più di tutti gli altri pezzi di Mika le sue incredibili corde vocali, stavolta una delle sue cifre stilistiche sono state attaccate al chiodo: il falsetto.
Grande protagonista di Life in Cartoon Motion, The Boy Who Knew Too Much e The Origin of Love, qui i vocalizzi altissimi lasciano il posto a melodie meno innaturali (perché in natura solo Mika e Freddy Mercury sono riusciti ad arrivare a prendere note del genere…) e più intensamente emotive.
Ecco cosa ci ha raccontato l’artista, che noi ben conosciamo anche in veste di giudice di X Factor (pronto a tornare sugli schermi con la nuova edizione del talent show. Il tavolo della giuria di X Factor 2015 lo aspetta: domani a Bologna si terranno le prime Audizioni di questa edizione con migliaia di aspiranti popstar) durante l’intervista in occasione della presentazione stampa di No Place in Heaven:

Buongiorno Mika. Emozionato?
Ogni volta che devo presentare un album mi sento un po’ triste perché devo condividere con altri una cosa che prima era solo per me. Ma questo è anche il bello! Però c’è sempre molto nervosismo. L’emozione è tanta anche perché questa è la mia prima conferenza stampa che posso fare totalmente in italiano.

Ha ragione, ha imparato la nostra lingua benissimo.
Lo devo al francese. Sapere bene il francese mi ha aiutato a imparare in fretta anche l’italiano.

E come mai non ci sono canzoni italiane nel nuovo disco?
Perché cantare in italiano è troppo difficile! La pronuncia, la gola da dover aprire… Ci ho provato ma non mi viene bene. Però per il disco ho collaborato con tanti musicisti italiani, da Lucio Fabbri a Benny Benassi. E ho registrato nello studio di Eros Ramazzotti, che è forse lo studio più bello di tutta Europa. Però la fase della scrittura è avvenuta a Los Angeles, dove ho scritto tutte le mie canzoni. Prima ho provato a scrivere negli studios musicali di Hollywood ma poi ho preferito affittare una casa su internet, portarci computer, piano e musicisti e registrare nel salone. La cosa che non potevo immaginare è la frequenza con cui i turisti passavano davanti a quella casa con il TourBus. Ogni ora si sentiva l’annuncio della loro guida che diceva: “Ed ecco la casa di Orlando Bloom”. Avevo affittato la casa dell'attore senza saperlo.

Ci sono molte differenze tra No Place in Heaven e i suoi album precedenti. Ci vuole parlare di questo cambiamento?
Certo; la differenza è enorme, c’è stata una vera e propria rottura. Mentre prima facevo sempre album molto intensi, lavorati e complessi, stavolta ho voluto creare qualcosa di trasparente, semplice, lineare. Senza metafore, senza situazioni inventate per nascondere le mie storie personali.

Perché questo titolo: No Place in Heaven?
Perché non sto cercando un posto in paradiso; se c’è, bene, se non c’è, amen. Non si tratta però di un titolo triste, anzi: c’è tanta gioia dietro a questo disco. Nella cultura libanese, cui in parte appartengo, parlare di sé non sta bene, è considerato volgare. Con questo album ho oltrepassato questa vergogna, la paranoia di non dover parlare davvero di me stesso. Stavolta parlo di me, di quello che voglio diventare. Credo sia molto più interessante parlare di ciò che si è anziché di ciò che si è stati.

Ci sono stati aspetti negativi legati alla sua esperienza e permanenza qui in Italia?
Le spiagge. I vostri paparazzi hanno gli zoom più potenti del mondo! Anche gli aeroporti sono un disastro.

E aspetti positivi, invece?
Qui in Italia ho imparato a far collimare il Mika pubblico con quello privato. Il vostro calore, la vostra latinità convive bene con la mia cultura libanese. Sarà per questo che in Italia mi trovo totalmente a mio agio. E poi il vostro vino è squisito.

Si è parlato di una collaborazione discografica con Morgan. È ancora nell’aria?
Certo, vorrei collaborare con lui molto volentieri. Anche perché ho scoperto un nuovo Morgan in studio, totalmente diverso da quello davanti alle telecamere di X-Factor. Senza le pressioni della camera, ne è uscita un’altra persona, diversa, piena di grinta. In studio suonava tutti gli strumenti con una passione e un entusiasmo indescrivibili. Farei volentieri un bel progetto musicale con lui, però dovremmo isolarci in una bolla, lontano da tutto e tutti, per fare qualcosa di più intimo e introspettivo.

Il pezzo All She Wants è un dialogo con sua madre. Cosa voleva esprimere quando ha scritto quella canzone?
All She Wants è una specie di coming out. Ma non un coming out sessuale, che non è certo qualcosa d’interessante, bensì un coming out esistenziale, una metaforica uscita dal guscio in cui per anni sono stato intrappolato. Quando vieni da una famiglia al cinquanta per cento libanese è tutto più complicato. Parlare di me stesso, dei miei sentimenti, di amore (sia quando il cuore è pieno di gioia sia quando è disintegrato dal dolore) era difficile, fino a pochi anni fa non l’avrei mai fatto.

Da All She Wants emerge un ritratto che è forse quello che sua madre avrebbe voluto per lei. Quando ha capito di non riflettersi in quello specchio?
A quattordici anni. Mia madre devo dire che è orgogliosa di me al 90%. Quel 10% è la voglia di avere un figlio un po’ più tradizionale, un po’ più presentabile alle cene di famiglia, in vacanza dai parenti in Libano… Inoltre mia madre è dovuta diventare una nomade per seguirmi ovunque. Proprio ora è qui a sistemare i vestiti per X-Factor!

Che rapporto ha con il suo produttore, Gregg Wells?
Gregg è un poliziotto che odio. Ogni musicista ha bisogno di un poliziotto tanto quanto ogni scrittore ha bisogno di un editore che lo pressa e lo riporta un po’ alla realtà. Gregg Wells è bravissimo nel suo compito da poliziotto, ossia quello di controllarmi. Mi ha aiutato molto a curare l’aspetto musicale; in questo disco tutto è più pulito, lineare, essenziale. Per me è stata una progressione naturale.

Ci parli dei Good Guys che ha messo a titolo nell’omonimo brano.
Sono miei eroi, da Andy Warhol a David Bowie. Sono persone che hanno cambiato la direzione del vento e che sono riusciti a mantenere un alone di mistero che li rende ancora più affascinanti. E poi c’è James Dean. Perché è James Dean.

In Italia ha conosciuto qualche Good Guy da aggiungere alla sua lista?
Sì: Dario Fo.

Come saranno gli allestimenti scenici del tour?
La prima tappa, quella del 10 giugno al Fabrique di Milano, sarà diversa a livello scenico dalle restanti tappe. Sarà essenziale, volutamente semplice. Il resto del tour, invece, avrà concerti con scenografie collegate alla copertina dell’album. Io sembro un mimo nella cover e proprio come lui mi trasformo e racconto tante storie diverse. Ho preso spunto dal futurismo italiano.
Nei concerti amo molto la fattura handmade, il “fatto a mano” che rende le cose più autentiche. A un mio live non vedrete mai degli schermi al led perché non fanno parte della mia personalità. A me piace creare un ambiente di fantasia con la carta. Spero che gli show vengano bene, vorrei che risultassero più come un balletto anziché uno spettacolo pop.

Come mai nel nuovo album non c’è traccia di falsetto?
Oddio, mi ci avete fatto pensare solo ora! Non me ne ero accorto. Credo che il motivo stia nella volontà di fare un disco fragile, non artefatto. Ma lo so fare ancora il falsetto, giuro!

Oltre a scrivere musica, sta anche lavorando a un libro. Ci vuole anticipare qualcosa?
Non è un romanzo ma un diario. Scrivere romanzi è la cosa più difficile che ci sia: creare personaggi, approfondirli… troppo difficile. Il diario che sto scrivendo è intimo, divertente, sincero. Si passa da un capitolo che parla di mio nonno in Siria a uno in cui descrivo la mia frustrazione al supermercato. Attraverso ogni pagina potrete entrare in ogni aspetto della mia vita.

post-18723-0-33575900-1433971127_thumb.jpg

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Today the whole italian Press is dedicated to Mika... every magazine has a column about him and his album.

 

Here are the scans:

 

La Gazzetta dello Sport  http://t.co/cHXsKFy4dL

 

attachicon.gifGDS20150611ds (Page 35).jpg

 

Il Giornale:

 

attachicon.gifgiornale20150611ds (Page 34).jpg

 

Il Corriere della Sera

 

attachicon.gifIl_Corriere_della_Sera_11_Giugno_2015 (Page 45).jpg

 

Leggo Milano

 

attachicon.gifLeggo.MILANO.11.06.2015 (Page 8).jpg

 

Metro Milano

 

attachicon.gifMetro.MILANO.11.06.2015 (Page 12).jpg

 

La Stampa http://t.co/4p96H4DpTc

 

attachicon.gifstampa20150611ds (Page 30).jpg

 

Grazie mille Lucrezia !! :hug:  I hope that you, and the rest of our Italien friends, are aware of how lucky you really are !?  :wink2: If this happened here, my feet wouldn't follow the earth, for a long time!! :naughty: But you all deserve it, cause in Italy  MIKA is much  WANTED !! :wub:   I think I'll have to move down south... :teehee:

 

Will all these art. also be translated ? - it might be too much to ask for, but anyway - it would be sooo great... :) 

 

Love,love

me 

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Today the whole italian Press is dedicated to Mika... every magazine has a column about him and his album.

