In September 2022, Leo Carnicella released his debut full-length progressive rock album, Super-Sargasso Sea. It came to my attention, and after listening to it and reviewing what is a very good album, Lee reached out and this interview has resulted, a deep and fascinating insight into a very honest and talented songwriter and musician capable of attracting guests of the highest calibre. The developing theme of the hallucinogenic DMT is particularly facinating.
I love this interview and hope you enjoy.
Hi Lee. Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. We will be talking about your records and a little bit about the Inner Mr Carnicella!
Your debut full-length album, Super-Sargasso Sea was released in 2022. Reviews have been positive. Looking back now, how do you feel about the reaction your music has engendered?
I'm amazed about how many magazines (Digital & Print) reviewed the album, and more fascinating are all the emails that I've been receiving from listeners from different countries over the world, tons of warming messages full of gratitude, because they consider it a very touching album. I'm feel blessed about that, and I'm happy. That's the best rewards that a songwriter can have.
In my review, I stated that the album shows great promise for the future, and I believe that very strongly – it is a fine album. How do you, though, see your musical career developing? Will you remain within the progressive music space, or do you see some divergence? What lessons have you learned from the album process to take forward?
In reality, and unfortunately, music is not the profession from which I make my living. Even when it is part of my life from when I wake up until I go to sleep, I have another profession. In my mind there are always ideas for new songs, concepts, art, poetry, lyrics. I can't say that I'm a progressive fan, but truly a Music Lover. I am a huge fan of a lot of progressive bands, but also of classical music, some pop stuff, hard rock, blues, jazz, new age and even Scott Joplin's ragtime. So, even if I try to do a full progressive album, there will be always a mix of evident influences. What have I learned from the album? I should put a better voice than mine as a lead singer.
Before we discuss the album, guests, and production, please tell my readers the gestation of this album, from initial ideas to production. Please do go into as much detail as you are comfortable with describing the creative process and following this through to the finished product.
I started with an idea to create an album about the contact of people with paranormal entities, and I did some interviews to Dr Juan Acevedo and Dr Nestor Berlanda, two professionals from Argentina with decades of experience with people that have experienced contact with "something" that doesn't fit with the world we know. That is, entities, intelligent lights, voices... So, Dr Nestor Berlanda told me about the DMT and recommended to me the book "DMT The Spirit Molecule" by Dr Rick Strassman, so I was immersed in this book after that, and many things of content connected me with the passing of my father in 2020. So, I contacted Dr Strassman himself for some questions, at the end I decided to create an album about the loss, the loss of trust, loss of someone you love, the loss of human contact, the loss of memory, and the loss in altered states of consciousness through the DMT.
More on the overarching theme to the work. I felt Tell Your Mum I’m Not Coming Home was deeply introspective, there is the storm of the opening track, the story of Sargasso we discuss later, and the invective to remember freedom in Conundrum.
Yes, “Tell your mom…” is about the passing of my father. According to the Book “Bardo Thodol” or “Tibetan Book of the dead”, the soul has 49 days to find liberation after death. If the soul can’t make it, it is destinated to reincarnate. The song tried to recreate the moment my father died, his soul trying to tell my brother “Go back and recomfort your mom, I will not come back”. It is a very personal song.
Conundrum, in the other hand, is about loss of trust, in Governments, in media, in religion. I strongly believe that we live under their absolute control, their multiple laws and models of conduct that are very convenient for many powerful people.
As I compose these questions, I am, as you would expect, listening to your music. Oblivion has been played many times now – I put it on my personal 2022 best of playlist, but it is so short. I think the atmosphere you and Thomas Krampl create is stunning, a soundscape which takes the listener to a higher plain. These are the thoughts of a music critic, but a question to the writer, why so short? Almost criminally so! Every time I listen to this piece, I believe there is an epic waiting to burst out of it.
This is an old song of mine that we started recording in 2017 in Thomas Krampl's studios in Vienna.
I developed the opening guitar, then he did the arrangement of the second guitar. Then, by the end of 2021, I added the ambient keyboards to make it more profound with those atmospheric sounds.
For me it works as a contrast with other largest and regular time songs. But you're not the first to ask why is too short; for some people, it is one of the most beautiful moments of the whole album.
