Arya is a band trying among many difficulties to push the boundaries of music and to express their own emotions and personalities. Based in Rimini, Italy, they started out in 2015, making themselves known for their intense music, that shows a huge number of influences and elements of many genres including metal, grunge, jazz, shoegaze, ambient and indie pop, and for their rentless recording activity.
Arya are running an active Youtube channel, where they sometimes post interesting contents such as vlogs and tour diaries, to show the situation of live music in their region of Italy and to promote the bands they meet on the road. The band has always followed a strong DIY attitude: everything from production to mixing, artwork, promotion and booking has almost always been entirely handled by the band members.
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Q: Introduce yourself in 6 words or less.
A: Wannabe artist, tried often, always failed
Q: During the Covid-19 Quarantine, a lot of people spent time doing things they normally wouldn’t have done…did you pick up any new hobbies or learn any new skills?
A: Well, playing guitar isn’t really something new for me, but since I hadn’t had the chance to practice music for many hours a day for a while before the pandemic, it has been nice to try to make my blues and jazz playing skills better, while everything outside was crumbling.
Q: What do you miss the most about touring?
A: I really miss living those days where you travel, set-up, perform, meet people, struggle to solve any kind of problems, get really tired, feel like you’re not alone: that seems to me like living life to the fullest.
Q: Do you have any Post-Quarantine plans?
A: All in all, since the end of lockdown Covid hasn’t prevented me from doing anything I used to do before: I’m working, I’m studying, I’ve watched some live shows and played one, I’ve made a trip and regularly commute between two cities, I sometimes even see some friends. It has just made everything more bothersome, less pleasant, and affects me with a constant sense of potential danger. So I really hope it will go away as soon as possible. I’d really like to be able to play many concerts with Arya, but besides the pandemic, it’s also a matter of whether we’ll be able to find a stable bassist soon or not.
Q: What’s one personal item you absolutely can not tour without?
A: My camera: even if I’ve changed a few models, it has been just like a part of my body for most of my life now, and I use it a lot, especially when I’m traveling to new places. My archive of photos is like a diary, and one could reconstruct most of my life, the places I’ve visited, the most meaningful relationships I’ve had with people just by looking at all those pictures. For Arya, I’ve often shot many videos as well that ended, up after a bit of editing, in many tour vlogs for our Youtube channel.
Q: What are the Top 3 artists you are inspired by?
A: Speaking personally, I would mention Robert Wyatt (Soft Machine, Matching Mole and solo), Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (At The Drive-In, The Mars Volta and more) and Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree, solo and more): during different parts of my life, while my musical interests evolved and expanded, they’ve really been figures that I could draw much inspiration, probably biographically even more than musically. I probably wouldn’t agree with everything any of them has said or done or idolize them, but I really think they’ve been really good at music during their lives.
Q: Any words of wisdom for someone who may draw their inspiration from you?
A: Music has always helped me during the worst moments in my life, and I hope one day my music will give someone else the relief that someone else’s music gave to me many times. I know the music of Arya is not easy to listen to, but I’d like it to mean something deep, to communicate emotions, and to inspire people to make their life better and to make the world better. However, one must be prepared to work really hard without reaching barely any accomplishment or satisfaction for a long time. The world is always giving you the impression that they don’t care at all about you and your music, that you’re worth nothing, that everyone is doing his job better than you. To keep putting time, money, and energy into making music like we do, can only happen if something inside you forces you to keep doing it for some unknown reason, even if it makes no sense at all.
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