 

Here are the scans:

 

La Gazzetta dello Sport  http://t.co/cHXsKFy4dL

 

attachicon.gifGDS20150611ds (Page 35).jpg

 

Il Giornale:

 

attachicon.gifgiornale20150611ds (Page 34).jpg

 

Il Corriere della Sera

 

attachicon.gifIl_Corriere_della_Sera_11_Giugno_2015 (Page 45).jpg

 

Leggo Milano

 

attachicon.gifLeggo.MILANO.11.06.2015 (Page 8).jpg

 

Metro Milano

 

attachicon.gifMetro.MILANO.11.06.2015 (Page 12).jpg

 

La Stampa http://t.co/4p96H4DpTc

 

attachicon.gifstampa20150611ds (Page 30).jpg

What a MIKA day!!

I really envy Italian fans :(  

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Wow, it really is MIKA day in Italy, isn't it? I found this article too:

 

http://www.panorama.it/musica/mika-a-nudo-no-place-in-heaven/

 

Mika: "Con il nuovo album mi metto a nudo. Per la prima volta"

("With the new album I bare myself. For the first time.")

Il cantautore anglo-libanese parla di "No Place in Heaven", un vero e proprio diario scritto a cuore aperto

(The English-Lebanese singer-songwriter talks about "No Place in Heaven", a true diary written with an open heart)
 

by Cristina Marinoni

 

Più che Mika, si potrebbe dire che a firmare No Place in Heaven (Virgin/Emi/Universal Music) sia Michael Holbrook Penniman Jr. Non l'artista che si cela dietro uno pseudonimo ma l'uomo nato a Beirut nel 1983. Perché nel suo quinto cd, il cantautore naturalizzato britannico si racconta senza filtri come non era mai successo.

Perché ha deciso di mostrare chi è Mika-Michael?

"Per liberarmi da tante paure. Ogni cd ha rappresentato un passaggio importante nel mio percorso di vita. L'ultimo, The Origin of Love, è stato un punto di rottura, ha segnato un solco che mi ha permesso di cambiare e ripartire da zero e lavorare in totale libertà. Così è stato: il nuovo disco è il più trasparente e intimo che abbia pubblicato. Attraverso queste canzoni sono andato dritto al punto, senza giri di parole o metafore. Insomma, non mi nascondo più".

Cosa rivela di sé?

"Mi sono tolto un po' di pesi. Il titolo è l'esempio perfetto: non è una frase triste, al contrario, è gioiosa. Se troverò posto in paradiso, bene, altrimenti non c'è problema, io non voglio andarci a tutti i costi. Questa affermazione è pesante, sa? Va contro la cultura orientale con cui sono cresciuto, che è legata alla vergogna, al senso di colpa. La parte libanese che c'è in me include una buona dose di paranoia nell'affrontare le faccende personali, considerate volgari. Ora che sono riuscito ad abbattere il muro, esco dal guscio, finalmente".

Ha provato vergogna per quale motivo?

"Tanti. La sessualità su tutti. Buttare fuori la paura di come gestire una parte così determinante della mia identità è stato un passo importante. Torno al discorso della cultura: anche se la mia famiglia è libabese solo per metà, è sempre stato molto complicato aprire il mio mondo. Sia quando si è trattato di questioni profonde, come l'amore, sia banali".

I testi sono tutti autobiografici, allora.

"Sì. Ad esempio In All She Wants, la madre che sogna per il figlio una moglie, un buon lavoro e una posizione sociale, come nella tradizione più classica, è proprio la mia. Invece, altro che casa e nipoti: mia mamma si ritrova a organizzarmi il guardaroba per gli show. Si è trasformata in una zingara senza accorgersene!".

Da dove ha tratto ispirazione per i suoni, invece?

"Sono tornato alle mie origini, cioè a quella che secondo me è stata l'epoca d'oro del pop: le atmosfere magiche di Elton John Billy Joel e Carole King".

Il disco include due tracce in francese (L'amour Fait Ce Qu'il Veut e Boum Boum Boum, ndr): non ha pensato di comporre un pezzo in italiano, che ormai mastica benissimo?

"Ci ho provato ma i tentativi sono stati tutti bocciati: la pronucia è troppo difficile! Con il francese sono più avanti, lo parlo da una vita: mi ha aperto le porta all'italiano. Senza il francrese non avrei potuto impare la vostra lingua così velocemente".

Un'anticipazione sul tour (le prime tappe italiane: 23 luglio a Taormina e il 25 luglio a Cattolica, ndr)?

"La copertina del cd dà un'idea del progetto: mi sono ispirato al Futurismo italiano. Sarà uno show "fatto a mano", nel senso che non ci saranno effetti speciali; nessun ledwall, per interderci. Mi piace sempre creare con la fantasia ma attraverso oggetti reali, che recupero dalla strada. Insieme al mio team sto realizzando i disegni, adoperiamo la carta: vedrete un concerto semplice, sobrio, ma spettacolare ed efficace".

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