Francesco Zedde: opposite music, between conservatories and squats
di Giovanni Panetta
A monographic interview with Francesco Zedde (Tonto, Tacet Tacet Tacet, Valadja Petrescu, ANO, Kree-Mah-Stre, etc...). An artistic path between avantgarde music and noise sounds.
TONTO

TONTO live. Credits: Carmelo Tempio.

Francesco Zedde is an Italian electronic artist, drummer and sound engineer based in Utrecht. In his guise of noise musician he released/collaborated in almost twenty works (full-length, EP and split) on behalf of several project (Tonto, Tacet Tacet Tacet, Alaskan Pipeline, Valadja Petrescu, Diarrheal Blast, Suikeroom, ANO, Kree-Mah-Stre). The last one was Agalma XII, published on January 27, 2022, for the Icelandic label Agalma, in which he collaborated with Magnús T. Eliassen (drums), Diego Manatrizio (guitar), John McCowen (contrabass clarinet) and Guðmundur Arnalds (laptop), and recorded in Post-Húsið (Reykjavík) by Örlygur Steinar Arnalds. The record is a free improvisation rarefied in its most melodic/atonal aspects with an intense creativity in microelements and details developed in a complex way by the artists’ subconscious. Take twelve, part one flows through a most dynamic energy, instead take twelve, part two is characterized by a noisy silentium with many dissonant elements, and a chaotic synth acidity is most evident in the take twelve, part three.

Moreover another recent work by Francesco Zedde, on behalf of Tonto in this occasion, is the EP Cerbiatto, released in October 25, 2021, for the label Grandine Records, from Bologna, and with the contributions of Hate Limbs, Rico Gamondi (Uochi Toki), Paola Paganhate and Frè Zocca (Lleroy). Tonto is a drummer and an electronic artist at the same time, and his noise and DIY sound in Cerbiatto develops in an even more magmatic entity, not only for its collaborations, than the previous and other more organic Tonto’s release Excerpt #4, with the related and fervid craftsmanship which consists in one drums, one laptop and several piezo microphones.
The Tonto next record will be a full-length tape titled Functional Stupidity, for Grandine Records again. It will be released this year (2022) in April.

Cerbiatto cover

Cerbiatto EP cover. Artwork by Tonto and Lili Refrain.

We talked with Francesco Zedde about his entire discography, and other topics like his beginning as drummer, the worldwide events of Discomfort Dispatch, his academic formations in Electronic Music at Conservatory of Pesaro “G. Rossini” and in Sound Design at Conservatory of Bologna “G.B. Martini”, etc… Following the monographic interview.

Let’s start to talk about an overview of your sonic path. I have found very interesting and not conventional how you pass with incredible fluidity between your academic research and punk/harsh noises which best characterize your musical poetry. We could say the approach on your art is full-immersed and in a certain way absolutely coherent, indeed, for example, with Tonto project you explore the pop side of avant experimentation, with a sarcastic attitude and craftsmanship, which seems the nearest pop thing to avantgarde. Do you share my opinion? How do you live this full-immersion in music?

“I’m not sure I’m always coherent but i do my best, thanks for saying that. Rather than immersed, I’d  say that i’m almost obsessed with music-making and sounds. When I started playing in bands at 14, I already felt that one single project, of one single genre, was not enough to pull out everything I wanted to do and had in mind, so I have always had several, very ‘opposite’ works going on at the same time. For instance, when I was in a prog band, I felt like joining a hardcore punk quartet with a missing drummer; after playing soothing ambient and drone for some years, I decided to create something raw and loud like Tonto, and the more time I spend in conservatories, the more I appreciate the energy of squats, and so on… I get a particular thrill from the contrast between those activities and the alternation of very different works. It gives me often the freedom to decide what I want to devote myself on each day, which I consider to be a huge privilege if I compare my job to, let’s say, an office job.

“I often hear from other musicians about “writing blocks” and struggles with creativity. I have the opposite problem, a sort of creative diarrhea. I just can’t stop myself from making or writing something, it feels like scratching a mosquito bite or something like that. It doesn’t mean that it’s always nice; sometimes it feels like a superpower, other times it feels like a curse because it also means that I get easily bored and constantly need some kind of stimulation.”

You are an electronic musician and a drummer; Most in general it’s easier that each one of these roles excludes the other. In every case, playing and creativity result organic in an obscure prospective, chaotic but meditated, plasticly punk and sharply ironic. How do you combine your drumming with your electronic activity in one instance, like the above-mentioned Tonto, or in general in your discography or corpus of live performances?

“Well, there was a point (more or less when we dismantled ANO, around 2017 I think) in which I though about stashing my drumset in a closet and focusing on the elettronic stuff. Luckly enough, I got in touch during the same period with people like Utku Tavil, Alessandro Guerri and Tatie Petanol, and got to know the music of Nah and Black Pus; those are the people that at first inspired me to continue with drum in that they were (and still are) great examples of how you can structure a live performance around a solo drummer with electronics, so this is how I came to think about Tonto.

“Later I decided to write my master thesis on what is known as “augmented instruments” or “hyperinstruments”. In short, the augmentation of an instrument is the operation of applying some sort of technological gimmick to widen the range of sounds and gestures that can be performed. To be more clear: stomp effects for guitar are a very basic example of augmentation, you have devices (the pedals) which allows you to extend the sonic possibilities of your instrument (delay, distortion or whatever), through the gestures of your foot. The deal can become really way more complex than stomp pedals. There are artists using sensors, microprocessors, actuators, machine learning algorithms and so on.

“The writing of the thesis pushed me to research more examples and I ended up interviewing Avelino Saavedra, Simon Berz, Tommaso Rosati, Nanorisk Akatsuki. Some of them may not even use the word “augmentation” but they all shared amazing strategies and visions about what the sound of a drumset can become and how to transform it. In the same thesis I included treatments about renown composers from the academic world (such as Carmine Cella, Michelangelo Lupone, Andrew McPherson and Mari Kimura) and DIY artists from “off radar” scenes that I met while touring, for instance, Utku, Tatie or Imran (Nanorisk Akatsuki), that I mentioned before.

“To get back to your question, being an electronic musician and being a drummer at the same time, can be inconsistent sometimes, but in my case the “electronic musician” saved the “drummer” from oblivion, and the “drummer” saved the “electronic” from being on stage just turning knobs and swinging the head up and down. Tonto became quite much of a Megazord of the two things together, rather than a gimmick to keep one of the two alive.”

