Damian Dalla Torre returns with People Pleaser, a record shaped by movement, collaboration and an ever-deepening relationship with sound as environment.
The Leipzig-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer first found wide attention with his 2022 debut Happy Floating, and his subsequent album I Can Feel My Dreams was named the #1 Contemporary Album of 2024 by The Guardian, an accolade that broadened his audience and deepened confidence in his evolving voice. That second album, written between Europe and South America, opened unexpected doors and took Dalla Torre to stages across New York, Japan and Italy. “When you release music, it’s very intimate,” he reflects. “You show your emotions pretty raw. I was kind of scared. But getting so much positive feedback gave me a lot of self-confidence to try out more.”
People Pleaser begins in that quiet shift of confidence.
The title stayed with him for months before he committed to it. “It was a working title for a long time,” he says. “I didn’t actually think I would use it. But this term also felt somehow relevant in connection with the phase of self-negotiation during the development process. Some aspects are related to pressure, others are positive.” The ambiguity felt right. Rather than presenting it as a statement, Dalla Torre leaves it open, an invitation rather than a confession.
He began writing the album in December 2024, shortly after completing his previous record. Finishing an album, for Dalla Torre, is a process of release, “you get really into it, maybe too detailed, you might try to please. In the end, I learned to be at ease with my own way of expression. The moment you release your album, it takes on many different bodies of perception, a life of its own, so that it can simultaneously meet or break expectations, and I learned to sympathize with the loss of control over it.“
At the centre of People Pleaser is collaboration. Guitarist Bertram Burkert, whose playing stretches from classical delicacy to electric abstraction, joined Dalla Torre in the studio for an intensive three-day session, recording a wide palette of textures that would become the backbone of the album. Vocalist Laura Zöschg, a key live collaborator, harpist Babett Niclas, organist Felix Römer, tape experimentalist Markus Rom, marimba and vibraphonist Volker Heuken and Japanese artist Manami Kakudo also contribute, creating a sound that feels intimate yet expansive.
Dalla Torre’s process remains distinctive. “I have a quite chaotic archive,” he admits. “All the recordings I do, I internalise. Sometimes I have a sketch and I remember another recording somewhere and I feel like, okay, that could be the same tonality, the same vibe.” Rather than composing in straight lines, he assembles. Fragments, field recordings and live performances are layered gradually into something cohesive over time. “It’s more like archive work.”
Geography continues to shape his sound world. Birds recorded in Leipzig sit alongside rain captured in Kobe, Japan. During a summer residency high in the Italian mountains at 2,500 metres above sea level, he and his collaborators recorded surrounded by elemental sound. “There was just a stove where you had to make fire to cook,” he recalls, “on one track you can hear the fire crackling in the background.” Rather than removing ambience, he integrates it. “I really got into field recording. The power of integrating ambience into the music is huge. My phone is always on record. I go through life just listening.”
His travels whilst touring I Can Feel My Dreams has left a particular imprint on this new album. A week spent immersed in ambient music in New York, and the quiet stillness of Japanese forests, reshaped his sonic perspective. “When I listen back to the album, I can hear Japan,” he says, “the nature, the calmness.”
Musically, People Pleaser feels more grounded than its predecessor and more cohesive as a body of work. Where previous albums embraced dramatic shifts between tracks, this record leans toward a core ensemble sound built around the guitar and subtle electronics. “The last album, every song was super different. This time I wanted it to feel like it has a flow,” he explains, “I could have loaded it up much more, but I tried to keep it more minimalistic. More acoustic.”
Born in a bilingual (Italian/German) part of northern Italy , a cultural borderland where identities overlap, Dalla Torre later studied jazz at the Vienna Conservatory before relocating to Leipzig. Years spent within traditional jazz institutions gradually gave way to a more intuitive and interdisciplinary practice spanning theatre, documentary scoring and collaborative art projects. “When directors ask me to translate emotions, that’s quite easy for me,” he says.
That instinct runs through People Pleaser. The record does not prescribe emotion, it suggests it whilst capturing internal shifts of confidence and doubt set to a rich tapestry of cities and landscapes. If his previous two albums were defined by discovery and technicolour contrast, People Pleaser feels more elemental, built from the ground up in the changing environment around him.
As ever, Dalla Torre resists fixing a single meaning. “I really like that music is abstract,” he says, “maybe you can’t explain it with words, but you feel it.” In that space between offering and expectation, People Pleaser finds its quiet strength.
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