Hi Nino, nice to meet you.
Which expectations did you have when you contacted me? 😉
Hi Liz, I didn’t have any specific expectation exactly, but I really enjoyed the conversation and you’re quite positive, which is needed to new artists (especially) on the industry.
I’m always very interested being contacted by musicians especially when their music touches me from the very first moment.
Tell us something about your musical past. When did you start playing/writing music? Which artists influenced you the most?
I started playing piano when i was 6-7 years old. Later when i got 13 years old I started playing drums (learning on my own), mostly started drumming because of Joey Jordison (Ex- Slipknot) and later guitar and started parcticing vocals. When I first listened to Slipknot, whole new horizons were opened in my mind, but metal music was not a stranger for me. My father also used to listen to metal in his youth ,so I had many metal albums at home (mostly Black Metal). I used to listen to a lot of Black/Death metal in my teens, later I started to get more „melodic“ , started to listen to HIM , Type O Negative, Placebo and a lot of blues/funk/jazz. I played in few local bands as a drummer as well.
Can you tell us something about the albanian music scene in general and especially the gothic scene? Do you have the possibility to play concerts in Albania?
Right now music scene in Albania is quite bad, especially the Rock/Metal scene. There are not many places where you can have a gig or introduce your music. The Balkanic music dominates the local music industry.
When I listened to your songs for the first time I immediatly thought about HIM / Ville Vallo. Is he a big inspiration for you?
When I first listened to HIM (being honest I didn’t like them) because I was on those years where I was listening to a lot of Black/Death metal so HIM were not on my taste yet. Few years later I was singing for fun and few friends told me my voice sounds a lot like Ville Valo (whom I didnt know at that time) then searched for him and later started to like HIM bit by bit until I became a big fan of them. They became some type of „music school“ for me. Love them! Lets say I take it as a compliment when people tell me my voice color is similiar to Ville!
You started a solo project and released three songs each of them with a video. Who did the scripts and produced the videos?
The videos were produced by „Papadhimitri Production“ . They did the whole thing about the video, script, shooting, editing etc.
The landscape in the video to „On the Surface“ is amazing. Where did you record it?
The video was recorded in the mountain of „ Dajti“ , it’s a mountain near the city of Tirana, the location was just 20 mins from the city. It was at the top of mountain exactly.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=cpuhHu856pI%26nbsp%3B
Tell us how do you write songs? Is it a specific routine or something random which leads you to a new one? Are the lyrics influenced by your personal life experiences?
Actually it’s not a specific routine, it might depend by the situation. Sometimes while I’m thinking about a specific situation or seeing something might inspire me. Sometimes it happens while I’m playing random notes on guitar or piano and then I get immediately a paper and pen and write it down. Usually I write my songs in one „take“ , it takes only 5 minutes for me to write a song and I write the music and lyrics at the same time always. Later I get back to the song to see if I wanna change anything or not. My songs are quite personal and inspired from real personal situations.
How is the response on your music so far? Do you know where your fans are from?
Well, I’m seeing a positive feedback so far. This feedback keeps me going to make music more „professionally“ , so I invest a lot of time to get the best sound possible as well. For some reason I’m having a lot of feedback from the USA and South America, which I didn’t really expect it to be honest. In Europe the most feedback comes from Germany, Spain, Italy for the moment. Maybe there are people from other countries too, but I’m mentioning the people who write me often and they’re from the countries I mentioned above.
Which plans do you have for next year? Do you want to go on tour outside from Albania?
I’m planning to release and EP or Album, but that’ll depend on many things, time mostly its the problem for me as in my daily life I’m a dentist and I work most of the day everyday, but if the feedback from people around the world will be really really big I’ll consider the album. My aim is to tour as well in 2023, finding shows that are worth it is quite difficult lately, especially for relatively new artists like me.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Thats a tough question, but I think I’ll be „delivering“ my music to a wider audience till then. That’s how I see myself.
So please follow me on social media and subscribe to my youtube channel.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077705436149
https://www.instagram.com/nino.dani6/
https://www.youtube.com/@ninodanivevo2045
One personal question. Do you have other interests/hobbies beside music?
I’d say astronomy and astrophotography, I also spend a lot of time observing the Universe through the telescope, been doing that since many years now.
Are there any other news you want to share with your fans?
I will release a new song by the end of January (hopefully) , but I’m not sure if to release an EP or a single. The EP will take a longer time of course.
I would go for a new single and then the EP. 😉
Thanks for your time and hope to see you soon playing a concert in Germany!
I have to say thank you for the interview!