Everybody in Leonardo Matera’s family plays an instrument or sings, so the 19-year-old Italian music artist grew up with an interest in music.
Everybody in Leonardo Matera’s family plays an instrument or sings, so the 19-year-old Italian music artist grew up with an interest in music. And when the pandemic forced him to stay home for months, Matera spent the time honing his vocal abilities with his mother, a singer in her own right.
Four years later, after learning music production and how to compose while spending time in recording studios, Matera has dropped his debut EP under the moniker DNT. My Five Faces, with five tracks, is the result of nine months of work and officially released on May 10.
The five songs describe different feelings, or “faces,” that he went through during one of the hardest breakups he’s had.
“They’re all about the relationship and the five faces I went through during the breakup,” he says. “There’s sex, there’s party or drugs, there’s a girl who is jealous and then there are regrets and the missing them and the pain and dark times with the devil.”
The project was therapeutic for Matera, who found solace in the studio.
“It helps because whatever feeling you’ve got or what you’ve been going through, you can make beats that also give others the feeling I’m going through,” he says. “It’s a challenge I like putting to myself. I’ve always listened to music to help me in dark times and it just helps putting everything I’m feeling into music, through the instruments and the vocals.”
Matera flows through several genres on the EP to show what he can do, but he’s an R&B artist with pop influences at heart, and he likens his style to a late night cruise with a cinematic vibe, and at least a little bit of darkness. The project’s third song, “Girl?,” features a dance beat and synthesizers, and Matera questioning decisions made by his ex.
His next project, which he’s already at work on, will offer even more cinematic qualities through instruments and the dark story to be told by Matera.
“It will have a truly defined genre that will be between R&B and trap,” he says. “I’ve been working with a lot of people and doing this first project helped me learn how to write as good as possible, how to compose as good as possible, so now I have a bigger vision than I had at the start. ‘Girl?’ was the last song I made and I think it’s the one that sounded more catchy and unique, so you can kind of get the vibe I’m going to.”
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