500 Days w/ Milan André Boronell

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How long does it take for an album to come together? For Milan André Boronell’s latest project it was 500 days which also became the title of the album that was produced. Let’s find out more about that process and the music that came out of it.

SB (StarBeat): Style: Your music includes fingerstyle guitar, what led you to that style to showcase your songwriting?

MAB (Milan André Boronell): A month after I graduated from Humber’s bachelors of music program in 2013, I remember first discovering Ben Howard. He played a big role in the way I started to experiment with alternate tunings and finger picking. Matt Corby was another artist that influenced this style. I find fingerstyle playing to be one of the most expressive on a guitar.

SB: Worldwide: You have lived in many different places – does this experience enhance your musical style?

MAB: I feel that my nomadic lifestyle has enhanced my musical experience more than my style. So my style remains consistent, but my experiences are constantly changing, which impacts the way I write and the things I write about.

SB: Time: Can you tell us about the creation process for your latest album titled ‘five hundred days’?

MAB: Half of the album started out as demos and the other half were made from scratch. I record demos at home when I finish writing a song, which I did in 2019/2020. I loved some of the demos so much that I wanted to keep them for the album. I brought them to my producer Kristofer Harris of the UK. In August 2020 I flew to London and added new bits to my demos, we also began some songs from scratch, such as ‘500 days’. Then in November 2020 I returned to the UK to record cello played by an Iranian/Slovak friend named Hoda Jahanpour. The process in studio for the songs we did from scratch was very free. We had no plans for how they would sound and simply let spontaneous creativity occur, which always led to many serendipitous moments.

Milan André Boronell

SB: Finding: You also do some producing for other artists – what advice would you have for an artist trying to develop their sound?

MAB: To truly develop an authentic sound I would say to avoid references. This industry and world in general is quite obsessed with comparisons. Comparison is detrimental to authenticity. Comparison is authenticity’s kryptonite. All artists have most likely spent years, if not their lifetime, listening to their favourite artists, so influence is inevitable. Therefore referring to or comparing to artists when creating is redundant. Trust your process and ideas.