You Will Like PINHDAR

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If you know Nomoredolls, you will know PINHDAR

Interview conducted April 29, 2019

by Dan Locke

PINHDAR is the new project from Cecilia Miradoli and Max Tarenzi, former founding members of Nomoredolls and creators of ‘A Night Like This’ Festival. It’s a journey through Art Rock, New Wave and Trip Hop and they’re certainly exploring new territories for their sound.

Dan Locke: What happen with Nomoredolls?

PINHDAR: NMD was the most significant experience in our lives, both as musicians and as a group of friends sharing a dream. Together, we lived unbelievable adventures in different parts of the world but our lives have now taken different paths and the band is stopped. We have no plans for a reunion, although you never know

Why did you start PINHDAR?

PINHDAR is the answer to our need to make music and pursue our ideal of beauty. Cecilia and I strongly wanted to shape a new project that could better represent our musical world.
We formed as a duo while working on A Night Like This Festival. Managing for the event was life-sucking but we also wanted to keep the music flowing in order to feel our lives complete

How was playing at CBGB’s

It was a blast. Before getting on stage we were scared and pumped at the same time. You have all those expectations about playing in such a meaningful place so, when you´re there and you see that everything is really like all those stories you read or that you were told, you just go crazy. This particular feeling, say like living in a movie, is something that often happened while touring the US with the band. We will never forget that particular kind of excitement.
By the way, our set went great and we´ve been invited to play back there other times before the club closed. But our very first show at CBGB´s was a turning point for us since we gained consciousness like a rock band.

Can you compare the two projects?

They are pretty different and the only common factor is that Cecilia and I write the songs. But the 2 projects don’t share the same approach to songwriting
NMD used to work as a live band, rehearsing and arranging our material together with the other bandmates. It was definitely a live band, At times we would experiment and play live a song before it was finished just to test the reaction from the audience and see if the energy from the live set could bring some more ideas . And then we would transfer all that in the recording stage, with the help of a producer.
PINHDAR is a more mature representation of ourselves and a big challenge as musicians. It’s just the two of us taking care of everything, from writing to recording and producing which forces us to focus a lot on what we actually want to achieve. I personally feel more accomplished as a musician with what we do now.

What was A NIGHT LIKE THIS festival?

A Night Like This Festival is an independent music and arts festival, held in a beautiful area in the countryside between the cities of Milan and Turin.
It belongs to the recent category of “boutique festivals” and it is totally immersed in its environment. It’s about new bands playing together with bigger international acts and bringing an urban event into an improbable and breathtaking environment (one of our stages is actually an on water platform in the lake nearby the main location). It has been rated as one of the 10 most suggestive places to attend a live show in Italy.

Are you still running it?

Yes. We skipped last year edition in order to discuss some future developments that we have in mind together with the local administration. This gave us the opportunity to launch PINHDAR and focus on our music more.
Next July A Night Like This Festival will be back on a shorter scale, still the most representative, on the Lake platform.

How do you come up with the name PINHDAR?

Sir Paul Pindar is one of the two main characters in The Aviary Gate novel. We have been fascinated both by the story and his character so we took his name and added the H to make it ours.
Also, the H cuts the name in 2 parts, which is kind of symbolic about us.

What were you doing between projects?

We were totally swallowed by the Festival, which needed al our attention and energies. We wrote, produced and recorded our album during this time. The production stage was long as we were never satisfied at first. We started from scratch more than once before coming up with this album.

How is music in Italy?

There are a lot of interesting and cool artists here and we learned to scout while running our festival. For others is mostly about following trends which is no good, in my opinion.

In the video Toy, how did you get the idea to become an art installation?

Toy is a song about obsession. The videomakers took this concept and furthered it to a social degree. The idea was inspired by Yoko Ono performance “Cut Piece” and pictures the various facets of aggressiveness, competition and lack of empathy that are stronger than our willingness to understand others

Why did you pick a Leonard Cohen tune and Tear for Fear tune as covers?

We released those covers on youtube before finishing our album. We did it for fun and mostly because we love the originals.
In particular, Mad World is a song that has been covered so many times in many ways and we wanted to give our take on it by our own point of view.

Why do you call PINHDAR are a rock/trip hop duo?

PINHDAR have dual roots: the early 80’s synth-rock/new wave and the 90’s trip-hop/psych-rock
We can’t tell how much of all this you will find in our music but it’s what we absolutely love so I assume it’s also a massive influence.
Someone recently said we play “trippy” rock

With your new project are you going to cover old songs like Killer, Electric Sheep or Red Lines?

That will not happen for the moment but, again, you never know I guess you like them?

What are your feelings about Donald Trump signing the Music Modernization Act?

The new law—the first substantial copyright legislation to pass in decades—accomplishes three main changes:
The use of music by streaming services will now (more about that in a minute) be paid for in a regularized royalty arrangement;
Audio producers and engineers who participated in musical recordings will start to be paid when their recordings are played on online and satellite radio services;
Digital services will have to pay for their use of songs recorded and released before 1972 (these recordings were not previously protected by copyright law).
There are also smaller sub-sections of the law which are of less general interest.
Much of the discussion has been around the pre-1972 artists and their recordings, e.g. Smokey Robinson provided testimony in support of the bill last year, and President Trump handed the pen he signed the bill with to Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave). This seems fair. But, for copyright mavens, another interesting aspect will be the section of the law that calls for setting up a new “Mechanical Licensing Collective” for the newly-authorized monies that will start flowing from digital uses. Setting up and operating a collective of this sort may be trickery than it seems.

Has it started to help you make more money?

We actually don’t know much about it yet and our incomes form digital streams etc have not increased since.

Any thoughts about the rebuilding the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris?

It’s absolutely right that all the resources we can find will be spent to give back to humanity one of the world heritage sites. It belongs to everyone.

How do you see your band in 5 years?

Releasing new music and playing all the cool festivals around the world. Hopefully, we’ll be able to play at our own A Night Like This Festival, as we’ve never had the opportunity to do that in any of the previous editions.

Anything in closing?