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Artist News Releases
Porcelain Raft returns with album release prompted by COVID-19
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 16 April 2020
Porcelain Raft – aka musician Mauro Remiddi – has announced that he will release his first album since 2017 next month. Titled ‘Come Rain’, he reveals that – until very recently – it was an album he was not expecting to release.
Based in Italy, the first European country to be majorly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, it was watching the health crisis unfold that convinced Remiddi to release the album and to release it now.
Explaining his absence from music since his last album ‘Microclimate’, he says: “In the past three years I decided to take a break. I became a father, went to live on a mountain in LA and, after the loss of a loved one, I went back to Italy, where part of my childhood re-emerged”.
“I found myself playing an organ made in the 1500s”, he goes on, “I danced and played piano for a children’s show”. During this time he “made a collection of songs that I thought I would never share”. But then, he says, recalling the days when the disease began to take hold in Italy, “the world stopped”.
“I managed to come back to Italy the day before the airports were on lockdown”, he says. “As I stepped in Rome I felt frightened, it’s surreal to see Rome silent. You can feel how tense people are. On the other side you can tell there’s a lot of solidarity. Helping the neighbour with little things for instance. We have been confined in our houses and exposed to big numbers and huge scale operations”.
“This is why I decided to share these songs now”, he goes on. “What a better time to hear our inner voice. This album is my rain chant in the time of drought, ‘Come Rain’ is an invitation to look inward, into our micro-cosmo, whatever we may find. To look for that place within us that is everything but hell, so we can give it space and let it dance”.
The album was recorded by Remiddi at home with contributions from former Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel, cellist Gaspar Claus and drummer Matt Olsson. It’s set for release on 15 May. Here’s the title track:
