LE FESTE ANTONACCI
Every once in a while, something truly new streaks across the sky of Italian music. Not a passing flash, but a meteorite - dense, elusive, destined to leave a crater. That’s what Le Feste Antonacci feel like.
An Italo-Parisian duo made up of Giacomo Lecchi d’Alessandro and Leonardo Rizzi, they create sonic worlds that lie far outside mainstream formulas, yet never stray from a deep and instinctive understanding of what pop music really is.
Composers, producers, and multi-instrumentalists, they’ve worked behind the scenes on soundtracks, advertisements, and records for major platforms like Netflix, HBO, Disney Channel, and YouTube Originals. Now they’ve released their debut album, UOMINI CANI GABBIANI (Panico Dischi), a record that dares to be both mystical and wild, refined and primal.
The album was previewed by three tracks: Uomini Nudi, P.U.L.P., and Porgi l’altra guancia. Songs that began mapping out this psychedelic and spiritual journey. Each piece becomes a symbol of a world that’s lost its bearings, told through a musical language that shifts between disco-funk detours, meditative silences, synth basslines, budget-sax solos, and vintage guitar riffs. What ties it all together is a kind of relentless expressive urgency - sometimes irreverent, always honest. And it’s all, literally, home-made.
We sat down for a conversation with them in the middle of a whirlwind of rehearsals ahead of their summer tour, with shows in Genova, Florence, Trento, and Bologna - before heading out into the clubs across Italy this autumn.
Le Feste Antonacci, shot by Jacopo Cozzi, courtesy of press office.
If I were Belluca, the clerk from Pirandello’s story, I’d tell you the train has whistled. But in my case, it’s your debut album UOMINI CANI GABBIANI that’s just started playing - and I suddenly feel like taking off my jacket. That’s my metaphor for surrendering to freedom, for letting myself be moved by love in a world that feels darker by the day. It’s the essence of UOMINI NUDI, the opening track. This first record is the child of some wildly brilliant ideas - playful, but also sharply focused and deeply cohesive. We hear you loud and clear. But for you, how was making this album like taking off your own jacket?
“This album is an invitation to listen to yourself -intuitively, unconsciously- to stop observing yourself from the outside and start forgetting, shedding, decentering from your own existence in order to turn outward, toward others. While creating it, we had to wrestle with ourselves to say what we really wanted, without hiding behind irony or sarcasm. It became a slow demolition process - tearing down walls just to say even the simplest things we never thought we could say.
Often we had to build an entire world around a single phrase, just to make it feel like it belonged. It’s a messy process - but the truth is, our songs usually start with phrases that are born right alongside the music, coming straight from the subconscious. Those don’t need justification. Everything that comes after - that’s where the real choices begin. And getting those to feel as natural as the first is hard, hard work. That’s when jackets start coming off. Layer after layer”.
You’ve become known for how you use words (few, precise, and timed like punches) but also for how your riffs and huge arrangements tell stories on their own. They either punch you in the face or launch you straight into orbit. Even without lyrics, songs like AQUEKETE seem to narrate absurd skits or trigger deep, cathartic thought. How do you know when to use words, and when to let the music say it all?
“First off, thanks for the kind words. We’re both more composers than lyricists, so early on, lyrics were a real problem. We believe music, by its very nature, can communicate without needing to say anything. Over time, we started enjoying the process - or at least learning to listen to the words the music itself was suggesting.
For us, the meaning -or even the absence- of words is often already encoded in the music. Every melody evokes (or doesn’t evoke) a theme. Sometimes it’s just not there.
In AQUEKETE, for instance, the theme was clear: it was about a homeless man, one of many we’ve seen in Paris, completely stripped of his humanity, who carried this single non-word (‘aquekete’) as the last remnant of being a person. We chose not to write anything and to paint an emotional state instead, blurred between our perspective and his. We naturally lean toward using as few words as possible, letting the music -with its openness to interpretation- carry the reflection for us. That said, we’re slowly starting to explore the world of lyrics more intentionally. It’s tough, especially if you want to avoid being too literal”.
I remember being a kid and hearing my grandfather say, “things were better when they were worse”. I used to laugh and agree. But over time, I got tired of that way of thinking. ORA È MEGLIO DI PRIMA feels like your manifesto for how to keep going in the now, no matter what. How did this track come to be, and looking at your story so far -musically, professionally, personally- what’s really better now than before?
“That’s a huge question: ‘is now better than before?’.
We could talk about it for hours. In fact, we did, for days, while working on the song. It’s a call to become protagonists of your own movement. The hyper-activity of our times leaves us exhausted even when we haven’t done much at all. And the ‘hands’ moving us around -algorithms, systems- are now so subtle and refined we no longer have the mental space to even conceive the idea of resisting them.
But those hands are victims too, of the same fate we all share. So why not try to be together in the brief parentheses of our existence?
Personally, yes - now is better than before: we’re older, more grounded, more patient, more serious (less bullshit, more stoic pragmatism). We’ve developed better lenses to see the world, and that helps us not get lost on the ride.
Professionally, we’re tired but satisfied. Our work as composers keeps surprising us with opportunities we never thought possible - especially for two Italian musicians just out of high school during the 2009 financial crisis”.
With PORGI L’ALTRA GUANCIA, that heavy funk stench made me wonder - how does your duo actually work? And what’s your chemistry like with the rest of the live band?
“That funk is baked into us - it bursts out as soon as we let go of the reins. Songs like that often come from long improv sessions over drum machines - we’ll keep five seconds from four hours of jamming, and build from there.
On stage, it’s total trust. Our bandmates are not just incredible musicians, they’re our friends. They listen to the tracks, find their voice, and bring it. Then we rehearse - and live, it’s pure joy”.
When SIENA / FIRENZE started, I thought I was listening to a classic “speeding-ticket song” - something to make you feel like Lightning McQueen on the highway. Then came the sudden escape to the sea -a break from the boredom of your hometown- and that led me to UOMINI CANI GABBIANI, which made me feel like a modern-day Max from A Goofy Movie. How did this track come to represent the essence of the whole album?
“You nailed it - Siena/Firenze is a pure gabber/verismo track. The speed is like an extra adjective. Just like the Ponzi-esque synth and those explosive risers - they tell the story better than words. Lyrically, it’s all about that shift from small-town inertia to the beach.
And Uomini cani gabbiani? That’s exactly what you hear: it’s the one and only take, recorded on a phone, that somehow became the title track. It’s both totally meaningful and completely nonsensical - the perfect combo, just how we like it”.