The title of the track is inspired by a personal experience that I had in my youth. I think I was 18 or 19 years old, and I was walking on a Saturday morning in a very concurred location of Caracas called Chacaito. There was a very big record shop there. I noticed that it was open, and I decided to enter (I was already and still I am an avid buyer of music in physical format). The store was totally empty, there were no other customers, or even employees. It was curious to me, but I started to check the cd sections looking for some good stuff.
Suddenly I started to feel that someone was watching me. I turned to my right side and there was a man like in his 80s wearing a black suit, watching me very intensively. I looked him with curiosity with an expression trying to find out what he wanted and suddenly he told me “Let’s go, they’re waiting for us”. It was very surreal, and strange, and some seconds later the manager of the store came running and took him gently on one arm and told me “Please forgive him, he is my father, and he is suffering from Alzheimer’s, he doesn’t know what he’s saying”.
It was a very strange moment, and I decided to synthesize that experience in this song as the loss of memory because of this terrible disease.
Let’s discuss the guests, and somewhat obviously, I am going to start with Martin Barre, the incredible Jethro Tull guitarist who to this day continues to delight audiences with his playing and dignity following the terminal split with Ian Anderson. How did the appearance by Martin on the epic track, The Place Where Lost Minds Go come about, please?
I knew from the beginning, that if a guitar player will play on the track about the DMT, that should be Martin Barre. Because he is, in my opinion, one of the few guitarists that can delight people with aggressive sounds but also with classical and subtle passages, so I sent him an email, and a person close to him told me he was touring but this probably could be interesting for him.
I had to wait several months and when he returned, the contact person sent me an email to schedule a call, but my answer was to send the demo of the track (keys, bass and drums) and I said; "Let Martin listen to the track. If he doesn’t like it, then better not to disturbing anymore" The next day. I received the confirmation that the track was downloaded and 20 min later, Martin himself sent me an email confirming his participation on the whole track. We talked then in a video call, and he told me that he liked the track a lot. The result was wonderful.
Having discussed Martin, it would be remiss not to spend many words discussing the musicians who helped you to create such a great album. We have the wonderful Tony Franklin on fretless bass and Pendragon skins man, Jan-Vincent Velazco, Beledo on acoustic & electric guitar on tracks 2 to 4 inclusive, and Thomas Krampl on tracks 1 & 5, with Alexis Peña providing vocals on the first track. Tell my readers, please, how the process of recruiting such talented collaborators was realised.
Well, Tony Franklin makes magic in every track, his way to play can connect with deep emotions, and that's exactly what I look for, that's why I am still asking him to participate. Velazco is an awesome drummer. As amazing are Thomas Krampl and Beledo (who played in most of the songs). There was a long list of guitarists that I tried to have in "Conundrum" but was not possible and at the end I decided to keep Beledo also in that track. Alexis Peña is a great singer, very famous in Venezuela. I admire him very much and love his voice. Sometimes I regret that I didn't ask him to sing more on this album.
What was the process of recording, please? Digital files shared between you?
Yes, Velazco recorded in his studio in the UK, Franklin and Beledo in US, Krampl in Vienna, Martin also in UK and me in Germany. Everything was mixed in Australia by Mike Stavrou, who is a lovely person, and I have the feeling that somehow, we became good friends.
We discussed Martin on the epic track above, but I would now like to spend more time discussing The Place Where Lost Minds Go. Firstly, the mellotron, that sumptuous instrument which rightly brings a smile to every progressive rock lover. This featured heavily in the EP Until A New Dawn we discuss below. Many classic progressive artists talk lovingly about the soundscapes the instrument created, but also the fact that it used to make them tear their hairs out in frustration as it could be temperamental. Your relationship with it, please.
"In The Wake of Poseidon". That album, and that specific track, changed my life forever, and made me an unconditional fan of KC and everything that the members did outside. It is so touching, so profound, that I try to use it always to evoke feelings
Let’s discuss in detail the theme. The spoken words are by Dr Rick Strassman, an American Psychiatrist who undertook the first approved experiment with ingestion of DMT, a hallucinogenic. You worked with him on this track detailing his work with more than 50 volunteers. Please tell my readers in detail the story of his work, why and the outcomes.
Well, the extraordinary thing about DMT, is that our body produces this substance in an endogen way, specifically in the pineal gland, in the brain. Some of Dr Strassman comments about DMT are related to the book “Bardo Thodol” which gave me comfort when my father died.
