Planet Funk out to impress

Malta is warming up for the band which has been hailed by music critics for crossing musical frontiers and creating an open vision of dance music.

And band producer Sergio Della Monica is raring to prove to Maltese fans that Planet Funk are more than just a dance band when they play at the Tribù:Ten festival this evening.

"It will be one amazing musical journey," Della Monica told The Sunday Times yesterday.

Planet Funk, which were among the bands to perform at Live 8 in Rome, will headline this year's festival to mark the 10th edition of Malta's popular summer event. They will be performing at Gianpula, one of the three venues of Tribù:Ten, which also include Tattingers and Amazonia.

In line with Planet Funk's fans worldwide, Della Monica says he is not expecting just a dance crowd for this evening's gig.

"All I can tell our Maltese fans is to be prepared to have good fun with the energy we try to inject into our shows," he said.

Few people have the right to say their music is a worldwide phenomenon, but the Anglo-Italian collective centred on producer players Sergio Della Monica, Alex Neri, Domenico GG Canu, and Marco Baroni can make that claim with confidence.

With a history of worldwide hits behind them, the team that two years ago stormed the charts with Chase the Sun have taken their eclectic groove evangelism to the next level. Hits like The Switch, Who Said and the remix of Faithless's 14 Reasons only confirmed their supremacy over other bands.

Della Monica explains that Planet Funk is a melting pot of different musical influences from the classic rock of the 1970s to the Stone Roses to The Prodigy.

The band is renowned for its perfectionism. For the first album, Planet Funk spent two years in the studio, blending digital sounds with human voices, working with different singers, expanding genres and gradually evolving into a fully functioning live band complete with guitars.

The efforts paid off and last year they found themselves with five singles in the charts. They also won the Italian music industry award for best dance act, best newcomer and best band.

Della Monica is relishing the moment and despite selling the overwhelming success of Planet Funk's first two albums, his feet are planted firmly on the ground.

Asked whether he believed Planet Funk have what it takes to break the US and become a music phenomenon, Della Monica replied:

"At the moment we're looking forward to working on our next album. We have a musical DNA running through our veins. In five years' time we might look back and say how much fun we had."