Your first testimony in music world was with ANO, a DIY, punk-ish duo with you as drummer and Alessandro Fiordelmondo as guitarist. A intense, idiosyncratic and playful experimentalism which will develop in a further extreme effort in music with other projects, fervid at same. But how was your beginning in music? What was your intentions? Was these especially in the sign of DIY ethic and camaraderie, as the period (beginning of ’10) could suggest?

“ANO is the first testimony that you can find on my website actually because it is the first project in which I could start playing shows away from home, make a bit of money and handle the production of our records. Before that, I’ve been part of a sloppy progressive/psychedelic band named Virgin Iris and a ravaging old school HC group called Tentacle Rape, both experiences carried on with quite some hubris and very little skills. Before that, I had some shitty metal cover bands with my schoolmates, made some rare appearances in the music school orchestra and several years of traditional study on classical guitar. I was a kid, and to be honest I rarely think about my lost proficiency in Segovia ‘n De Falla kind of stuff.

“What was crucial is the town where I was born and spent my teenage years, Jesi (not far from Ancona, on the east coast of middle Italy). That area used to be a cove of grungers in the ’90. I grew up in the late tail of that period, and I remember a crazy scene with tons of bands playing all sort of punk, metal, noise rock. Some of my favourite bands from my hometown are Lleroy and Gerda, of those that are still active. During high school I played a lot and I was always hanging out with older dudes; I learned a lot of stuff from them, like, how to organize stuff together and how to play shows. “

Let’s talk about Discomfort Dispatch, a free impro festival you create with the following rules: “one set, two artists”, “one set in 20 min,” and “reharsing is forbidden, verbal planning inappropriate”. DD events have Bologna as epicenter, involving worldwide performers with varied own musical background. It is a fervid performance concept and a magnetic pole of experimentation forming an idea of interesting, music instance, in a certain way estatic and broadly spiritual. How was this concept is born? In this case, what is the ispirations from people, things or situations? In these experience, did you believe or know these performers develop new intuitions they will use in their artistic future? Are these sounds any inspirations for your work as artist too?

“At a Discomfort Dispatch, you will hear mostly experimental music, sometimes harsh, sometimes soothing; we don’t set strict boundaries of genre or style so it can sometimes drift to danceable or catchy kinds of acts. As a rule of thumb to understand our curation: if a good musician from any background is open to improvising in such a context, we can consider them suitable for a lineup.

“The idea for the format of Discomfort Dispatch is not new at all; blind date improvisation featurings happen all the times in certain scenes, like in free jazz or noise. Maybe what is original about DD is how open we conceive it. We don’t exclude any genre or style and there is no specific “we” in the sense that anyone, everywhere, can decide to organize an occurence of DD. My role was to define the format and organize a bunch of editions by myself. Then of course some good people wanted to help, and some of them decided to organize editions on their sides. Part of the reason why I started is Multiversal, a collective based in Berlin that organized a series of roaming impro-noise festivals all around Europe. I’ve been traveling with them quite a lot around 2018, and when Multidom (the roaming editions) stopped, I just wanted to make something similar in Bologna. I used to say that Discomfort Dispatch is the retarded cousin of Multiversal, and probably it’s still a good description.

“In the last 2 years, the calendar of DD has of course been pretty loose due to Corona, but we managed to organize a studio residency and a show. Lately, a little team has coagulated around the project in the Netherlands and we got some funds from the city hall of Utrecht to organize stuff so hopefully we are managing to spread around here…”

Tacet Tacet Tacet was at beginning a musical collective you managed, then it has had a one-headed form, and the name indicates your moniker in your electronic activity. The sounds are lyrical, noise, but sometimes more lighting. There is an experimental approach with avantgarde and dancefloor sonorities, with an darkly elastic, creativity. How was this project born and did it develop? What was or is his intentions through the time?

“Tacet Tacet Tacet is the first true ‘solo’ project in which I composed all the music and produced all the tracks myself. The name is a reference to the score of 4.33 by John Cage. At the beginning, I mostly made music influenced by the idea of “emancipation” of concrete sounds in the structure of traditional music, then I decided to create a collective/band to play that kind of stuff and I involved two videomakers for the realization of Embodiment. There was Alberto Amagliani on synth (already in Virgin Iris and Kree Mah Stre), Valentina Vindusca on violin, Francesco Ceccarelli and Federico Pupeschi on the visual side.

“It became clear that even if we were working pretty well toghether, I was too much active and hectic—the others having of course other projects—so I slowly progressively drifted to a solo set up and ended up curating the visual by myself. That’s how it kinda became a solo project. With this being said, it has never been really “solo”, in Tacet Tacet Tacet productions you rarely see something that was made entirely by me. I always longed for collaborations. Someday soon I’ll release a new album that was composed with Jacopo Mittino (52heartswhale). In other past productions I have also had the pleasure to make stuff with Rea Dubach, Luigi Monteanni, Alberto Tanese, Giorgio Maniglia and Lili Refrain.”

Let’s talk about your first-level degree thesis in Electronic Music for Conservatory of Pesaro “G. Rossini”, that is titled “On tri-dimensional music reproduction”, in which you analyse also different technics for the reproduction of music, which have as aim the spatialisation of sound, for an efficient distribution of sonic sources. A peculiar, practical exemple is SPACE, a research center with electronic laboratories for experimental music. In its activities, it was realized a room with geometrically spaced speakers and perfectly balanced. Can you talk about your live and research experience (beyond your work with the thesis) in that place and context?

“The SPACE is a Soundscape Projection Ambisonic Control Engine. It is a facility inside of LEMS, that is the “Laboratorio Elettronico per la Musica Sperimentale”, which is the laboratory of the electronic music department of the conservatory of Pesaro, where I did my bachelor. The SPACE is basically an amazing sound studio with a bunch of speakers placed in a strategical array for the perfect tridimensional spatialization of sound. In other words, it allows to reproduce (and simulate) sound with complex spatial characteristics (like direction, movement, size of a sound gesture)

“It looks complicated but to make it simple: stereo sound is the most common standard in the sense that most people play music on two speakers (or two headphones); when we listen to music on speakers, we can roughly say that sounds is either on the center, on the right or on the left. In a normal studio with a stereo set up, sound is projected from two speakers; we can create sounds and control every aspect and colour of recorded sounds, but when it comes to the spacial features of a sound we can only place “fake sources” in the line between the right speaker and the left speaker. There are tricks to simulate distance, movement, spread and position; they can be quite effective, but of course the actual behaviour of soundwaves in space is more complex. Dolby surround, in contrast, is more complex. It’s the kind of stuff that you have in cinema. The standard for Dolby is usually two speakers at your back and three in the front, so five speakers in total around your head.With such a system, the guy mixing the audio of a movie can place “fake sources” on your side or at your back. To make it simple, direction and trajectory of sounds can be derived from the whole horizontal surrounding.

“The SPACE lab has roughly the same pourpose of a surround system, but has more than two or five speakers, it has 23 independent speakers. Those are placed around the walls, on the top and on the bottom of the room, and they are all perfectly arranged and tuned in order to be neutral and behave like a uniform engine for the projection of a tridimentional soundscape all around the listeners. As you can imagine, such a system embodies fairly complicated technology. Having it working properly has been a huge quest but learning how to use it and figuring out what a musician or researcher can do with it has also been very fascinating. With my thesis i stressed the idea of using ambisonics for purely musical purposes, taking into account the state of the art in simulation and reproduction of real soundscapes, while describing a personal musical interpretation of space and a system of orchestration of space trough spatial archetypes. The germinal idea was proposed by Carmine Cella, my supervisor, who also helped with building the core of the software that i coded, as a demonstration of the spatial archetypes.

“My aim was to create a system suitable for managing objects of the musical thought in a tri-dimensional environment, taking into account the simulation strategies as well as the abstract behavior of sound in space. I called “spatial archetypes” models of orchestration of the space in which the sound is reproduced. I figured out which ones are the most significant to understand the basic categories, specifically position, spread, movement and spectral segregation. My contacts with the SPACE and the conservatory in Pesaro became rare after my graduation but I know that a new bigger ambisonic theater has been inaugurated in town. Its called Sonosfera and it looks dope. The most important fact about ambisonics studios is that those places are highly specific; you cannot just take the same tracks and play them at home, you have to be there to experience the whole thing. This gives a particular relevance to the present moment, the “here and now” that is dedicated to the sound amusement, contrasting the modern systematic overflow of “schizophonia“, the detachment of sounds from their original source (yeah, you know, we listen most of what we listen from speakers). Contrasting the virtuality of sound in listener’s habits with a room literally full of speakers is a nonsense of course, but i’m sure that experiencing an ambisonic piece can help to reflect on the difference occurring between how we reproduce sounds, and how they really are.”

The following part is a monographic questionnaire of your complete full-lenght (albums, EPs, live recordings, plus any collaborations and single tracks.

Alaskan Pipeline

The Alaskan Pipeline record (with Nicola Amato (guitar), Filippo Bonelli (bass) and Jacopo Mittino (growl), and a recent noisy collective), that is titled Jenny Got A Taste Of The Alaskan Dragon Today, and released by Italian labels Dischi Devastanti Sulla Faccia, Fresh Outbreak Records and Still Fuckin Angry, districates in death metal sonorities (more specificly, a grindcore with math elements) where that sarcastic (non-verbal) sound is related with cinematographic samples (some of them originate from Pane e Cioccolata Italian comedy, directed by Franco Brusati, with Nino Manfredi). Anyway, a diversified heavy sound, with the plasticly rhythmic sign of yours, but more darkly traditional and clearly ironic. How did this recent course begin? How has been your new exploration in sonic metal territories happened?

“Alaskan Pipelines has never been a serious project. Nothing is serious about that, beginning with the name. The band basically crawled towards the recording of an album for 3 years and we played live only once.

“In 2017 an old friend of mine in Bologna told me that he knew two guys looking for a good drummer for a jazzcore band, gave them my contact and had a rehearsal with them. They were Nicola, a dude who really enjoys playing metal on guitar and is mostly known as a visual artist, painter and incisor, and Filippo, a great bass player currently devoted to kids education, a weirdo jazz and bossanova, who recently dropped a new electronic project. I remember our first rehearsal, I had a colorful woolen sweater, they had a bunch of fucked up riffs, odd tempos and complicated edgy shit. Those guys were really confused. Luckly I was even more confused, so it worked great. On paper we wanted to play jazzcore and i think we’ve been swinging around in a large grey area between Zu and Anal Cunt. Eventually i found a new apartment through Nicola and we became flatmates, falling in love forever. Soonish after we managed to have a few songs ready and we invited Jacopo to sing with us. He has been our muse. The dude is crazy as a horse, full of tattoos all over his body and has a nice taste for perverted lyrics and titles. I also collaborated a lot with him in the period I’ve been in Bologna; we had a tour together in duo in 2018 and so on. “Jenny Got A Taste” is a resume of 3 years of very lazy band activity, and the most fun financial suicide of our careers.”

TONTO

TONTO live. Credits: Carmelo Tempio

A.N.O.

ANO was a project where you (as drummer) and Alessandro Fiordelmondo (as guitarist) partecipate to from 2009 to the middle of ’10 years. In 2012 the first and unique album, titled Le Migliori Canzoni D’Amore, was self-released as limited edition of 100 handmade cardboard copies. The sound tap into metal-like, math-like sound (rhythmic patterns of guitar and drummer are interesting in that way), through a DIY and powerfull process of creativity. Indeed, a teen spirit is dominant in a nihilistic and sarcastic idea, which reveal in those lyrics and sonorities. There’s a extended field recording in Lullaby, a more heterogeneous track at the end of the record, with urban/occasional noises; everything could happen, through a long, non-sense sonic path, anyway it is a necessary and naïf component of the album in its complexity, instilling a heterodox, fugal idea. How did this creative path happen?

