Darren Cinque: Artist on the Rise

Darren Cinque – The Australian born singer/songwriter has recently made Milan, Italy his home.  “Let The Beat Hit You!” is proud to feature Darren as our second in the “Artist on the Rise” series. A collaboration with producer Giovanni Prolo has proved to be a perfect match where they have worked together on several songs.

Darren has released his first single entitled “Another Day” which has received great reception from radio play in the United States  and obtaining over one million views on YouTube along with currently being on sale on iTunes!  The online website VEVO is a great outlet to access all of Darren’s current hot singles and music videos.  The current single “Fight For The Young” is a hard hitting single that the artist has worked in conjunction with the World Vision organization to have this song looking for peace.

I had the pleasure to speak with Darren whom spoke about his drive/passion for music which comes across in his work. This is a very unique article where it is all in Darren's words. Darren is I am pleased to say our very select "artist in residence" where you will be hearing a lot more from him on "The Beat" and I personally could not be happier.


Darren Cinque Sites:
Official Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/darren.cinque
SoundCloud:          https://soundcloud.com/darrencinque
YouTube:                 http://www.youtube.com/user/darrencinque
ReverbNation:       http://www.reverbnation.com/darrencinque

Article Written By: Mason Williams

Darren Cinque in his own words:

I'm currently working with my director in making my third video for my song "Fight for the Young".

It's a song that was inspired by the situation in Syria, that I wrote about a year ago. The message is that we have to stop the suffering of children affected by war, but not only, it also illustrates how young soldiers who are sent away to war  are affected and the mothers left behind hoping that their sons return......we still haven't learned anything from past wars.

So I hope to be able to make the message clear in this video.

Otherwise, I can tell you that my song "Another Day" is now available on i-tunes and can be viewed on my VEVO channel.

My experience with my producer Giovanni Prolo. It's funny how we met. I was teaching English in a language center here in Italy - I was speaking to another teacher who sings a bit and she mentioned she was called by this producer who was looking for an English speaker to record some dance tracks. I was looking for a producer and thought I would give him a call.  I still remember our first meeting; he was very stern with me, didn't really want to reveal his interest in my project, but after a long conversation, he then told me to send him more material. We went on for about a year and a half where I went to his studio once a month showing him 5 or 6 songs that I had written. He would take notes, giving me the minimal feedback like, "yeah this song has a great verse, but the chorus doesn't do it for me" or "this chorus is great, but the rest of the song is pretty average", "Darren, I still haven't heard what I'm looking for". This went on and on, I was starting to lose faith  in myself and hope, until he then one day chose a few songs that he thought were up to the level to record as demos of piano and voice. 

During all this time he taught me the technique of singing in front of a microphone in a recording studio setting, which is a strange and un-real environment, absolutely not so easy.

We went on to record more demos until we then recorded my current releases.

All this time, as I mentioned in my bio, I was playing and writing and performing with a local group by the name of Lomo. This was a fun experience which also gave me an insight of what the live music scene is like here in Italy. Unfortunately nothing like what I was used to in Melbourne Australia. In Australia, there are many venues with so many bands who are playing any night of the week. Here in Italy on the other hand, for an up and coming band, there aren't many venues to play at. The culture itself doesn't demand such a thing, not only music, but sadly art in general. Festivals continue to become more and more scarce and the crazy thing that I still can't get my head around, is that in summer, the few venues that may host local bands to play, CLOSE during the summer period. There is nowhere to play or go and check out a band. So this is a big thing I miss. 

Just a thing, I remember when I was still living in Australia one Monday night I decided to go and see who was playing at my favorite pub/band venue. Without even knowing, it was a group from the USA if I recall well they were called "the Dambuilders". They were on a tour of Australia as the support band for Jeff Buckely. I was so blown away that night when I had the honor to meet Jeff Buckely who was standing in front of me in the very small audience. We exchanged a few words, after that, the next thing I knew he was racing towards the stage , jumped up on stage and threw his himself onto the drum kit, trashing it all. lol - amazing night!! Great band as well!!

Just maybe on a personal note: I love to cook!! I have always loved cooking. When I was studying at the conservatorium, I found a job working in a catering company as a dishwasher, very common thing to do as a musician lol. But eventually since the chefs made me help them on many occasions in the kitchen, I soon learned how to cook many multi-cultural dishes and before I even knew what was happening, I was running the kitchen as head chef and creating more and more interesting things. But it was then time to move on after several years in a kitchen, but now I still love to cook with my choices of music to accompany the fun. Fast and quick dishes require a high energy and sometimes aggressive sound so I put something on like Soundgarden or even Iron Maiden (always been a Maiden fan) otherwise if I have more time and I'm fixing something that requires many steps, my musical choice could be  for example John Mayor or even some opera favorites like popular arias by Puccini or Verdi.

I'm always listening to different styles of music of old and new artists. So far for this year, the bigger listens would have to be of Florence and the Machine, Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran and the new release by John Mayor, Gotye, Empire of the Sun. Otherwise I love anything from Nina Simone to Deep Purple, from Duran Duran to Cinematic Orchestra. My all time favorites are anything from Bjork which includes her first musical experience The Sugar Cubes - absolutely love her!! Others would include, as I mentioned before Iron Maiden, Placebo, Toto, Beatles. Whatever has an emotional impact on me, works for me.