After working as a session musician and slowly releasing music on the internet for the past ten plus years, Fabiana Palladino recently released her debut, self-titled album on 4AD Records. It’s a masterfully produced album filled with 80’s style R&B ear worms and features collaborations from musical family members Pino and Rocco Palladino, the enegmatic producer Jai Paul, amongst others.
Fabiana recently caught up with WUNC Music’s Brian Burns on Future Shock to talk about the album.
This is an excerpt of an edited transcript of that conversation. You can hear the full interview by clicking the LISTEN button at the top of this post.
You produced the record yourself and it has such a cinematic, large sound to it. Tell us a bit about your journey as a producer.
That took a long time, and it took a lot of refining and encouragement from other people, especially Jai [Paul] and other people I’ve worked with. But essentially, there were a few records that I listened to in my early 20s, one of them being ‘Hounds of Love’ by Kate Bush, and another being ‘Sign O The Times’ by Prince, that both kind of sparked an interest in production and specifically synth lead music, or music with drum machines. It took me a long time to see myself as a producer and to really own that and push it forward. I still collaborate with other producers like Jai, but essentially, I know how I want my music to sound and it makes sense for me to be in control of the production.
