‘A jazz flavor mixed with electronics’
Enraged Splitting Machines by Antares Flare is Best Composition in the 2024 Dutch Jazz Competition
Reflections on Engaged Splitting Machines
We asked Piero Conte to reflect on his band and on Enraged Splitting Machines, which was awarded Best Composition in the 2024 Dutch Jazz Competition. The track was chosen from a total of 270 applications by Max van Bossé (senior programmer Melkweg), Maaike Teunissen (programmer Brebl and Jazz International Nijmegen), and Julia Koenen (tour manager Paradiso Melkweg Productiehuis, junior programmer Music Meeting, artist).
You have several projects in the Netherlands and in Rome that you are active in. How did Antares Flare start and what is your ambition with this band?
‘Antares Flare started during my studies at Codarts as part of a class about building a project. Back then it was my first attempt to be a bandleader. The band started as a quartet to become slowly a sextet. Once the line-up was settled we made our first record, which is self-titled, and started playing it in the Netherlands and Italy mainly. Most of the music so far has been written by me but each member of the band brings and gives to the ensemble his own touch and experience, from dealing with marketing and bookings till helping me finishing the songs or send me recordings that I then post-produce. The collaboration has grown bigger and bigger through the years, until the point where we decided to try to make our next record as a collective. I’m really excited to see what will come out of it and where the band will go from there!
About Antares Flare
Rotterdam-based Antares Flare characterize their music as ‘a groovy, afrobeat layer topped with soulful improvisation with horns (think Kokoroko with Christian Scott and BADBADNOTGOOD), combined with edgy electronic effects’. Led by composer and guitarist Piero Conte (IT), the current line-up features Paolo Petrecca (IT, trumpet), Paul van de Calseijde (NL, alto saxophone, synth), Andrea Leone (IT, tenor saxophone), Dean Montanaro (MT, electric bass, synth), and Euan Jenkins (LU, drums, spd).
Recorded in Rome, Italy, their self-titled debut album (2022) was produced and mixed by Anton de Bruin (Dragonfruit, Peter Somuah, Imaginarium). The 2024 EP Another Problem Ahead has been recorded in Rotterdam with Simon Akkermans (engineering) and again Anton de Bruin producing and mixing. All music has been mastered by Wouter Brandenburg in Amsterdam.
The idea to tryout a collective form was taken also because, through the years, my taste in music shifted more towards electronic music, which is not always present in Antares Flare. Thanks to another project I’m playing with in Rome, Sinnerman, I’ve discovered new music and refined my sound. And that pushed me to start a new project: Piero Conte & Adepts Of The Sun. This will be my main focus for the coming years. We just started recording a live session in a trio set-up in Amsterdam and we will head to the studio next year to make our first record! Really looking forward to this new chapter and I hope I’ll be able to bring it on stage in The Netherlands, starting already from this summer.’
Is Enraged Splitting Machines different from other music you write?
‘The song is pretty unique if we look at Antares Flare’s repertoire but I believe there are already hints of this different style in Sinnerman and my new project Adepts Of The Sun; even if the song still definitely has more of a jazz flavor mixed with electronics rather than the other way around.’
How did the composition come to be?
‘I wrote Enraged Splitting Machines more or less one year ago. I remember that I’d lost my phone while I was in Rome and spent 10 days without any. I realized how much that machine influenced my mental state and I started to feel very different in my ability to focus and to reflect. Reflection that brought me to build the concept for the Another Problem Ahead EP, that follows the first release by Antares Flare and which Enraged Splitting Machines is part of.
The concept of the EP starts from the idea that, in modern times, it’s very common for us to never come out of a loop of tasks and problems for extremely long times. This habit is made possible by all the tools and machines that we use daily, which allow us to accomplish goals at a speed that was not even imaginable until 30 years ago. The problem with this situation lays, in my opinion, in the fact that this drastic change happened really quickly and we still haven’t found a way to synchronize healthily with these new rhythms.
Enraged Splitting Machines tries to embody these ideas and feelings through the indirect abstract ways of music. The whole first part is a preparation to the heavy fast melody that comes in the second half leading towards the alto solo. This song is to me the first step, together with We Used To Sing, the last track of the EP, towards the sound I’ve built for my new project: Adepts Of The Sun.’
You were one of 270 contestants who sent in their music for the Dutch Jazz Competition. Why do you think this particular track appealed to the jury?
‘There are so many incredible artists in The Netherlands that I’m sure it was really tough for the jury to pick only one winner and I feel really grateful to be that person. I do think though that Enraged Splitting Machines is a good composition; it has a nice development and there are elements of jazz, electronic and pop music. It’s very structured but there’s a space for improvisation towards the ending, there are drum machines and live sampling present but also horns and acoustic drums. I guess this could have been something that made this song stand out in the long list of candidates.’
How close do you stay to the recorded version when you perform it live?
‘We perform the song exactly as it’s been written and recorded, apart from the improvised sections of course. Thanks through live sampling, SPD and synth bass sequences we managed to play the arrangement live without needing to be synced through a common click.’
Interview by Mark van Schaick