This two-song single is a special release. One can say this was a mere coincidence to finish working on these two songs the day before the celebration of the Anniversary of Italy’s Liberation, but who knows, who knows...

You probably know that I tend to pay attention to such "coincidences" and other sort of signs. One Sunday morning I was strumming three basic chords on my guitar and a simple melody began to emerge on the fly. Soon after that a scene from the life of a small town appeared right before my eyes, and I was sure about this town being located... somewhere in Italy. I googled for Italian children's poems and rhymes, and the first thing I came across was "Stella stellina", that perfectly matched the melody.

Still unaware of the story behind the poem, I found two slightly different versions of the text (otherwise I would surely start from finding the original version), so I needed a help from someone fluent in Italian. No other candidate here than Elen Adamyan for me, so I asked her to help me get an ultimate version to sing to the already recorded backing tracks.

When the job was done, I got a familiar feeling from the time when I was working on my Peter Hammill tribute: it's when you finish something but want to do some more. "I probably wouldn't succeed if I tried making something artificially, by forcing the creative energy flow into some limitations, frames and boxes. But what if I try to have some of my own songs translated?" I thought. And I meant the new songs. I stuck for a while with "The Happiness (The Revelation of Philip Sandman)" and pretty soon decided that it would be the best choice.

The ultimate version of the Italian lyrics was prepared in just a couple of iterations, and with the text in hand I began befriending it with the music. It took a few takes to produce a demo, fix the pronunciation issues, and get all the accents and pauses right. In parallel, I recalled how the "Westerlies" album came to life, and I tried to check the rest of my new songs to see if I could find any other candidates among them and produce an album of songs. However none of them responded to my call. The path of "Westerlies" was already taken in the past, and I had to think of something new.

At the same time, I know it's not worth it to think out something under pressure of a mere desire to make it special. If something IS special, there is no need to artificially change it, and if it is not - better not to pretend I could make myself believe it can become any special. So, I decided these two songs are the only options to form an Italian single (which is already quite an ambitious goal to aim at in my case). A single would perfectly do, and so "Un singolo italiano" came to fruition.

Both songs deal with books and are based on the material already published. And if "Stella stellina" is a famous children's poem known to almost every Italian (even though not all know the story behind it or heard about its author Lina Schwartz), the second track is based on a chapter from my own book "The Happy Life of Philip Sandman" (recently released in Russian as "Счастливая жизнь Филиппа Сэндмена"). This is the quintessence of the novel and, at the same time, one of the central themes of my upcoming album that will feature the original English version of the song.

The news about the new album will appear soon, I faithfully hope. In the meantime, enjoy Un singolo italiano, specially released today (April 25, 2023) to celebrate the Anniversary of Italy’s Liberation - Festa della liberazione!

Auguri a tutti i miei amici italiani! Mille grazie a tutti! Abbracci!