Swanz The Lonely Cat is the solo project of Swanz, already author, composer and frontman of Dead Cat in a Bag, a band balancing between Folk Noir, Balkan, Tex-Mex and Post-Rock, with whom he has recorded three albums with excellent critical reception, promoted in national and international tours, and opening for Hugo Race and Bonnie Prince Billy. In his solo guise, he explores a more acoustic singer-songwriter repertoire, with electronic incursions.
The first album, Covers On My Bed, Stones In My Pillow (Desvelos, 2017) is dedicated to the reinterpretation of classic songs: "Swanz from the Turin band Dead Cat In A Bag deals with his sentimental-musical training by putting together a collection of covers that includes everyone from Hank Williams to Joy Division. Rough versions, with expressionist and pre-modern tones, simultaneously very modern in devising ancestral folk drones on which the expressiveness of the voice investigates harshness and whispers without becoming caricature." (Alessandro Besselva Averame, Rumore). The single on vinyl My Fair Drama Queen / 21 Years was released in 2020 by Gustaff Records.
The live performance is focused on a folk music that is often theatrical, between philological references and unorthodox style: "Everything sounds like a kind of comfort, a thing like 'here you are safe, friend' despite that cavernous voice and the dark atmospheres of much of the repertoire that awaits us. The audience is with him, seems to love him or at least to me it seems impossible not to love him song after song, kilometer after kilometer, always further away from the city that contains this Arci club and my clandestine life. A hero, in short." (Alessio Cerasani, Erba Magazine).
For years, in parallel with his work with the band, Swanz has appeared on stage as a composer, musician, and actor in shows by companies such as Teatro di Dioniso/Teatro Stabile di Torino, Balletto Civile/Michela Lucenti, Marta Di Giulio, Gabrielli & Migliora, Kulturscio'k, Alessandra Dell'Atti, Circo Delicia, EgriBiancoDanza, Barbagallo & Bonsangue.
He has also collaborated, live and on record, with alternative and experimental folk projects such as Gentless3, Silent Carnival, Thomas Guiducci, Ho.bo, Midnight Scavengers, Liam MacKahey, with singer-songwriters such as Cesare Basile, Federico Sirianni, Andrea Tarquini, Davide Tosches, Elli De Mon, Gianluca Mondo, Protto, Andrea Tarquini, and more experimental projects such as those by Gianni Maroccolo (CCCP, CSI), Barbagallo, Interiors. The solo live presentation took place as an opening act for CousteauX.
Currently, in addition to an album in collaboration with Stella Burns (together with Diego Sapignoli and Francesco Giampaoli of the Fatalists), Swanz The Lonely Cat is working on an instrumental album inspired by the soundtrack he composed for Macbeth - an electro-acoustic project between drone music, minimalism, and concrete music - and on an album of unreleased songs featuring guests such as Dan Solo (Marlene Kuntz), Michele Gazich, Alain Croubalian (Dead Brothers), in addition to the fourth chapter of the Dead Cat in a Bag adventure, ready to return with a theatrical show titled Cabaret de la Nuit, awaiting the continuation of the solo recital Swanz's Hotel Chronicles, focused on hotel rooms, which was staged before the pandemic. "The unifying element, in addition to the chosen theme, is undoubtedly constituted by Swanz's particular voice, often hoarse and sometimes even strident, but which can also "melt" - as in Moonlight Hotel - into tones and accents of a romantic crooner. (...) With due proportions, it is somewhat similar to what happened with Johnny Cash's American Recordings." (Renzo Nelli, TomTomRock)
He loves cats very much and has a female cat named Kitty.
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