“Alessandro and me were around 19~20 years old at that time, we were hanging together everyday, we played together both in Virgin Iris and Tentacle Rape (see question 3) and we’ve always been the younger boys of the band. The year in which ANO was born was that year when all of our friends started university or a job, and we the last two in high school. So we were the only people in our bands being free in the early evening, which means that we could meet at the reharsal place before the other guys and start practicing some new riffs. At the beginning, ANO was an appendix of Tentacle Rape, we basically opened the shows with the first 2-3 songs we made as a duo. But pretty soon it became clear that we managed to outline a different style and identity as a band. That was also the year in which we saw Zeus and Lightining Bolt performing live for the first time, so the noise powerduo formation was freshly validated for us at the time. In the same year we both got into experimental electronic music. All sort of weird stuff that we used to ignore (such as field recordings, drone music, noise, free impro, Stockhausen and friends) jumped in our ears at once and of course ANO became the space to try out some different kind of sounds – instead of freaking out our friends from the other bands who rightfully used to prefer some proper bum bum cha and fat riffs.

“By the way ANO means ASS. We’ve been just a band named anus for a while. Then we started pretending that it was the acronym for Anarchist Noise Orchestra… Whatever. Most importat testimony of that period, the videoclip of “Ninja”, including the final busting from the supermarket butcher.”

Second release by ANO, an EP entitled Frizziquizzi (by Bananophono and the historical label Bloody Sound Fucktory, both originary from the Marches), is a visceral garage punk in an almost-free form (where is peculiar the characterizing, raw melodism). There’s a citation to King Crimson music (the titletrack of the first album 21th Century Schizoid Man, masterpiece of that progressive ’60/’70 English band); Its complexity, with that mainstream reference, gives an extemporaneous form to your effort, in a consonant, punk sense. What is the story behind this EP, and how was born its rough, catchy spirit?

“That’s a nice story. We basically prepped that EP in a week or so. Bananophono told us they wanted to produce our album, we had a great idea about a concept on clinical classification of crap and everything was amazing. After the first meeting with the dude from the label (for some weird reason i can’t remenber) we decided to warm up with the release of an EP in a short time: we prepped the cover from King Crimson, recorded a new song, revisited an old one et voilà, here’s an EP out in a month.

“The release went pretty well and we played quite a lot of shows but soon after Alessandro moved to Perugia and i started studying in Pesaro, so the band was fucked up. We actually recorded the record about craps. It’s in my hard disk and no one is about to release it, but you never know, maybe someday…”

The Diarrheal Blast

The only and homonymous Diarrheal Blast album (with you as Valadja Petrescu, Paolo Gàiba Riva and Nicola Vinciguerra) is freely improvising creativity in an almost-aleatoric and harsh way. If the first of the three tracks is charcterized by jazz/analog sounds (with a presence of exacerbaing synth and electronics) other parts are more synthetic, managed by an acid subconscious. How was this improvisation born, and what were the intentions?

“ALMOST aleatoric? Kidding me? That’s totally random filthy noise. I was barely listening to myself. Diarrheal Blast is most of the time Paolo and me, but Nicola is always welcome. I never understood if we are a trio “sometimes performing as a duo” or a duo “sometimes availing the collaboration of Nicola Vinciguerra”. No big deal about how we conceived the album, we just had some time together and we decided to make one for Turgid Animal, Nicola’s label. I love the sound of that album. I’m on drums on Op I and Op II, then I play some feedback circuits on Op. III, Paolo is swapping between clarinet and feedback circuits and Nicola is on Fecalizer (noise instrument made with springs and pickups). On the last track we are all playing electronics. Nicola wrote this little statement about the release, that should answer your question the best way:

“Kill the all free jazz impro artists! We hate Borbetomagus. Piss off John Coltrane. Asshole Painkiller. Suck Fushitsusha. Fuck Large Unit. We love disco sound. Vomit eat shit free jazz impro sound.”

The second release, North Western Raid, is formed by two live recording, (to Milano in March 3rd, and Fossano in March 5th, both 2018). This time you’re a duo (your solo project Valadja Petrescu with only Gàiba Riva), and express a more digital chaos with distortions handled by human touches; your poetry faded into more dark and almost-white sonorities, and, at same time, the futuristic component of the related electronics mixed up with that nihilistic attitude. What was the path of that creative process? Moreover, what does title of release mean or recall?

“Diarrheal Blast is very versatile, we never had a rehearsal. It is just about adapting to the situation, being raw and aggressive to the paroxysme; it’s harsh noise wall. We don’t even care too much about interaction between us, we just blast the whole time and eventually there will be a spiritual coordination of which we are barely aware. We ask the sound guy to separate our signals, let’s say, my sound on the left speaker, Paolo’s on the right speaker, so at least people can understand who is doing what.

“There is no nicer way to say that, as a matter of band identity, Diarrheal Blast don’t give a shit about music. That’s some sort of different sonorous entertainment, it has a different meaning and different functions and in my opinion it’s just pointless to analyze or talk about it with the same mindset that you would use for traditional music – because it is very much at odd with the later. North Western Raid is called like that because we recorded those shows during a tour across north east Italy (Milan and Fossano, in Piedmont) and then we edited and organized those recordings in the days off during our tour in Canada (October 2018), which is even more north western. We just added Raid cause it sounds belligerant and out of context – which people love, right?”

Kree-Mah-Stre

The Kecak album, by Kree-Mah-Stre ensemble (which was released September 19, 2014), with the brothers in crime Gabriele Scortichini, Francesco Lilli and Alberto Amagliani, is in the name of childish, cabaret-like, theatrical sonorities in an arlequinesque, weirdly baroque form. The pop, heterodox effort is very progressive too, and it seem, the several music lines which appear in this work are conflicting between themselves, in a renewing, chaotic way. Sometimes there’s an electronic sound with any effects, giving the possibilty to glimpse your digital potential. Anyway, what was the working course of this release? And how was Kree-Mah-Stre born and developed? What is the expressed concept behind this project?

“Kree Mah Stre is one of my project of which I’m the most proud. That stuff was so funny. Gabriele and Francesco used to play toghether with an nice keyboard player (Luca Martarelli) and got me as a drummer around 2012 I believe. At the beginning they played some weird ambient-post rock with post punk vibes. I guess we had in mind a style between Low and Sigur Ros, during an age in which we were all obsessed with ’70 progressive rock. Later Luca left, Alberto joined and i had a new rehearsal space in which we could be louder and use some better gear. At the time Alberto and I were studying audio recording so making up Kecak has been a bit of an homework. In the same period we discovered The Residents and we completely fell in love. The concept of Kree Mah Stre in the latest period was something about being as weird as possible, while keeping up a catchy and playful vibe.

The videoclip of “Ouverture” gives an example of how you shouldn’t mix a song, but also marked the hard limit of coolness that you can reach in a videoclip when you have a few ideas and a green screen available… That hard limit has been eventually destroyed recently by Viagra Boys with the video of In Spite of Ourselves, but we can accept it.”

 

TONTO live. Credits: Carmelo Tempio

TONTO live. Credits: Carmelo Tempio

Suikeroom

Suikeroom is your project with Lukas Simonis, that is founder of Z6 Records and responsible of WORM SoundStudio. Your unique record, released in June 1, 2021 for the above-mentioned label, is an electronic, exacerbating competition between digital errors and distortions that was come from your diabolicly handled mixing, and the violent guitar employment of Lukas, where noises with different origins encounter between themselves in a idiosyncratic way. Even if the sound is so aleatory and libertarian, its free style is increased by fullness and meditation (we could say in a subconscious way) which characterize all the context. Indeed WORM SoundStudio is the recording space for Dispatch Captivity, a radio program of WORM (a network from Rotterdam, and enviroment for alternative art production) related to the worldwide reality of Dispatch Discomfort, infact, at similar way of festival,  20 minutes free improvisations with only two/three artists are trasmitted. Anyway, how was born the project and the release? How did this collabortion happen? Can you describe the instrumentation used in that work?

“I met Lukas before moving to the Netherlands. During a tour in October 2018 I decided to apply for a residency of one week at Worm. They have a nice studio packed of old synths and cool gear and they host artists for a very low daily fee or in exchange of a gig. Basically, I offered a workshop on circuit bending and I had the studio for free. Lukas is the studio person, i had to talk with him for the residency and he introduced me to the place the day I arrived. I didn’t know much about him at that time, but he was chill, so I invited him for a short session together that week. The sound of that session was great, i think we both didn’t expect to make something so crazy and cool, so later we decided to mix it properly and release it. Luckly the quest to find a label wasn’t hard because Lukas was happy to release it by Z6 (his own label). After moving to the Netherlands i met Lukas pretty often, he’s lending an hand with the activities of Discomfort Dispatch and i got to know a bit of his career. That guy is awesome, you should check the tons of music he made. Playing and doing stuff with him always makes me feel kinda privileged, especially if I think that he was playing super cool shit even before my dad grabbed a guitar.

“Lukas is a guitarist pretty into extended tecniques and preparation. He gets crazy weird vibes from his guitar and effects. Sometimes it barely makes you think of a guitar, on record. I was playing with my Fesso passing trough a digital processing system with a load of effects. Fesso is a “feedback engine sound system ordeal”, a device that I made with cheap circuits and to which i’m totally devoted, it’s costantly evolving since 2016 and it’s still the most important piece of my set up.

“”My attention has always caught my attention” is one of my favourite recent works. It is somewhat spiritual but far away from being serious, raw but measured, controlled, and the sound palette is just crazy if you think that everything comes from feedback circuits and an electric guitar. There are some very good arcs of tension here and there, and the architectures of the tracks are sometimes surprisingly nice for something totally improvised.”

Tacet Tacet Tacet

The first released track, titled Epitaph and available in associated Bandcamp account, is a form of extended music, in a more songwriting style; the semi-dark composition, with a grey, opaque landscape, develops with a almost-baroque sound in classical and orchestral way, where there’s unexpectly a trumpet and a violin. A real different beginning, but it’s possible to glimpse a certain experimental attitude with the sonic use of an iron chain. Can you talk about your beginning as Tacet Tacet Tacet, and what was its course through the work of Epitaph?

“I’m into songwriting sometimes, but just really sometimes. At the times I was learning how to record stuff and listening to a lot of psych-folk and post rock like Cerberus Shoal, Big Blood, Matt Elliot, Sun City Girls… And I had this new tune in  mind with some depressed lyrics, I gave it a go, involved a bunch of friends for the instrumental overdubs and I produced the track all by myself. The mix is ugly and you can hear that the editing of the second part is pretty messy, but I consider it a really decent result for the skills and gear I had. That was before i thought the name Tacet Tacet Tacet, and it’s not even the same style than the stuff I did later, but I still wanted to load it somewhere so it’s in that Bandcamp page.”

In 2015 was released your first album as Tacet Tacet Tacet, for Weird Tapes Rekord, that was titled Embodiment, which was also the soundtrack the homonimous short film. The introspective sound, thought as a poetic and immaginative feeling, impresses the listener through its organicity, in a raw and idiosynctatic way. The Theory of Soundscape is relevant on this record for its elastic introspectiveness; in Bones wooden concrete sounds encounter metallic harmonic lines of piano and vibraphone, and Hypothalamus is a mix of electronic landscape, naturalistic sonorities, and stochastic voices with a periodic pianism, realizing a modern idea of casual/meditated music associated to its context, where the day-to-day living spreads subconsciously on the listening. Moreover the track Womb was analysed in depth on your above-mentioned first-level degree thesis, describing its structure and creative work; in its couse is dominating the rain sound, and reversed or natural gloomy guitar lines, with an organic work of processing. But what are the feelings and the elements of your formation which encouraged this process of creation?

“I don’t know, I remember it was a really confusing experience to release my first record. I know I started doing that kind of stuff because of a cat, Orazio, who is the most beautiful fat cat you can imagine, but when I found him he was a little piece of vulnerable trash on the verge of being eaten alive by a dog. I rescued him, locked him in my bedroom to take care of him and it came out that the little bastard had basically any disease that a cat can have, even diseases that were quite dangerous for people. I had to quarantine my room and sleep in the studio, so I came up with this idea of recording long soothing tracks of field recordings and drones to play before getting to sleep. So basically the cat thing caused my first experience with “quiet” music. Thanks Orazio. At a point I had a bunch of drafts and good material here and there, so later on I cut the crap and organized the architecture of the songs and finally put them up on a record.

“Silence was pretty much the starting point of that album; the studio was impressively quiet at night, and i could literally concentrate on and listen to my body. While I write this I recall of the songtitle “Silence teaches you how to sing” by Ulver, one of my favourite bands at the times. I researched techniques to record the sounds of my belly, breath, heartbeat, the articulations crackles, the blood flowing in the veins. Some of tracks of Embodiment includes those samples, some others (like Hypothalamus) are just metaphorically telling a story about certain mechanism of the body.”

