Billboard ITALIA

Planet Funk: Dan Black will also sing on the new album

The band will be present at Pitti Uomo 104 on Wednesday 14 June with an unmissable concert that will see them celebrate their return to the lily city together with U.S. Polo Assn.

From Piergiorgio Pardo

June 13, 2023

It's time for men's fashion and lifestyle in Florence. The reference event for the sector, Pitti Uomo, kicks off and will remain at Fortezza da Basso until 16 June.

The theme of this year's summer shows is Pitti Games, a theme that Raffaello Napoleone and Agostino Poletto, respectively managing director and general manager of Pitti Image, consider representative both of the international appeal of the event and of the proactive and challenging nature that it is about to assume. The challenge, whose winning outcome can already be guessed, consists in converting the undeniable difficulties that characterize the current situation into positive energy and creative abilities.

It is the same spirit with which Planet Funk face the present and the future, present at Pitti Uomo 104 on Wednesday 14 June with an unmissable concert which will be held from 10 pm in the splendid Torrigiani Gardens and will see them celebrate their return to the lily city together with U.S. Polo Assn., an official brand of the United States Polo Association (USPA), the non-profit governing body of the sport of polo in the United States.

We reached Planet Funk in their Florentine headquarters, the iconic Tenax , like the formation a classic of Italian clubbing and beyond, snatching Marco Baroni and Alex Uhlmann from the setup rehearsals, to have a brief exchange with them in event view.

The interview with Planet Funk

Planet Funk in very good shape, I'd say. How did the celebrations of your twenty years of career go and are they going? Mark : Great. We realize that in our audience more than a generational change has taken place a generational ”topping up”. The old fans have been joined by young and very young ones. This has increased the amount of people who come to see us. Our concerts are always full. This is something not to be taken for granted, for which we can only be grateful to those who follow us.

Speaking of a new sequel, what about the album that has been in the pipeline for some time now? Marco: It's the first album without Sergio della Monica, who passed away in February 2018, so in terms of writing there is still his presence. It will be an album very up to date, with new sounds, in which Dan Black will also sing. Even if the pieces have been written over the years, the production is something very unitary. We worked on it with care and in a precise and well compacted period.

Alex, did your entry as a singer lead to innovations in the sound of the group according to your point of view? Alex: I came from a songwriting background, indie if you like. So the combination of my vocals and electronic sound was the result of a research we did together and which I think is also the reason why I got involved in the project. Marco: Planet Funk are a collective. It is not so much the concept of frontman that characterizes our singers as the very idea of creating vocal parts in perfect symbiosis with what is happening musically in a certain phase of our evolution.

The concept of collective in Italy is always rather rare. You have always been, and among other things, one of your creative environments is the Neapolitan one, where interesting realities have established themselves, also inspired in various ways by the formula of the collective, such as Thru Collected, or Nu Genea, to cite only the most striking examples. Billboard Italia has recently dealt withNaples. How do you, also as a Tuscan-Neapolitan project, see that scene? Alex: I consider Naples my second home. When I arrived in Italy that's where I recorded my first album with Planet Funk. The ferment was already beginning to breathe, which has now become enormous, also due to the resonance of football, fiction, etc. What immediately struck me about the city and its environments, musical and otherwise, was the total absence of labels. In Naples you are free from cataloging, so it is easier to express yourself in an atmosphere of artistic and human freedom. The musical projects you mention are very valid. We as Planet Funk feel close to all the realities where innovation and positive energies are breathed.

But Florence is also your home. What effect does participating in Pitti Uomo 104 have on you, in synergy with a brand linked to sportswear such as US Polo Assn.? Marco: It's a great pleasure. I love Florence very much and Pitti Uomo is an important event for the city, for everything it brings to it. In terms not only economic but above all cultural, of exchange, of social evolution. U.S. Polo Assn. it is a brand that we love very much, both because we are passionate about sports and because it is a company that is attentive to the issues of environmental sustainability and ethical development. It is an international collaboration. We are happy with it.

Speaking of Florence, what effect does it make you find yourself more than twenty years later at the Tenax, which has seen you so many times, and in various capacities, protagonists? Alex: It's like being at home. Marco: Alex Neri is even resident here, with Nobody's Perfect, his evening which has now become historic.

The pandemic has also been a time without clubbing. Now we are back, it seems appropriate to say, on track. Is there a before and after? What do you think has changed? Alex: The first days were strange, there was a kind of hysterical euphoria, a desire, a need, or perhaps an illusion, of being able to make up for lost time. Now the situation is normalizing. Marco: Personally I have been living clubbing for a very long time, since my first productions with Alex Neri, when Planet Funk didn't exist yet, and there was a time of great mixing of genres, electro, garage, house. When we founded the project we brought with us both the experience of clubbing and that creativity indifferent to labels, which was mentioned earlier in connection with Naples. It was a time of great freedom and reaction to the crisis. Who knows, we may soon have another even stronger one, finally leaving some problems behind us.

Future projects? What will your lives be like? Mario: With the release of the disc we will have a real promotional tour, with a formula in which the electronic component and the played component will merge together, to have the same presence as the sound of the disc, but remodulated and amplified in order to adapt it to the situation.

https://billboard.it/musica/electro/planet-funk-nuovo-album-dan-black/2023/06/13114326/