Interview by Serena Lotti – Photo courtesy of Daniele Baldi And Franco Zanussi
THE Sick Drum are preparing to light up the stages of the main summer festivals with theirs MEXICAN TOUR. Fresh from the success of the winter tour full of sold outs, the Pordenone band is ready to bring out a renewed setlist which will include, for the first time live, the songs from the new album “Dementia” (released January 16, 2026 for The Storm Discs). The name of the tour is inspired by one of the tracks of this latest work: a visceral album, suspended between indie rock and post-punk, which explores the fragilities and contrasts of the human mind.
Among the most anticipated dates, the two unmissable special concerts in co-sharing with i stand out Three Happy Dead Boys: The 9 July at Magnolia in Segrate (Milan) and the July 19th at the EUR Social Park in Rome. A double appointment that will see two true icons of the Italian independent scene on the same stage.
If the album artwork bears the signature of Davide Toffolo and Paolo Proserpio, the visual universe of “Dementia” has also been enriched thanks to the official video clips. After the single “Silvia runs alone”the band extracted “Imagine if”accompanied by an impactful video created by the pencil of Cla the Cartoonist born Claudio Mangiafico.
We had a chat with the artist to hear how he translated the emotional flow and contrasts of the song into images.
Hi Claudio and welcome to Rockon. “Immagina se” is a song with a powerful emotional impact with lyrics that are disarming for their clarity. What was your first reaction when Sick Tamburo made you listen to the piece and how did you understand that animation would be the key to telling it and how did this collaboration evolve?
Hi Serena! Thanks Rockon for the interview.
The collaboration with Sick Tamburo and Gian Maria Accusani was a bit of a coincidence. I should have seen them live in Milan and a week before this concert, I wanted to pay homage to their single by creating a short animation of a few seconds for one of their Reels. The band noticed it and reshared it on social media. Then, at the end of the evening after the concert, I met Gian Maria; we introduced ourselves: “Look, I want to make a video with you”. I told him: “Okay, I'll take your word for it”and he: “No, no, I'm serious”. We spoke again and this collaboration was born: he entrusted me with the song and I made it for him.
When I listened to the piece I was very struck especially by a sentence in the song where he says: “Imagine if you no longer knew what a telephone was”. This thing shocked me, it opened up a world to me about the type of narrative choice to follow. Gian Maria left me total creative and expressive freedom even in scripting the video but agreeing everything with him: he left me free space on a narrative level and also on the structure of the entire video.
There is a notable dynamic gap in the video: on the one hand the immobility and soft colors of the hospital scenes, on the other the dark and sharp energy of the band's live performance. How did you work on editing and colors to make these two very different worlds coexist?
Yes, there is a gap because I wanted to separate the two sections. The one in the chorus – where the drums and a major movement start – aims to recreate the same atmosphere that I breathed when I attended their live show. I wanted a very “live” impact, much appreciated by the audience and fans, and to recreate that energy that was felt live, isolating this part of the chorus from all the rest of the context that carries the story forward.
To do this, I used two different types of filters. Also, to maintain this rhythm within the chorus, I punctuated the editing with a sort of stroboscopic flash inserted into the animation.
Often animated video clips tend to be purely psychedelic or abstract, while yours is a full-fledged narrative short film. Do you think animation today offers a narrative freedom that live-action can no longer give to music?
I'm a keyboard player, I had my own band, and my dream has always been to be able to bring something that was closely connected to music and animation. Often these things are sometimes separate, sometimes not, sometimes they are united; I also really like live shows where animation is used on big screens.
Yes, usually when the music video is told, it is done, as you say, with pure abstract psychedelia or in any case with animations that take up images that are repeated in a loop. In this case, however, I had that breath that I always wanted to have in video clips. I've done several for various bands in the past and some of the collaborations have been a bit stifling. I realize that, rightly, whoever commissions a video from me wants to see his script, so in those cases I am a simple executor: I rely on the directives given to me by the band. One band was even so suffocating that for every single phrase of the song it divided me into the frames that I would have to create in the animation.
In my opinion it doesn't work like that, because we need to give the artist some breathing room. If the music can be reconciled with a certain type of stretch or with a type of pause, space must be left. I had this sort of breathing space in the making of the video “I've lost my dreams”because I was basically given carte blanche. I knew exactly where I could take breaks or where I could put certain types of frames on repeat or not.
