Feature: JP Lantieri [Zodiac Overview]

Five years in the making, JP Lantieri's concept album 'Zodiac' was recently released to much acclaim. Available on CD and digitally, it's a compelling journey into smooth rhythmic concepts and transcendent melodies. Borderless in appeal, the LP effortlessly melds progressive house, techno, house, melodic house and deep house across twelve uniquely crafted cuts. We had a chance to chat with JP about the album and he gives us a track by track breakdown into the making of the project. Enjoy!

Aries

As Aries is the first track to open this Zodiac album, I wanted it to be energetic and solid, like the ram it represents, and fresh like the spring, as this sign follows the Spring Equinox. It conveys a naivety that can be found in many charming Arians. The flowers blossom, and each chord of the short repetitive synth bells is a new flower which opens up under the warming Sun. This track’s positive energy sets the tone of the album, a celebration of twelve facets of life.

Taurus

Taurus is a strong and solid track, while not going crazy. This sign’s element is Earth, which is why I wanted this track to remain grounded.

The breakdown, with its ethereal vocals and reverberated solo string instruments, represents the laidback side of the Taurus character. The more active sections are in line with their energetic side when they are charging to build their cathedral.

In fact, while composing this track, I sometimes had this vision of a collective of masons building Notre-Dame-de-Paris cathedral, stone by stone, until this majestic monument was achieved.

Gemini

I regularly escape to a remote place as a kind of retreat ritual. I usually go somewhere close to nature, where not many tourists go, and where internet is slow enough so that I can really disconnect.

A couple of years ago I “retired” at my friends’ place in a famous French ski resort. It was in May so there was nobody around, and the weather and the scenery were fabulous.

That’s where, while facing the majestic mountains, the ideas for my track Gemini came. The environment was so calm that Gemini became a delicate music. While composing it, I was struck by the opposition between the daily hectic life that most of us encounter, and the calm and imposing serenity of these mountains.

This duality represents an important part of the constant struggle between my mind hecticly going all over the place and the calm I encounter when creating music, like if I were two different yet same persons, the twins inside me.

Cancer

Cancer is probably the track I had the most difficulty to create. I worked and reworked it many times, and in the end it took at least three years to complete.

You know, when creating music, sometimes the ideas come naturally and flawlessly and a track can be done in a couple of days. And sometimes it’s never there, the magic does not appear, and it requires a lot of work to reach something I can be proud of. Most artists certainly understand what I’ve been going through here.

I am not a Cancer, but it looks like the creative process of this track brought me trough many mood changes typical of a Cancer.

Leo

I may have more artist friends who are born in the sign of the Leo than in any other sign. Is it a coincidence? I don’t know, but their individual sensibility touches me. They often give me the energy to keep going in my artistic venture.

Full of groovy beats, a funky Disco influenced bassline and infectious melodies, this House track is one of those I had quite some fun creating. The descending chords sequence in the breakdown wears some nostalgy, but this kind of positive nostalgy which reminds me of many of my travels around our world.

Virgo

I am a Virgo. I have a tendency to over-analyse, over-plan, go too much into details... It often takes more time for me than for people from other signs to reach a goal that I have set, as I want it to be perfect and as I have a tendency to work, rework, and re-rework.

This is often an issue when creating a track, as it often takes me ages to finish it. That said, does finishing something as subjective as a music piece have a sense? Leonardo da Vinci said: “Art is never finished, only abandoned” and, as many Virgos, I am faithful and do not like to abandon anyone or to abandon anything that I am creating.

Libra

Libra is the track of the album which would best fit in the house music category. Its vocal chops which seem to bounce towards each other, its crisp organ stabs and its old style computer-game chords are the trademarks of this track.

I started it after a birthday party of a friend born under this sign, a cool and fun party where he had taken some time decorating the venue and had wonderful DJs playing some classic house music.

When I came back home after the party, some images and sounds were stuck in my head, so I opened my computer and started to lay down a few musical ideas inspired by this party, ideas which eventually became this very track.

Scorpio

Scorpio is the most intense of the horoscope signs, and is the most intense of the 12 tracks I created for this Zodiac album. It’s a proper, pure techno track. A bit dark, in which I poured some acid flavour.

Many Scorpios are drawn to “dark” things, and often wear the color black, which is the main colour that techno aficionados love to wear. It’s definitely not music for the faint-hearted, you’d probably be dancing to it late at night in an underground club in Berlin.

Sagittarius

I had a special vision while creating the track Sagittarius, a sort of nostalgic dream: I wanted to capture the emotions I was feeling in the late nineties and early noughties when Progressive House was a thing and when I was listening in loop to these CDs wonderfully mixed by extraordinary DJs like John Digweed, Sasha, Dave Seaman, Hernán Cattáneo and many others of this caliber.

These DJ-producers still inspire me today, and I am more than happy to have received great feedback from several of them.

Sagittarius may well be my most emotional track of this Zodiac album.

Capricorn

Capricorn is almost a stubborn track, if such an adjective can be applied to music, as it often applies to Capricorns.

I realized that most of my close friends born under this sign are lovely but have indeed a tendency to do things their way, sometimes not listening to what I say. They have irritated me more than once, but I always realized later on that they had a specific goal, that they often reached it, and that it was eventually not in my disfavor.

That said, they all have a good heart, and some of my closest friends are indeed from this sign.

Aquarius

Galileo, the "father of modern science" and the "father of observational astronomy", was an Aquarian. I thought of him while composing Aquarius. He had a strong vision, so much that he was considered an heretic and spent the end of his life in house arrest.

According to popular legend, after recanting his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun, Galileo allegedly muttered the rebellious phrase "and yet it moves". History proved him right, as we all know (and this was only a small piece of his huge contribution to science).

Aquarius is a strong techno track, full of conviction which I feel unites the people towards a positive world, a better world, like many Aquarians strive to.

Pisces

I was travelling in Myanmar and was staying for a while on the shores of the unique Inle Lake. While walking back to my resort, I passed by one of the many amazing buddhist temples in this beautiful country, and heard a monk reciting chants and mantras. His voice captivated me, so I stopped and recorded him on my digital recorder.

The following day I was on a boat discovering the fishermen carefully balancing on one leg, wrapping their second leg around the oar to guide their vessel through the freshwater lake, when it struck that Pisces being a water sign, the connection between this monk’s chant and this sign suddenly seemed obvious.

And that’s how this compelling voice became part of my track Pisces.

'Zodiac' is out now on Flemcy Music, you can purchase the release here: https://ffm.to/FLEM039