Let’s talk about your split with MUG, that is nickname of Giorgio Maniglia (Microwave With Marge, Ada-Nuki, Capase…). This time the context moves in industrial, mechanic/percussive, futuristic tones (for both the artists), where a female voice (the multi-instrumentalist artist Lili Refrain) gives a lirycal and ethereal touch in MUG first track, and last track of your part (Thin) keeps a minimalistic melodic mood. A heterogeneous work with a different attitude. How was your collaboration with MUG born? There was a symbiotic relationship between the music poetry of both?

“Well, Giorgio is a long time friend, we just laugh our ass off together, that’s the poetry I guess. We met at the time he was touring with Capase and eventually Musica Per Organi Caldi, Giorgio’s label, coproduced both Excerpts #2 and Excerpts #4. The collaboration was a really obvious moment of our friendship I guess. I often visit him and that time we decided to work on some tracks, I lent him an hand with mixing his stuff and we re-worked “Parade” together. The name came out because we watched Paprika by Satoshi Kon one evening, we got literally obsessed with the soundtrack by Sumusu Hirasawa, and we borrowed a title even if the music has nothing to do with it. That’s a great tape. The artwork by Alessio Sangregorio is perfect.”

Perpetual, released by HysM? And Eclectic Polpo Records, is the Tacet Tacet Tacet’s most organic record in the sign of dark tonalities and shimmering, sweet and sour harmonies. The titletrack is a fugal flow through an urban and articulated sound with more elegant and well-ordered melodic lines; moreover the first showcase of the above-mentioned part of the tape is a recording of an electronic collective performance through a sound system installed on the Tiber river in Rome (the name of exhibition was “Liquidi Volumi” by Young Composers Commision, an ensemble with electronic musicians from Conservatories of G. Rossini (Pesaro) and S. Cecilia (Rome), with your contribution; this performance was a side event of the William Kentridge’s presentation of his piece of art “Triumphs And Laments”). In Chordate are dominant reversed and synthetic sounds, a leitmotiv of that track. Instead, last track Amniote is characterized by more droning, dream-like sonic drawings and this crepuscolar, austere feelings. The structure of this record is more meditated than the past works, where chaos and casuality are the principal ingredients but in an elegant form in any way. First at all can you talk about your experience with Liquid Volumi? And, how did the more meditated attitude happen on Perpetual?

Liquidi Volumi was quite a crazy experience. The project was conceived by Kristin Jones and David Monacchi, taking advantage of a gargantuesqe sound system installed for William Kentridge’s inauguration of a huge mural work between ponte Sisto and ponte Mazzini, “Triumphs and Laments“. We (the composers) were asked to realize a specific composition for the space, taking into account the constrains of the urban noisy area, the complications of projecting sound through a huge and variable distance, preferably embedding in the music a meaning connection with the main event and the river, with all its historical characterization.

“If I remenber well, the space between the two bridges and the walls is 530 m long and 80 m large (a bit less than Circo Massimo); the sound was delivered by 24 high power speakers on 8 clusters of independent channels. Listening music with that system on such a space was really impressive.I remember that the preliminary work was to write a software to simulate the acoustics of the place, implementing the sound delays that we calculated for the distances between the speakers and the opposite bank of the river (something like 2 seconds from corner to corner). We made different simulations and worked on the music according to the model. Then, on the day of the show, it was windy and the simulation went straight to hell, soundwaves were carried away and everything sounded different from the studio. But it was fine, probably even cooler.

“In my work (the material from that composition is the same used for “Perpetual”) I used a lot of drones carpets of processed vocals, really really bad vibes. It was so much fun to listen to that kind of stuff in the context of Tiber bank at 2 pm; I remember scorching an unaware jogger stretching his legs against the speaker array in the middle of a piece, so unreal.

“About Perpetual: I think that after Embodiment I got tired of some conventional forms that I was using a lot, at least in the context of Tacet Tacet Tacet. In that album you barely hear any arpeggio or truly melodic moment. I was mainly focused on sounds and strategies to obtain unusual forms. In other words, I just got into different kind of listenings, more meditative/vertical kind of ambient stuff, along with glitch and dark ambient. Nowadays Amniote is the track that I am the most proud of in that record. I’m working on similar stuff at the moment. No spoiler, but something new is coming out in spring.”

Your last work is Skakki, which appears in Klaustrophobie, a compilation for Klang, that is an electronic label from Rome, released in pandemic times (2020). A more lysergic techno immaginary permeates this baroquist effort, in a more ordinary but elegant way. Anyway the micro-rhythmic part is so interesting, and there’s a systematic elasticity  in bpm velocity, in a more dark-like way. How did the devilish and, indeed, claustrophobic period influence your creativity in that way?

“It didn’t, because the track was composed the year before in Iceland. I just had the track there and decided to send it for the compilation. Skakki means skew or bent in icelandic. During the first lockdown I was in my apartment in Bologna, spent my time binge watching Hokuto No Ken and some other post apocalyptic series, actually. Can’t complain, I had a great time. It took a couple of month before depression took over.”

TONTO

TONTO live. Credits: Carmelo Tempio.

Tonto

So, your first album, Excerpts #2, is permeated by percussive and electronic energy, in a noise and idiosyncratic way. But the playing is more straight, often characterized by a martial periodicity, any industrial and dub references, and an oblique and blinding light of its electric sounds. Moreover, the tracklist recalls phonemes with a stylised and freak aesthetics, combining your iconoclastic music with a relating, mysterious key of reading which your sounds come to a humanized life. But what is the excursus of Excerpts #2, and how was born its lysergic fire?

“Nice question, I really don’t remember precisely, but I know that before that time Tonto was a bit more of a joke. It is my first serious release as Tonto but it was recorded and mixed at home, released on 80 copies. It sold crazy fast and i got a lot of gigs. Actually, i started touring for real after that. All those records that I named Excerpts are improvised, or at least the original recording has been cut out of a long improvised session and then overdubbed or edited.”

Excerpts #1, your released first demo, is another mix between electronics and analog percussive noise. Sound of the beginning was more esotic for the several present melodic lines. The atmosphere was minimal and raw, but it signs a clear and more idyosincratic position. In particular, I’d like to know how your project was born. What are the intentions? Anyway is there any influences from European or extra-European elements in that demo and your music in general?

