The pseudonym of Italian musician Roberto D’aiello, For The First Time is a project started in May 2015. Roberto is an acoustic guitarist and singer, and has headlined around Europe.
Starting with a need to express his deep feelings and overwhelming thoughts, he wrote phrases and sentences, turning them into thoughtful and honest songs, with the result that which is clearly a very personal and intimate project. We were intrigued to find out more about this artist.
EP: ‘For The First Time’ is an interesting name. What is that all about?
RD: Everything started when so many things in my life were kind of falling apart and after some bad months I started to find a way to overcome the feeling of senselessness. Then I found music as a therapy: I started to write songs and that made me feel better. All the negative things and feelings were turned into the music that had a positive impact into my life. And something like that happened “For The First Time” in my life.
EP: You’re from Italy – tell us a bit about yourself, where are you from, what’s your background?
RD: I am 27 years old and I come from the centre of Italy. I’ve attended Art School since I was 15 and this year I am graduating from Sculpture department. Nevertheless I always considered myself more as a musician. Everything started when I was three years old and my mum bought me a kid’s drum. I was so into it that I wouldn’t give up on it even though all my neighbours hated me. After some years I started play a real drum. Later with my older brother and my grandpa I was practicing playing all kinds of guitars including a bass one. As it usually happens when you can play some instruments, I met the people with the same interests and set up the bands. The most important was one punk rock band where I played the drums and one grunge duo with my friend Francesca where I also played the drums.
EP: Tell us something about your music – how long have you been writing, how long have you been performing, where have you performed?
RD: My solo music project was born in the end of May last year when I wrote my first song. It was after a really bad breakup. After that I kept writing more and more songs and recorded an EP in September before going for Erasmus to Slovakia. Because my project has only been around for less than a year, I haven’t have many performances so far. I played for the first time in September, in Italy, then in January I had two concerts, one in Slovakia and one in Italy again. I recently got inspired while in Slovakia, and since December I’ve written 4 new songs and started preparing my new EP.
EP: Where do you see yourself in one year’s time? In 5 years’ time?
RD: Actually it is hard to say because everything is changing so fast that sometimes it is impossible to make any plans. But for now I think in one year I would like live in another European country for a while. I will probably do an internship at the contemporary centre in Berlin and I will try to spread my music there by giving concerts and so on. And I have a big dream that in five years I will be travelling around the world, performing in concert.
EP: Talk us through your album. Is it a concept album, or do you feel each song can stand alone?
RD: Every song on my album is about love, some are about the good side of it, but most are about that bad side, like being heart-broken and devastated by the breakup. As I said before, my bad life experiences were a trigger to start writing my music. Nevertheless I think it is still possible to listen to one song without knowing the whole content.
EP: What’s the Italian music scene like?
RD: This is a really hard question for me to answer because I have grown up on American and British indie, alternative and rock music. That makes me to look up to foreign bands more than Italian ones. The Italian music scene is a bit different from the world music scene, mostly because of the language and for the musicians it is hard to be popular abroad.
EP: Where can we find your music? Where can we see you perform?
RD: You can find my music on Bandcamp, Soundcloud and some videos on YouTube. I keep searching for new concerts for the next month, so stay tuned for the news.