So, I contacted him for an interview, he liked the idea of the song, and at the beginning the idea was to have his voice reading some passages of his book but we didn’t get permission from the publisher, so we simulated the experience of one Hypothetic Volunteer, whose breathing at the beginning, he relates the experience through the lyrics.
There is here something important to mention, many people criticised the part of the “mechanic voice” during the movement “Contact through the veil”, which is the third part of the suite. This was based on a real event experienced by a British Doctor called Carl Smith, who took DMT for research purposes and during the experience, a non-human entity approached him and said, “You should not be doing this way, this is the wrong way to do it”. Some days later after that experience, Dr Smith took another DMT shot and found the same entity for the second time who said to him “I told you last time, you should not be doing this way”.
So, what exactly is the nature of these entities? People that have experienced with DMT and Ayahuasca (which is an ancestral beverage to increase the DMT levels in blood by inhibiting the enzyme that synthesizes DMT in our blood normally) are fully convinced that these entities really exist and have some kind of wisdom or intelligence. They describe the experience as “more real than real”.
Within the album, there is a wide range of sounds. Obviously, your work falls within the progressive rock spectrum, but that is a very eclectic one. There is a bit of everything, blues, jazz, psych, harder rock to pastorally melodic, alongside something almost post punk in Balance. How would you describe it? I ask this as a writer who loathes pigeonholing artists into straightjackets of styles or “genres”.
Well, I don't like the labels or “genres”. They work fine to sell the music as a product. I compose following my influences, all the music that captivated me since I was just a 6-year-old boy kid. So, the best way to describe it is the music that I would love to hear in an album.
So, let’s discuss Mr Carnicella! You are Venezuelan presently living in Germany. I know we live in a so-called global economy now, but that strikes me as being a long journey! Tell us about yourself and how you came to reside in Europe.
My whole family is from the south of Italy, so after all the crises in Venezuela, I decided in 2014 to move to Vienna. I spent 7 amazing years there, and then decided to move to Germany in 2021. Basically, all the problems in Venezuela made me run to Europe as an Italian Citizen for which I thank my parents!
What about your musical journey? What are your strongest influences, both early and present? Are there any keyboardists or other musicians you particularly admire?
The first three tracks that captured my attention in my childhood were “Human Nature” by Steve Porcaro (included in the album Thriller of Michael Jackson), “You are my best friend” from “A Night at the Opera” Album by Queen, and “Grease” from Frankie Valli (soundtrack from the movie). Those three tracks made me get into Rock music, then so many other names such as Pink Floyd, of course, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple among many others until I discovered King Crimson and got into Progressive Music. That took me to wonderful bands as Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Yes, Genesis and Jethro Tull.
The first keyboardist that captured my attention and still is a big influence was Jon Lord, then Richard Wright, specially for his amazing job in the “Wish You Were Here” album, which is one of my favourites, and the third for me, the one who made more impact in me, Keith Emerson. The album Trilogy was for me a revelation.
You released Strange Land of Weird Colours in 2011. Firstly, I have reproduced the most gorgeous cover for this. Tell us about the artwork, please.
The cover is an amazing painting from the British artist Josephine Wall, called "The Enchanted Flute". That work was really a demo album but had some minor relevance in an underground way. I was looking for flutes on the internet and found the cover, so I contacted her asking for permission and finally I bought rights to use it in a limited number of units. I think it was a very good way to start presenting my work, for me the art cover of an album is a very important part in the success of it. But this is just my humble opinion.
I regret I have never heard this, and your website notes it as “sold out”. Do you have any plans to reissue it?
The idea comes to my mind from time to time, but as I always have a new idea for something, most of the time I prefer to create new material. I think I’m going to leave that to a period of “deficit of creativity” If I can call it in that way.
Tell us about this work, please.
It was a “one man work”. I recorded everything using multiple virtual instruments and samples, the idea was to put together some original songs and try to put it in the market and see the results. Just 100 copies were produced and sold in 4 or 5 local stores in Caracas. I never found other musicians to wanted to join me to make this kind of music, so I decided to do it by myself and really didn’t have any expectations in that time about it. I made that album as an experiment.
It was 2021 until you released Until a New Dawn. Why such a long time?
As I’m not making my living with music, many things happened in my life in that time. A marriage, a divorce, other family issues, my decision to leave Venezuela… It was not so easy to continue doing music, and definitely it was not the best moment to continue.