“Not directly or consciously. But I listen and used to listen some traditional music from Africa, the Caribbean and South-East Asia, so I can believe that some of that taste is in everything I play.

“I wasn’t and I’m not trying to convey any particular message trough the character of Tonto. The intention is to do something amusing for me that can also be amusing for an audience. Of course it is an act that can carry unspoken metaphors about society and modern life. Everyone can perceive it and frame it their own way, eventually create a world around it and get inspiration. If there is a message, it is not part of my pourpose to explain it in words. Otherwise I would be writing books instead of playing shows.”

Live #1 is a compilation of extracks from live set around the Europe, in a period between October 2016 and May 2017. These performances are physically powerful in more minimal, caustic form, and it’s possible to feel the sarcastic attitude expressed by sonorities and personality. But, in any way, a baroque, dilated almost-academic darkness pass through this listening, giving an idealistically mathematical shape. How was this release born? And how does this geometric comprexity and the concept of sarcasm combine in your poetry with Tonto?

“Live #1 was released thanks to Selva Elettrica. One of them attended my show in Fanfulla and asked me to make something for the label. I was at the end of an intense period of touring in a time in which I had the habit to bring a recorder and use it at every show. I had TONS of recordings to listen, picked the best spots here and there, fixed the sound, and here you go.”

Your free improvisation Excerpts #3 was analysed in your second-level degree thesis for Conservatory of Bologna “Giovan Battista Martini”, about augmented instruments. Indeed a harsh, caustic and visceral sound aleatory and rarefied too, is showed in this two excertpts (Excertpts #3.1, more percussive and neat, and Excertpts #3.2, with more magmatic and processed sonorities). But what are the points of reference or general ideas behind this improvisation? Do you think you will release those sound in next future?

“Excerpts #3 would have been the name of an album to be released after Excerpts #2 (2016) and before Excerpts #4 (2018), but it never saw the light for a number of reasons. I wasn’t satisfied of the mix, I never found the right label, and at a point it probably got too old to reflect my taste. Once I heard a songwriter saying that – records are like children that does not grow; you give them birth and they remain the same forever, even after you evolve as an artist and as a person. – So sometimes it is better to abort or leave it there. With this being said, I don’t want to see it as if Excerpts #3 has been trashed. Some days it will probably come out, one way or another.

“To come back to your question, #3.1 and #3.2 are two selected tracks (from the fantomatic Excerpts #3) that I used as models for the dissertation on the musical meaning of the technological construct I described in the thesis. My thesis on augmented instrument has a strong technical component, there’s a lot of talking about microprocessors, processing and electronic gimmicks; I find that kind of stuff deadly boring when there is no creative outcome, so I’ve been really careful with linking every nerd talks with some musical interpretation. For instance, those two pieces were recorded at home, in a really spontaneous mindset, with not a single pre-established composition structure in mind, just enjoying improvisation and wilderness. While trying to make a credible analysis of the tracks in “academic musical language”, I realized with pleasure that there was a lot to say. Actually, inconsciously or not, my performance enlightened a number of relations between the processing tools that I was describing and my music language at the times.”

Excerpts #4, that is your second record, in chronological order, is more meditated in its organicity. It oscillates between grindish powerful rhythms and voices and a certain lysergic dub-like atmosphere. Infact the experimantation is not absolutely a manifestation of the grown-up music; the sounds are joyful, plastic, hardly math, with a heterodox capacity of writing and performance in the sign of the Surrealism, or in a certain way the Hyperrealism (this sonic landscape could be surly an output of a psychotropic experience…). Anyway there are also rarefied parts in a noisy and almost-avantgard form; in particolar, a most dominant silence in background, in the final part of the listening, offers a austere contemplation, as a relaxing appendix. This non-homogeneous mix between musical void and noise is showed as a double face, in a sonic sinusoid through the music intensifies or disperses. Moreover the record was released for several labels, and it suggests this not indiffernt organicity of the album. But what is its progress from the pre-production phase? And how those dichotomies are collocated in the context?

“It’s hard to say what is a pre-production for Tonto. Lately, here in the Netherlads, with a larger availability of gear and time, I sometimes work on music with a “pre” phase, and songs take a shape before actually entering the studio; but at the times I used to set the microphones with a really bare idea of the album architecture and style. Excerpts #4 was improvised at Dalek with no design, I remember I wrote a little piece of paper in the morning with a tiny list of things I should have not forgotten, things like “record that riff you played last week at that show” or “make at least one song without vocals” or “record one impro thinking about this person” and so on… Anyhow, each song was made in one or two takes, and by the late evening I was done with the playing and was already cutting the crap in the DAW project.

“I’m sure that the album reflects a fairly complicated structure, but that depends on the choices I made after the recording, which part to keep or trash, what order, what mixing differences, etc. The balance between contrasting elements in the overall composition of the album is for sure not a fruit of how tidy my recording process has been. I think it’s more the result of how complex was the post-production phase.”

In They Come Out To The Dusk, a split with My Sweet Kalashnikov and MC Gola, there is your contribute with six tracks (three of these are remixed by the other two collaborators of the work), in a most breakcore container; this obscure territory which is the associated landscape, in the name of elasticness, atonality, cut-and-paste technicism and minimalism in depth of the structure. In this last sense, it seems there is sarcasm with a little of words (methaphorically speaking), expression of an iced and caustic friendship in music. What are your intentions with this work, and how was this collaboration born?

“That happened because of Still Fukin Angry Records (same folks who produced also Ex #2, Ex #4, Alaskan Pipelines). They are really good buddies. One of them, Alessandro Marchione, was my classmate in the bachelor in Pesaro and plays in Dick Dastardly’s. Filippo Uguccioni is the real name of My Sweet Kalashnikov, I always appreciated his stuff and really recommend the readers to have a look at his bandcamp page; there’s a lot of breakcore, metal, noise and nasty trap. But so, at a concert in Fano (Italy, east coast) I had a drink with Alessandro and Filippo, we got quite tipsy and decided to make up this split. Filippo was in charge of the cover art. In the first draft there was an image of a guy with my face being devoured by some Cronemberg-hy post apocalyptic monsters, three of them literally digging bowels inside an opened belly, I totally loved it. But for some reasons I can’t remember, the second (final) version was different. Still quite dope tho. I always wanted to make a record with a death metal cover, so here you are.”

