Hi guys and welcome to this interview. Tell us about your latest release.
When we decided to start working on a new record, it was after the summer, and we suddenly found more problems and difficulties than we expected. After a month in which we didn’t see each other, the feeling with the sound and our instruments, voice included, was weird and our producer suggested a change of plans and we agreed.
Initially, we had 12 tracks that we wanna release, but we decided to quit the initial project and take a step back and we decided to work on fewer songs, go in depth with them and play them at our best. We focused on a theme that was the same in 4 songs: racism.
Finally, we found our road and a new strong motivation after this choice: we could give voice to the voiceless. Then…here we are.
CYRENE is a 6 tracks EP; it’s a strong denunciation against the exploitation of migrant workers, at the tortures and violence committed in the Libyan lager, with the complicity of European governments.
Along with the four songs we chose, we included two special tracks that explain the core of our EP in a particular way. We definitely love our second studio work because the music’s voyage, the lyrics and their order are very similar: it sounds very consistent.
They are not cute songs left there to stand alone, but they are brothers who are fighting together.
How would you describe your sound?
Most of the time is the sound that guides us in composing a song or the lyrics: in this case, we did the opposite.
When we’ve taken this particular road, it was clear for us that every single detail was functional to the ultimate result. So, we discarded any sweet options for the gain tone and considered to disintegrate it, splitting it in two different guitar tones: one it’s like sand, the other’s like stone.
Why?
Simply because the majority of migrants face these two natural enemies during their long and dangerous journeys, and also because they wanted something quite similar in the end.
Another story is for the clean tones and the ambient effects: in our intention they should reproduce the aspiration of peace and a bright future, in a desert or wild natural scenario.
To be more realistic, we agreed to maintain a more natural sound for the drums and bass.
What do you listen to when you are home?
We are very different, every single one of us listen to think that the others sometimes actually despise! But it depends on the moment: we are in that age in which a single gender of music it’s not enough, and sometimes happens that the harder and violent we play (at a performance or a rehearsal) it’s preceded by a long listen of calming and completely different music.
We have to cite at least some of the artists that everyone of us considers somehow inspiring: Refused, Deftones, Soundgarden, Meshuggah, Tool, A Perfect Circle but also quiet ones like Teyana Taylor, Chelsea Wolfe, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Crosses, Beirut and various jazz and soul singers/bands.
We believe that only two different kinds of music exist: the good one and the bad one. The rest is a combination of our state of mind and musical knowledge.
What do you write about?
To Judge is about racism and every preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience; there is an infinite struggle against a very tough wall and you feel like don’t exist.
Target is the description of a sick relationship, between a sexually abused woman and her tormentor; unfortunately, most of the women among migrants are raped in the Libyan jails.
Black chicken/White donkeys describes the topic of the exploitation of the white collars and blue collars on black people, their different perceptions and the alienation of the first who believe to be upper class. The main sentence is a phrase of Karl Marx, from his “The Capital”: “white skinjob cannot emancipate until the black ones will be marked on fire”.
Freedom:democracy = property:lager is a reproduction of three different speeches of Marco Minniti (former Italian Minister, creator of the agreements with the Libyan torturers), Matteo Salvini (the one who boasts of having left thousands of people at seastarving) and Keir Starmer (current UK prime minister): three hypocrite ways to gain the votes of the social classes they fear most the immigration.
Behind their words is the sound made by the change in the Earth's magnetic field on the wood, reconstructed by the Italian Institute of Physics: a metaphor for the events linked to the rickety boats that cross the Mediterranean every day.
Cyrene is the Hellenic city founded on the Libyan coast and now a UNESCO world heritage site and a popular tourist place.
We want to underline how the culture of the ruling class and the barbarity of exploitation can live together near one another in capitalist society.
The title-track represents the stark contrast with the reality right now, when that country is a lager that the European bourgeoisie has built and people don’t want to know. We want to advise everybody that now is not like the Shoa, no one can say: I cannot know.
Mediterraneo is the last track.
For many of us it means holiday, a time of vacation and relax, but for the African migrants, it is a dangerous place where to live or die. The smooth waves can be their grave as for the aspiration for a better life or reunite with one’s family.
Your favorite live performance so far?
Our last performance with the original band.
We were enduring the last days of college. The previous night, we spent a lot of energy in a live gig in front of a dense crowd of students from all over the city. We played very well and we were so excited that we traveled all night long across Florence, until go to Siena and come back for the last day lesson at 8.15am without sleeping.
We only rest for a couple of hours in the afternoon and then we enjoy a gorgeous gig in another campus that very night.
We didn’t know we were about to quit playing together for many years after that night, but it seemed like something special in the air was telling us that.
We played so well, so much into the music and the energy of the people was so close to us that we literally flew one step on the ground, making a super performance that will remain forever etched in our memories.
Tell us a funny story that happened in studio or on stage.
We fight each other all the times, there’s nothing funny to talk about!
Your favourite albums?
The shape of punk to come – Refused
Deftones – Deftones
The Superunknown – Soundgarden
Lateralus – TOOL
Machina/The Machines of God – Smashing Pumpkins
In utero – Nirvana
La fabbrica di plastica – Gianluca Grignani
Kid A – Radiohead
A musician you would like to meet for a beer?
I’d like to meet Dennis Lynxen from Refused, not only because it is a band that I love, but ‘cause his political thoughts.
I think it could be a very interesting talk that goes over the music and concerns more prospective.
What would you ask for backstage, if you were the most important band on earth?
Very difficult question: for the present moments we’re just excited if there’s water and a few cold beers, but let us become the most important band on Earth and then we’ll tell you that the more you have, the less important everything becomes…
What are your plans for the near future?
Ever the same.
To be excited and convinced by what we play: it doesn’t matter if in the gigs or in the studio or even at rehearsals. At this point, we could have enough stuff to record our first LP, and it will probably be the fundamental plan for the near future.