After spending weeks or months drawing frame by frame while listening to this song on loop, how does it feel to finally see it out? What message or emotion do you hope remains most memorable in those who click “play” on YouTube?
It's been two months of hard work. I do something completely different as my main job, and I cultivate drawing and art a bit as a hobby or as a “conviction”, so for two months I did nothing but dedicate myself to this in my free time and in every space I had to be able to cultivate this video.
The goal I wanted to achieve – and I'm really happy with the responses I'm reading and the various comments on social media – it was precisely to strike, to create a strong emotion. Maybe at times I was a little too explicit, especially in the final part in wanting to talk about such a strong theme. But, certainly, the narrative aspect of this video gave me the opportunity to say: “We try to do something that doesn't just stop at drawing the drawing on paper, but that really arrives”. This was strongly my intent, and I hope I succeeded.
At the beginning of the video you see a butterfly and a child's drawing with an “A++” that appears several times. What do these symbols mean within the narrative?
You are right to ask me about the meaning of “A++” and the initial elements. In fact, I would like to take this opportunity to tell a background story on the very formulation of the video's narrative.
Initially, I had structured the entire video clip together with Gian Maria by inserting captions throughout. In the video, in fact, there was a real written dialogue between the little girl and her mother, in addition to the thoughts of the elderly woman, the grandmother. That “A++” that appears several times stands for the grade that the little girl got at school for a drawing showing her grandmother. In the story I wrote, the grandmother doesn't recognize her, but caresses her and says: “How dear you are, beautiful little girl”.
Subsequently, Gian Maria consulted with the editorial staff and his staff. He contacted me again saying: “All your images and frames are so obvious that they do not require a caption explanation through narration. The images already speak for themselves”. He then asked me to send him the “clean” video so that he could consult it with all the staff, eliminating the captions. In the end, between the two options, they opted for the second choice: completely eliminate the narrative part with captions and let only the drawings and animations do the talking.
Which artist would you like to collaborate with in the future?
My absolute favorite artist is Elisa. My dream is to collaborate with her for anything.
There is one thing I would like to do, returning to the topic of video and music. I attended her last three tour dates and saw a monumental, scenographic representation, a panel placed behind Elisa and her musicians, above which short animations were shown. Sometimes in loop, sometimes deeper.
It would be a dream of mine, perhaps for one of her songs, to be able to collaborate and give her images or short animations… I know she will do a concert in Campovolo, in short, we would have a whole year ahead of her if she commissioned me even just a small clip, that's it. Yes, this would be a dream.
3 disc recommendations to Rockon readers!
Elisa: I would put first For Dayswith Glen Ballard producing.
Bleach of Nirvana absolutely.
OK Computer by Radiohead.
SICK DRUM Dates MEXICAN TOUR 2026
June 26 – CARPI (MO) – Breaking the Silence
June 27 – VITTORIO VENETO (TV) – WP Festival
03 July – RIVIGNANO TEOR (UD) – Green Volleyball Tour NEW DATE
04 July – ALLERONA (TR) – Allegrona Party
08 July – MARINA DI RAVENNA (RA) – Peter Pan
09 July – MILAN – Circolo Magnolia (+ Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti)
July 11 – CAPRANICA (VT) – Skavinia Festival NEW DATE
July 18 – VICENZA – Jamrock Festival
July 19 – ROME – Eur Social Park (+ Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti)
July 24 – NOTARESCO (YOU) – Game Over Music Fest
July 26 – PIANCAVALLO (PN) – The Genzianella 4.00 pm NEW DATE
July 31 – FRIGENTO (AV) – PIF Festival
01 August – PETRALIA SOTTANA (PA) – CampArt Festival
05 August – BRESCIA – Onda d'Urto Radio Party
August 11 – LARI (PI) – Red Party
August 17 – S. PANCRAZIO SALENTINO (BR) – Foods and Spirits NEW DATE
August 18 – SANT'ANTIOCO (CA) – Sulky Rock NEW DATE
August 29 – MELDOLA (FC) – Vitignastock
August 30 – BOLOGNA – Sun Donato Festival
05 September – LIGURIAN FINAL (SV) – Camping San Martino NEW DATE
12 September – CANTÙ (CO) – Pop Party NEW DATE
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
