Markbass artist Lorenzo Feliciati has been featured in Chitarre magazine. Here are some excerpts, translated from Italian:

"Lorenzo Feliciati is an incredibile bassist. Able to get on the Sanremo stage as a luxury pop sideman for Tiromancino, and at the same time work on an irresistibile and odd project of experimental jazz with Pat Mastelotto of King Crimson. He's also a valued teacher in our educational department. Now we check in with him to get an update about his projects, which this time cross the border into progressive metal! 

As a musician you seem able to be credible in many different contexts. How much this is natural for you, and how much of it is due to the need to be active and work on more than one front?

I believe that my portfolio of experiences on many stylistic fronts is more the effect of a sane and inexhaustible curiosity than a professional strategy. I think it's the result of a respect and deep love for many varied music genres: I grew up with the Led Zeppelin that my brother let me hear; then I started to get into all the 80s new wave, then I arrived at jazz rock and fusion, which helped me appreciate the jazz that my father had let me hear at home from when I was child. Meanwhile I started to collaborate with many singer-songwriters, taking everything I could from listening to various Guccini, De Gragori, Venditti… 

In what direction is the electric bass going?

It has reached a middle point, that on one side gives importance to the emotive aspect and its impact on the composition---on the other side it brings back the relationship between the musician and the instrument as main source of music construction. A good example is prog metal, a genre that fuses the typical rock impact with particular writing and execution that creates a series of musicians that have no barriers between them and the intrument they play. In the past we arrived at instrumental genres so extremely tied to the technical and virtuosic that it seemed that things had gone past the point of no return. Luckily that wasn't the case! 

What instruments do you use now?

it's now been 10 years, from its first day of existence, that I play exclusively Markbass amplifiers. Their worldwide success is a testiment to their their totally winning characteristics. For years I have used Ibanez basses, products that mix great characteristics with unbeatable price and help me to find my sound without too much difficulty. I amuse myself to create sounds with Markbass effect pedals, and I use D’Addario strings.

Future projects?

I just got back from New York where I recorded the material for the new album of Naked Truth. We worked at Bill Laswell's studio and it was a really emotional to record in a place where so many discs that mean a lot to me were recorded. Then, a new project I believe a lot in: the Neon Karma Trio with Marco Sfogli and Roberto Gualdi: intense prog metal, very precise but definitely very fun to play. Soon we will release our first CD!