Who are Waterdrop and why should you know about them? Well simply put, they’re an exciting young alternative rock band with all the ingredients to have very successful careers in music. Hailing from Brescia in Italy, the band has come on leaps and bounds since their formation in 2015.
Waterdrop are:
Claudio Trinca – Vocals
Alessandro Bussi – Guitars
Nicolas Pelleri – Bass
Francesco Bassi – Drums
These four have grown out of a less than nurturing local music scene and withstood line-up changes to forge a promising path in alternative music. This shows a determined attitude where others may have faltered. With a well-received EP under their belts, as well as an awesome 360-shot music video to boot, Waterdrop are definitely a band to watch out for as in 2018 they look to build on their achievements thus far. Altwire had the opportunity to sit down and reflect with them on their formation and background:
Altwire: How did you guys form Waterdrop?
Francesco: It all started back in Summer of 2015, we all knew each other by name, in the context of the bands we were in at the time. Alessandro and I know each other since childhood and we always tried to bring a project to life, but we could never find the right musicians. Fate has a funny way to bring people together, and from the ashes of another local band, the perfect for singer arrived, Nicola. And let’s not forget we got the best bass player in the old republic! And from then the four of us constantly worked on our sound, always improving and always being sure that we were up to our strict live standards. We are really hard on ourselves when we are talking about our performance. The first phase culminated in our debut EP “Waterdrop” that we just released in September 2017.
Unfortunately due to different artistic visions, Nicola decided to leave the group. But that did not stop us and we already knew the perfect fit for the job. Claudio joined us shortly after and has brought us a tremendous amount of new influences to play with. And this is what we are doing right now, creating the sound that we feel to play next.
Altwire: What inspired the band name?
Alessandro: That’s a tough question that we’ve always tried to avoid because there is no real answer. Between all the dozens of possible names, it is the only one that stuck, the only one that felt neutral enough to not give any preconceived impression about the sound of the group. We are not huge fans of the name, but we will leave the music to define it. Fun fact: we really wanted to call ourselves Karmacoma, from the Massive Attack song. But oh well, democracy!
Altwire: What would you say your musical influences are?
Nicolas: We all come from different backgrounds, metal and punk is what influenced us all to take up instruments. Alessandro is the fire-starter when it comes to song writing. He always brings to the table the influences of groups that evolve… that mature over time and always set their sight on something beyond what they are known for. And this is what we are always looking for. That Massive Attack atmosphere or the way Chino Moreno [Deftones] plays around with his voice. Mike Shinoda [Linkin Park] and Trent Reznor [NIN] as producers are other great sources of inspiration for us. There are a lot of different pieces in the puzzle, we like to play with a lot of tools. Recently we got in love with Clipping and Circa Waves. The latest Queen of the Stone Age record is amazing too, and the new single by Justin Timberlake “Filthy” has a crazy beat. But we always keep a scrupulous ear on heavier stuff. We really like While She Sleeps, Architects and Norma Jean’s latest works.
Altwire: Your EP is well regarded by us here at Altwire, tell us about the process of writing the tracks.
Alessandro: It usually starts with me demoing track over tracks and when I feel like something has worth I ask the others for feedback. It is all about the mood for us. We want our song to take you through a little journey and as the structure evolves, as the part are defined and as the lyrics are set, all those changes have to take you inside our minds, our little shared universe, in which we want to communicate that specific story or emotion. We are not scared to get out of our comfort zone, so we don’t have a specific writing process, it can start from a beat, a melody, a lyric, but it has to turn everybody’s heads and make us say “okay, that’s interesting”.
Altwire: What are your long-term goals for Waterdrop and when might we see a full-length release?
Francesco: Right now we are focused on our live shows around Northern Italy and mastering our performance with every show. The goal right now is to build a fan base and to share our music and videos and get people to discover us. As far as the number of tracks we’ve made, we have enough material for a double release at this point. We’ve accumulated lots of good ideas over the years and Claudio is giving them a fresh new take. But we feel like we need the right support to produce, promote and distribute a full-length release, so while we are making our way into the underground local scene we are looking for a way expand our possibilities, soon hopefully.
Altwire: Tell us about the music scene in Brescia.
Francesco: The music scene in Brescia is really odd, you can feel a lot of repressed creativity among the young generations. Live shows with original bands are not promoted and cover bands are the ones that make the most money. It’s full of great musicians with fresh ideas, but it doesn’t have the right infrastructure to support it.
Altwire: If you could meet one artist, dead or alive, who would it be?
Alessandro: I would meet the first genius who put color on a wall, in a cave, you know, the first act! But if we are talking music, I would have a really interesting conversation with Dave Grohl, another artist who always wanted to pushed his limits, and that, in my opinion, did with the latest Foo Fighter records, which I think is their finest work, I would certainly ask him to play something together, to jam along.
Altwire: What do you guys do outside of Waterdrop? What are your hobbies and interests?
Claudio: We all work various jobs to sustain our passion; two of us are undertaking studies in Engineering at University. Francesco is pursuing a degree in music (specifically drumming) and Alessandro is making his way into the independent movie scene and digital arts. Other than that we are all great movie lovers, we watch movie after movie. I think between the four of us we have seen every movie out in the cinema at the moment. Cinema and series are great influences on the way we absorb music, and on the contexts it can serve. We are a little outdated with video games, but we all grew up with Prince of Persia, Halo, Metal Gear Solid and all those great games. Again, it was the music that drew us in, the scores, the atmosphere, we still play those old star menu tunes after tuning the instruments.
