Alessandro Raina

Alessandro Raina (born 29 June 1977) is an Italian singer/songwriter.

In 1998, Alessandro Raina meets Giacomo Spazio, a counterculture pioneer in Milan. The meeting gives birth to a tight collaboration, resulting in the Colonia Paradi'es release, a record featuring old pictures and tapes revealing the story of Montalto Pavese, the village where Raina grew up. Colonia Paradi'es magnetizes the interest of the avant-garde press. The British monthly The Wire labels it as one of the best débuts of 1999. Amedeo Pace from Blonde Redhead (to whom Raina pays tribute with a Girl Boy cover) in an interview refers to Raina as “the most interesting emerging Italian artist”. Still, Raina will never promote the record with live performances, except in two occasions: an exhibition opening for François-Régis Cambuzat at Tunnel and a concert along with Madrigali Magri at the social center Cox 18, both live performances held in Milan.

From 1999 to 2003, Raina worked as a freelance journalist for some of the most relevant Italian music magazines (Blow Up, Rumore, Rockstar) and for the literature magazine Pulp Libri. He even wrote some reviews for the Italian edition of the literary magazine Time Out, dealing with culture and costume.

Possibly born in Soledad, Falkland Islands, Alessandro Raina achieved Italian citizenship as his parents desired. He grew up in Voghera but he left his parents' home around the age of 18, spending many years in London, Milan, Paris, Caen, Rapallo and Hamburg, finally settling in Italy in 2001.

Former journalist and wannabe writer, he embraced the path of songwriting by chance. In 2003, Alessandro took part in the recording sessions of a track which will be later featured in the album Punk... Not Diet! by Giardini di Mirò, one of his own favourite bands. Right after this collaboration, the band asked him to lend his voice to the whole LP, to which he contributed also as main lyricist.

Since 2003, after leading an interview to one of his favourite bands of that time, Alessandro gets unexpectedly involved in Giardini di Mirò, lending his voice to Punk... Not Diet! (2003) and live performing in Italy, Germany, Denmark, Greece, Switzerland. This intense touring spree led Giardini di Mirò playing at prestigious festivals, such as the roving Tora! Tora! festival, the Neapolis Festival (which will even feature both R.E.M. and Patti Smith), Frequenze Disturbate (along with Beck) and a live broadcast MTV Day backing Interpol.

From 2005 to 2007, Raina put his musical activities on hold in order to work for Etro fashion house in Milan, as a full-time employee. After this period, he fully committed himself to music.

Alessandro is featured as singer in some tracks listed in Noorda's second album, To The Antipole (2005). This project was given birth by Cesare Malfatti (La Crus, The Dining Rooms) and Gionata Bettini. Raina is soon elected as main vocalist, but live performances are extremely rare and climax into the sound score to Darren Aronofsky's π, played live within the Santarcangelo dei Teatri International Festival held in Santarcangelo di Romagna.

December 2006 marks the release of Nema Fictzione, a musical/literary effort issued in the form of a book. The release was co-signed by Alessandro's mentor Giacomo Spazio, as well as by the instrumentalist Pierluigi Petris.

In December 2007 Raina becomes the first Italian artist to perform at the prestigious art gallery Debruille-Zlotogora in Paris, located in the heart of the legendary district of Saint-Germain des Prés.

In late 2008, after Cesare Malfatti has long since deserted live performances and Luca Saporito has been full-time working with Marlene Kuntz, Amor Fou decide to part from the two musicians, later replaced by Giuliano Dottori (guitars) and Paolo Perego (bass, guitar, noises).

In February 2008 Alessandro Raina makes a guest appearance on Action, Please!, début album for post-rock band København Store, lending his voice and lyricist skills to the single We Came Down From The North.

In 2008, Alessandro Raina released a self-produced EP containing three songs in English, under the moniker Casador (in homage to the famous character from Totò in Poverty and Nobility). The Puritans EP, originally available on the website of the record label Homesleep Music as a free download, has garnered much attention and collected numerous reviews on international and influential blogs revolving around the indie scene, such as Alistair Fitchett's Unpopular, Russell's Reviews, Sweeping The Nation, The Hype Machine, and many others. For the song The Puritans, Elisa Fabris directed the first Casador videoclip, based on the idea of a diary of a journey from Djerba to the mountains of Friuli. Performing just with guitar and vocals, enriched by sporadic electronic noises, Casador collected numerous live appearances, among which the opening concerts of Elvis Perkins, Micah P. Hinson, Piano Magic, Ra Ra Riot, Shannon Wright, Wilco, spacing from Italy to Germany and Luxembourg.

In June 2009 Amor Fou released Filemone e Bauci, a self-produced EP containing three tracks which marked a significant departure in sounds and vocals. The EP contains countless references to the songwriting (Battisti, Fossati), to movie scores (J. Barry, Piccioni, Morricone) and a cover of Ultima occasione, brought to success by Mina. At the same time, deepening the themes tackled in this EP, Raina writes and produces, along with some video-artist (Elisa Fabris, Ilenia Corti) Venti giorni di vita di una donna famosa vista da vicino, a short documentary about love, the city and the beauty, set in Milan and inspired by the works of Godard, Pasolini and Silvano Agosti.

His personal style features a heavy use of metaphors, twilight-intima, literary-poetic and ethical-political inspired lyrics, with mixed references – mainly in his Italian songs – to current events, classical mythology and history. Alessandro's self declared references are the acclaimed Italian singers (Tenco, Battisti, De Gregori, De André, Ciampi) spiced with love for cinema and literature of the twentieth century.