Another cracking cover. You obviously take this aspect of your creations very seriously. How did Hugh Syme become involved?
Yes, as mentioned before, a cover plays a fundamental part in the success of the album and should connect the music with visual images. The contribution of H. Syme was a surprise. I decided to contact him and to my surprise he sent me his contact number and we talked for an hour about many things. At the end he told me that he will do it only if the music was good enough to him, he listened to “Limbo” and “An Endless…” and he agreed immediately to do it.
Three tracks on the EP, the title track, Limbo, and An Endless Path to Infinity. The title track is available on your Bandcamp page digitally, and I have embedded it below. In addition to the dreamy mellotron, there is some magnificent guitar work. I know Tony Franklin appeared on this – was it just the two of you?
In the EP, there is also a Venezuelan guitarist, a friend of mine, Marco Ciargo. He is a founding member of a Venezuelan cult band of Hard Rock in the ‘80s called Resistencia. He also played in that track and Vincent Velazco on percussions. Funny that you mentioned Hugh Syme and then this question mentioning the Mellotron, because the addition of the mellotron on that track was an idea by Hugh Syme himself who told me that “His ears were asking desperately for a Mellotron in some part of the song”. So, I added it and noticed that he was right. I’m happy to have that anecdote on the making of that song, you know Hugh Syme is not just anyone, and I felt very honoured that he liked that song in such way that he did his own observations to improve the track.
I gather the other two tracks are old – from that debut demo?
No, I composed “Limbo” and “And Endless…” after a long conversation with a very important DJ in Venezuela who became my friend until his passing in 2016. Alfredo Escalante
You dedicated this to Alfredo Escalante who supported you with the demo album. Tell my readers about him, please, and your relationship.
A very good friend of mine worked with him in one of the most important radio stations in Caracas, he told him about me and this crazy idea to do an album with some of my prog songs. Then, this friend invited me to a press conference of the band “YES” in the second tour to Venezuela with Benoit David on vocals (just before the Fly From Here album), and there I met Alfredo Escalante in person.
We talked a little bit and then I gave him a copy of my demo. I received an email from him saying “I was gladly surprised with what I heard, I will open my next programme with one of your songs”. We became friends since that, and later he put the whole album in his show. He asked me one day, what will be my next move, and I really didn’t know what to answer because as I said, it was just an experiment, and he told me “I will give you two pieces of advice: 1. Do not stop making music, and 2. Try to join professional musicians, because they will help you to take this into the next level”.
After that conversation I was so inspired that I composed Limbo and “An Endless…” he heard the first demo of both songs but unfortunately I never released them until the EP, and that’s why I decided to dedicate the EP to him.
Listening to Limbo now, this is a very nice instrumental work with your keyboards taking an almost proto progressive rock feeling alongside an incredible bass guitar sequence by Tony Franklin.
The track was more lineal and monotone, Tony Franklin transformed the demo into an amazing tune. He has a lot of credit in that one.
An Endless Path to Infinity is a cracking title and I think hints at the ambition you have for yourself as an artist. A dreamy psych track with a lovely mellotron overlaying the track. I think it is very good, and my readers can listen to it on iTunes. Talk us through this track, please.
…And I recommend you see the video of the track in YouTube created by the Ukrainian Artist Yulia Kurkina, because it takes the experience of listening to the next level. This was a track where I tried to express the idea than human beings but in turn somehow, we repeat certain mistakes repeatedly, such as advancing technologically regardless of the consequences that may cause to the planet or ourselves in the future.
How much live work do you do, or intend to undertake in the future?
This part is difficult to assume by myself. When I see the options, the two possibilities are: To find a local band and perform this great repertoire (which will potentially reduce a lot the quality of the concept) or to have the musicians involved and tour with them. But that will necessitate having a promotor, and a tour manager, to align the schedules of everyone (Tony and Velazco are always busy with projects with other bands and artists). I asked everyone if they will be interested in some dates, and they are, but the conditions must be right for everyone (including money, because at the end of the day, this is a show business)
And recording work. When can we expect a new Carnicella album? What can we expect from it?
I have an idea for something more ambitious, I am slowly working on it. It will take some time, but at the end I must release something that definitely must be quite better than “Super Sargasso…” because the idea is to improve always and deliver a better concept, a better work, better presentation, better music, and a better artistic product.
To close, thank you so much for giving your time to answer these questions.
Thanks to you for the opportunity, Steve.