Flame is the very first shoegaze song that I ever wrote. In fact, after it was written, I realized that I wanted to be an alternative rock musician influenced by this genre that I love so much.
Before starting to make music as DKANDLE, I played in three music projects: the industrial-grunge band Pregnant Felix, the electronic music project Colortronic and the electro-rock project Aliencore. After a while, I realized that having three music projects at once is not really a great idea, because it demands a lot of time and effort just to make one project happen, even worse when you have three at once... I just didn't have the time to dedicate myself to all of them, but I didn't know what to do. Then, in the beginning of the 2020 pandemic, I got an invitation from Mario Bross, vocalist and guitarist of the Brazilian shoegaze band Wry, to make a remix for their song 'Tumulto, Barulho e Confusão', which I happily accepted. He invited me because I had written a remix for them before with Aliencore, for the song 'Come and All', which the band had enjoyed a lot. I don't know how to define this remix genre properly; maybe one could call it 'electro-trip-hop' or something like that... Now I wanted to try to make a shoegaze remix.
I had never written any shoegaze song before, I had no idea how it would come to life, but I just decide to give it a try. Mario sent me the notes for the song, which are F, G, C and D. Based on that, I simply grabbed my guitar, chose a cool sounding pedal configuration and tried to write something with those notes. Then, out of the blue, I wrote a song using only the notes F, G and C. I tried to include D too, but it just didn't fit, so I left it out. I recorded a demo and put Mario's voice over it, and I thought it sounded really nice. Then I recorded the drums part using my MC-307 Roland Groovebox, and finally recorded the bass. In the end I added more pedal effects, and that was it - the song came to life. I was very satisfied with the result. I sent it to Mario, and after a while, he replied saying that they were actually looking for a dance remix, with no guitars. But I didn't want to discard the track, because I liked it so much. Then I thought, "Well, I like shoegaze so much, and now I came to realize that having three bands at once is too much, so I think I'm going to start a new shoegaze oriented project and dedicate myself only to it from now on, not quitting the other projects - I can record new music in the future under them - but by now, I will totally dedicate myself to this new project".
So I decided to call this new project DKANDLE, and its first single would be this brand new shoegaze tune that I had just written. I would only rewrite the vocals, so I created new vocal lines (but I still included a guitar sample of 'Tumulto, Barulho e Confusão' in the intro).
After recording and producing it, I sent it to Kenneth Estrada, of the Berlin Shoegazer Youtube Channel, to master the song on his Tascam cassette recorder. This process makes the timbre of the music sound more organic, vivid and colorful. I really appreciated the final result, Kenneth nailed it on his master production.
'Flame' was released on May 13, 2022 on all streaming platforms. The single will be part of DKANDLE's debut album 'Mondano', which will be released on September 23, 2022, with 9 tracks. Before that, I will release the single 'Stampa Clandestina' on July 29.
The official music video for 'Flame' came to life on July 15 and was produced by me, with scenes shot in the following cities: Venice, Milan, Florence, Pistoia and Rome.
Enjoy!