Who are you and where are you from?

We're Valentina and Sergio, we're from Rome but we actually live in Gaeta, a little city by the sea in the centre of Italy. The other two musicians in the project, Federico and Riccardo, live on the other coast, in Emilia Romagna

What made you start your band/project? Do you have a musical education?

We always had different projects since we were able to! As a duo we have been playing together under the name Orange8 since 2010, while the project "La Mandolanza" was born during the lockdown period, when we had more and different time to experiment with music and new instruments.

How would you describe your music? What would be the basic idea behind it?

We don't know exactly which "style" it might belong to, but we feel it as a bridge between the mediterranean area, going through Africa and the Middle East with a psychedelic approach, using Italian language, instruments from different parts of the world, distorting them from their tradition.

What about your own musical preferences? What do you listen to and how does it compare to what you play in your band/project?

We all have a different musical taste, which varies from folk, to 70s psychedelia, jazz and ethnic music. Without a doubt our musical culture can be perceived in some way in what we compose. Even the friendship with contemporary bands, for example the Slovenian Sirom, has opened up a new way of writing songs and using instruments that are unusual in our culture.

What genre does your music fit in? Compared to the mainstream radio music, how does your music fit into this?

As we need to categorize in a style, we can say "mediterranean psych.prog.folk" ? eheheheh Maybe it doesn't fit in the mainstream world at all, but, as you said in your review, some melodies could be sung from many people!!!

What equipment do you use for your music?

The instruments involved in the projects are:
Sergio - mandolin, mandolira
Valentina - voice, acoustic guitar, harmonium, kalimba, lyra, mandolin
Federico - keyboard
Riccardo - tablas

Can you write a bit about (some of your) albums and their sound and conceptual background and the history of it all?

For now we have only recorded three songs released on Bandcamp under the name "Trigolum". This should be the preview of a first LP, of which the songs are already written and arranged, we are waiting for the right moment to be able to record them and release them. As we said before, this idea was born during the lockdown period in which we were forced to travel only with our imagination! We have long felt the strong call of the Mediterranean and the East of the world, unlike our usual Anglo-Saxon points of reference. Thus we approached other timbres, other rhythmic divisions and melodies. The decision to write the lyrics in Italian was also new for us, perhaps deriving from a greater need for communicability in that period of closure.