The Dining Rooms - Turn To See Me (2022)

“Art Is A Cat” was released in January 2020 and a couple of months later we entered a historical, social and economic moment that we will always remember: fluctuating, exciting, full of fears but also boosting towards a better future. “Turn To See Me” starts from where our previous album “Art Is A Cat” had arrived, and it could be considered its natural evolution, unless there’s been very little natural in recent years.
We started thinking about a mainly instrumental album with a deep work on words even before songs took shape, the classic post-folk ballads that are part of our trademark. We worked with Julie Normal and Bob Junior’s French words in “Bonjour”, written with Max Darmon, with the Italian ones by actress Emanuela Villagrossi in “Gli Inglesi e gli Americani”, the Chilean ones of Gianpiero Kesten in “Notturno Cileno”
(dedicated to the writer Roberto Bolaño), with the sounds of a southern Italian market in “Pronuncia di Levante” and with Jonathan Clancy’s post hip-hop tale in “What’s Your Path, Man”, accompanied Maurizio Marsico at the piano. Then, we have the instrumental tracks, ranging from the cinematic atmospheres of “Lungo il Fiume e sull’Acqua” (almost a tribute to Morricone’s “Investigation of a citizen above suspicion”), the jazz of “Empty Window / Empty Space” with Thomas Umbaca’s piano and some darker and electronic sounds (“I Am Here” and “Water and Sea”). Finally, we have the ‘proper’ songs with the title-track, written in collaboration with Chiara Castello (from the band I’m not a Blonde) and “Desire” featuring Egeeno, another spectacular voice of the Roman collective Tropicantesimo that here communicates with Gianni Sansone’s trumpet. A composite and profound album, melancholic like the times we are living in, projected towards a future that, although complex, is still to be discovered. “Turn To See Me” is an exhortation, almost a prayer to turn towards the others, with concrete, poetic, political actions. “Turn To See Me” is a record full of love.

The Dining Rooms (Stefano Ghittoni & Cesare Malfatti)
Milano, Marzo 2022

When Stefano and Cesare asked me to illustrate the cover of their new LP, I thought about how to suggest the movement described in the title “Turn To See Me”, and I chose the moment before the subject turns, leaving everything else to the viewer’s imagination and creating a moment of suspension. We had to choose whether to draw a man or a woman, and eventually we thought together that it would be nice to see both, to have a double cover, a real double cover artwork with only the title, the name of the band and the record label logo. I really liked this idea, for the originality of its solution and because I was able to play alternating the main colours on the two sides. Ever since I started working as an illustrator I have admired Domenico Gnoli’s art and I think the reference to his style is quite evident. Pierluigi Longo