Femminiell’s whole catalog has been a cinematic voyage. Bernie was a born rock star, and he has no intention of slowing down. Perhaps it's time for the world to catch on. Recently, we caught up with Femminiell over email. We talked about his liminal music for Parisian backrooms, his French lifestyle, and his upcoming releases. Read it below.
What is this release about?
Bernardino Femminiell: I don't know what either of the videos are really about, but I wanted to express my passion for complaining about the French bureaucratic system, which functions primarily on crushing its poor citizens on a daily basis. I am a victim of this continually as a foreigner, but so is everyone. The music, on the other hand, has a familiar Italo disco vibe, but decorated with little sparkles of Schlager all over the place. Twisted sex driven tales, corny, seductive and repulsive at the same time. The album cover was made originally through AI, but heavily manipulated. We managed to corrupt the poor robot enough to give us a weird penis character on the fingers of the dictator’s hands, and decorate the character and room to our tastes.
I was inspired to make backroom music for dark rooms in Paris, but since I don’t go out to these kinds of places these days, I decided to visit them in my lyrics instead. I kept it all in my mind, and I ended up writing a satire of backroom meets bureaucracy—it’s the result of losing my apartment to mold and fighting to get my immigration documents for years, all while living in France illegally because I've been screwed over by my lawyers.
It’s an anthem about the perspective of a beautiful and fractured nation in ruins, whose vortex has enveloped me. Getting into fights with strangers in the streets in broad daylight. Death threats. Refusing to drop the soap of my crumbling life with a grin on my face? Thank God I stepped back and did not commit the irreversible thing that unfortunately lives within my Parisian despair! I've come very close to completely snapping and losing everything.
I like pushing to the extreme my views on individualism. I enjoy "staying outside of things," therefore outside of society, its rules, and its prevailing mediocrity. Laughing about taboos. Isn't the animal always—excessively—associated with freedom? I’ll attach the translation of my words and the music videos so you can understand and be inspired by what I’m trying to say!
What has been inspiring you lately?
Living in Paris without a home is like being a tourist again, ha ha. Staying in the spacious and impressive bourgeois flats of famous musicians, to 20-sq-meter closets with a dog and wife, with Sacré Coeur as my neighbor, is pretty jarring and weird. It’s the matrix. It feels strange. Like the feeling of an afterlife or a previous life as somebody else, constantly in transit, with zero security, but at the same time experiencing and adjusting to the diverse energies of the different quartiers and “villages” within Paris.
What's next for Bernardino Femminielli?
Multiple music collaborations, releasing more music without the constraints of constantly relying on the physical object to validate the music, and not stopping touring I guess... Maybe starting an adult entertainment company. Shooting a feature film. Getting as far away from Paris during the Summer Olympics as possible. Always moving.
