The album is out. A dense work, with multiple nuances. Personal and social. Urgent. First question, point blank. Do you feel “full” or “liberated”?
Publishing an album is a bit of a liberation: in our case, a work that has lasted years has finally come to fruition. On the other hand, however, we are only at the beginning of the journey…
“Mazapé” is full of contrasts, thematic and sonic. An aspect that is at the center of many musical paths in this historical moment. In your opinion, why is there this urgency? What is the function of music today, for those who make it and for those who listen to it?
It is nothing new that music often reflects reality in some way, which is now extremely uncertain and conflicting. Many feel the urgency to describe it, interpret it or, on the contrary, distance themselves from it through artistic production. Answering these questions is difficult, because those who produce music, more than ever in 2024, are driven by the most disparate intentions, from simple entertainment (I just have to entertain the public!) to the desire to see themselves within a genre, up to social and civil commitment which in some way, given the current times, seems to be returning to the center of the songs, even if in a still quite marginal way or with trajectories that are currently difficult to understand. As always, the public makes its choices, is passive or on the contrary very attentive and prepared. He is certainly a more individualistic listener than in the past: music today rarely functions as a social glue, perhaps rap has somehow managed to create a movement of production and listening. In general, a large portion of the public gets lost in the saturation or automatic proposals of the various algorithms and opinion leaders.
It is an album that also talks about your land of origin, the “foot-killing” hill, a powerful symbol in your imagination. What are the memories, experiences or sensations that bind you to this place? And what is your relationship with your origins today?
Our rehearsal room is also a small recording studio located just a stone's throw from this hill and we recorded most of the material here. I (Gio, vocals and guitar in the group) was born and raised here, but for several years I was a nomad around Italy. Our “tour along the peninsula” begins from Mazapé. Mazapé is a crossroads, a border area. We are in the middle of the industrial triangle, but nature is uncontaminated because there are no productive activities. On the contrary, there is a constant flow of people passing through the tunnel that pierces the hill by train and by car heading towards Genoa. And being so close to both the sea and the cities, but also to the beginning of the Po Valley, almost everyone passes through here. For example, at the beginning of the 90s, even before other places, we experienced a strong immigration of people from Eastern European countries. The Turchino state road and the railway line strongly determine the stories of this place. My great-grandmother was one of the very few girls who commuted across the line to work in Genoa during the Second World War and was an indirect witness to the Turchino massacre. Luigi Tenco was born a few kilometers from here and Bruno Lauzi spent his summers just a stone's throw from Mazapé. Since I was a teenager I have been going by train to the stadium to see Sampdoria, the fans get on at every stop and Lower Piedmont becomes like a suburb of Genoa: the journey lasts almost as long as Cologno-Milan Duomo. In short, the baggage is rich. We are in the province, but not necessarily the gloomy and mechanical one that is in the collective imagination. Then clearly when I turned 18 I left for a long time and even Lo Straniero at the beginning represented a necessary detachment from one's origins, somehow reconsidered today thanks to other perspectives.
“A mare” is an almost cinematic track. How did you experience the creation of this song?
The text was written in one go on an afternoon almost five years ago and has not been modified since then. Sometimes it happens that the words unwind easily, centering the meaning of a story that was not decided at a table to tell but which was born by chance. The desperate journey of mother and daughter crossing the Mediterranean is a sadly common story. Having also worked in the social sector for 15 years, I have heard a lot of them, but I had never thought of bringing something similar and so concrete into our songs. It was a spontaneous thing. The acoustic soundscape inspired us: in that period, in fact, we were taken by world music, we were working on a funk sample with different acoustic instruments and we wanted to avoid progression by stopping on a single chord and making the words bounce over it. As soon as we recorded the audition we were already convinced of the song as a whole. Then Fede Dragogna (who subsequently produced the song) listened to it and gave us very positive feedback, thus he reinforced and gave order to our ideas while respecting the original idea of the song.
“Fires for the village festival”, on the other hand, talks about a unique, all-encompassing and almost liberating occasion, in a dark and dramatic context. To what extent were you inspired by personal experiences?
As I said before, in these places, as elsewhere in Italy, we have witnessed various flows of people coming from almost everywhere. This area is made up of a constellation of small rural towns, and being a crossroads, it has not had such a defined cultural and social identity for three decades. In the early 90s there were Italian and non-Italian families wandering around here trying to make ends meet and at the end of the day there was little or nothing on the table. Many have resumed their journey, others have found stability here, their children were and have remained my friends over time. On the one hand I remember well that for many the context of those seasons was very precarious, on the other there was great solidarity between people and a strong bond beyond origin and status. In “Fires” we tried to recreate a small family (or village) album with the movements and traits of many figures encountered.
What were the challenges in telling even intimate and tragic stories, maintaining the balance between empathy and authenticity?
You have to throw yourself into the stories, if you want to be honest in communicating things you have to know them. We like the documentary approach, but leaving space around without necessarily overwhelming the listener. In other ways, imagination can potentially take us anywhere, but it must be trained and without hooks, with experience in reality it becomes harmless or fake. As well as the discussion on form: then the gym is important for the writer, the exercise. The revision of one's work is a delicate phase, but the nucleus, the “beating heart”, must not be missing otherwise the authenticity is lost.
The definition of the tracklist: what choices did you make and why?
The album's lineup from mid-production onwards remained more or less the same. For us, a certain alternation between rhythmically straight or excited moments and others where we dilate, dirty sounds and ethereal moments has always been natural. The narrative part had its weight: this journey has precise coordinates. It starts from the sea and reaches the hills, from the province to the city, crossing urban and peripheral spaces.
“Via Domiziana” and “Via Ferrarese” are more than simple places: they are almost characters on a journey, capable of interacting with the narrative voice without ever using their voice. What story or personal meaning lies behind these tracks?
Some authors such as Gianni Celati certainly had an influence on this part: the landscapes seem to speak even when the style becomes extremely dry and very close to the news. I have passed along the Via Domiziana many times and a few years ago I read a report that struck me a lot. Its most degraded part becomes a terrible daily routine of overwhelm. This song is also a small tribute to my Campania origins and to the simple hope of a look from the window that my young aunt Carmen who recently passed away cultivated until her last days. Via Ferrarese in another way represents the desire to continue travelling, two friends in a place foreign to them go in the opposite direction to a flow of people. They get lost, they talk to anyone, they rely on instinct.
You mentioned a change in your compositional approach. Can you tell us how this new working method was born and what its effects were on the final result?
We were born as a group with a strong electronic matrix, for years we tinkered with synths, software and samplers. Even in the first records a song could be born with guitar and voice but then it was revised with a production approach of that type. Our training is on traditional instruments and after years, thanks to the change in training, we felt the need to go back to working with guitar, bass and drums from the beginning, limiting the use of electronics. The result has a different feel from previous works and gives us a less rigid and more satisfying scenario.
Production collaborations have had a significant impact. How have you changed in this process and how do you look back at yesterday's Lo Straniero?
In some cases the collaborations were decisive and brought enthusiasm, we had never worked with so many musicians all together. Everyone fit naturally into the creative process and arrangement. Fede Dragogna and Mattia Cominotto shared the production work with us, remaining in harmony even in the most critical moments as the two of them were already very in line artistically and humanly. The guests worked with personality, taking the appropriate space without major indications from us. Collaborations should always have this naturalness requirement.
How would you like the first listen to “Mazapé” to be?
Suggestive!
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
