Covarino Francesco

In Francesco's own words:

My name is Francesco Covarino (Perugia, 1979). I live in Granada, Spain and teach Italian. I play the drums in a duo called Covarino/Incorvaia, with which I've released two albums: "Perugia" (Preserved Sound, 2016) and "Granada" (whitelabrecs, 2017).

Olive is my first solo release, and it features 16 short drum improvisations, recorded in a big room in an industrial area in Granada, with trucks maneuvering and machinery noises happening right outside the door. Everything was recorded live in a single session, from about 11am to 6pm, without any editing or overdubs.

The idea behind this recording was to play softly, slowly, freely, and to only play a few notes, the fewer the better. I tried to make use of every creak, every little unexpected noise the drum kit could make, and use the silence in between all of these sounds, too. I played with different sticks and brushes, my fingers in a couple of tracks, and some small rattles.

I am a loud and proud self-taught musician, and in this recording there is no virtuoso playing, no technique display, no fast drumming. The final mix was meant to sound natural and warm, as close as possible to what I heard when I was sitting on the stool playing.

I like it when I buy a jazz record and on the sleeve I read a very specific recording date, like “Recorded on December, 9th, 1964.” I picture those guys coming in the studio, positioning the microphones, starting to play and often keeping the first take of a song. Maybe this is just an idealization of something that never really happened this way. Anyway, this music was recorded on September 23rd, 2016. My wife was pregnant with our first daughter, who we were expecting any day. In the first sonogram, she was just a little thing, the size and shape of an olive, so “Olive” was the name we used to refer to her during almost the entire pregnancy.

While recording this music, I was thinking, “When my daughter grows up she will listen to this and think: ‘This is what my dad was like when I was about to be born.’”