Talking about previous release, Live Edition #8, which was released by German label Econore, is a powerfull witness of performing potential; it is a recording of your exhibition at Freakout to Bologna in August 9 2020. There’s possible to hear your sarcastic (iconic, in that sense, are the momentaneous interactions with that audience) and mass-murdering energy, with any brand new songs like Cerbiatto, in an intensly exacerbating sonic form onto the culminating mephistophelian chaos at the end. Can you tell us you how your live sets take life with their aleatoric and intense energy? On this regard, can you speak about the instrumentation you use during Tonto exhibitions?

“In a sense, this conversation have been all upside down. Tonto is first a provider of live performances, and second a studio recording artist. In a parallel dimension in which artists can survive of their art without marketing gimmicks, Tonto would have never released a track on support, except maybe live recordings (note there are differences between the character Tonto and the person Francesco Zedde). I always stressed that listening to that music is almost pointless if decontextualized from what I do on stage, so I make sure to release some live records from time to time, to mantain some coherence.

“My set up has radically changed more than once since the beginning. I choose the gear with the tendency to look for lighter weight and smaller dimensions, but the processing chain is more or less always the same. Just like a guitarist develops separately an instrument technique and a pedalboard-amp rig, the matter for me is practicing certain grooves and techniques while studying how to process the signals from the drumset and deliver a sound trough the speaker system. The pick-up in my case is a set of artisanal piezo mics that I apply with duct tape on the drumheads and cymbals—those sensors are basically extremely cheap—and band-limited microphones, but with the right combination of preamp and equalization you can get a beautiful rough saturation, which can be considered a sound trademark of Tonto. From the kick drum, snare, hihat, floor tom and ride, I connect 5 cables to the audiocard, plus my voice, picked up with a telephone microphone hidden in my mask. The 6 signals are processed in many ways, but usually my set up involves granulation, distortion, delays, gates, resonators; with a control on the gates thresholds I can play with the physical feedbacks between speakers and drumheads, and with pitch tracking on my voice I can make the drums resonate with the tunes I’m singing, and so on. I’m currently playing with an Rme Fireface 400 audiocard, Ableton Live set running on laptop and Lemur controller running on an Ipad, but this is just an example (the smaller and most efficient I could find) of how you can build the same setup. In the beginning I used an analog mixer and guitar pedals, lately I’m working parallely on a setup that is completely digital, running in Max/Msp, and one that is mostly analog, with artisanal circuit boards combined with a microprocessor oriented to audio processing called Bela.

“Last year I needed to give a name to this system. For a number of reasons, i decided to go for SORDA; that stands for Sophisticated Ornamental Realtime Drumset Augmentation. Sounds cool, innit? Sorda is a really stimulating project. It is my little child. I’ve been after that for almost 5 years so far because Tonto completely depends on the gear I pick and the implementation I manage to create. But I also have to consider so many factors that it will never be perfect with the current technologies available. Like I have to keep in mind that everything has to be small and light (i’ll tour by plane with hand luggage, eventually) but I also want a good sound, I want something sturdy and stable, I want a lot of computation power in order to reduce latency, I want to write beautiful and powerful codes for sound effect, and everything is serving the musical purposes in the end. I love it.”

Let’s talk about your last EP, an extemporaneous idiosyncratic music with a most urban vision. Cerbiatto is an extended single with: one main homonymous track, with a plastic game of overdubbed voices, and a lighting, powerful drums; two remixes of the above-mentioned piece (created  by post-hardcore band Hate Limbs and open-minded artist Rico Gamondi respectively); and two other tracks at the end, that are Macbook (with music and visual artist Paola Paganhate with a lysergic hip hop attitude) and Oh (with the collaboration of Lleroy guitarist and vocalist Frè Zocca, and in which a political uncorrectness with a non-verbal consistency dominates in this most classic noise sound). Indeed, this work is very diversified in its various aspects, where past and present policy of the associated family of those harsh sonorities encounter beteween them. But what is the concept behind the album and its heterogeneous, spatial idea of music?

“Cerbiatto EP was dropped as an anticipation of the next album. The tracks Cerbiatto, MacBooks and Oh were picked among 12 songs that I recorded in Bologna last year in August, because we thought that 12 tracks would have been too long for an album and because some of them were not adding up well with the rest of the tracklist. Afterwards we decided to ask for the remixes of Rico and Hate Limbs and they made an amazing job I believe. For Cerbiatto EP, as well as for the upcoming album, there is no real concept, except for the loud affirmation of not having a concept, which you could consider as a concept itself. The album will be released on tape in April by Grandine records and will be called Functional Stupidity, which is pretty much about the concept-non-concept that I just mentioned. It’s about being proudly stupid, avoiding verbal meanings and articulated thoughts, leaving space to what happens naturally, and just witnessing something powerful coming from my brain, my hands, my throat. That’s pretty much what Tonto is all about. I believe that performing music can be (and should more often be) getting rid of social and cultural constrains. We should be able to just pull energy out there, no matter the tradition, the market, the lyricism, or the technique.

“By the way, functional stupidity is a particular concept that I found really interesting. Actually, when I read about that, I just thought that I had finally found the real name of something that I already knew quite well. In my everyday life I find it often useful to act dumb, and I guess everyone does it without even realising it, most of the times.”

Valadja Petrescu

The first release of Valadja Petrescu is a split with 52HeartsWhale, that is Jacopo Mittino (an electronic composer who collaborates in Minus – Collettivo d’Improvvisazione, which plays in their performanes with the concept of silence). Your track, Scilla, is chaotic white noise and it is articulated through scratchy, sharpy sound, with sometimes more acute, exacerbating light tonalities. Can you talk about how was this project born? How did its development until Tonto activity happen? Could we say Valadja Petrscu was a consequence from Tacet Tacet Tacet’s music theme, and at same time it was overturned through Tonto’s nihilistic sonic mindset?

“We recorded that one at Dalek Studio in Messina, 28th April 2018. I was traveling with Jacopo because we had a show in Reggio Calabria on May 1st. We had a nice connection with the people at Dalek so we decided to get the studio for the previous 3 days to record some stuff. We’ve been incredibly productive: on the 30th I recorded Excerpts #4 (Jacopo featured on keyboards in the last track), on the 29th we recorded S/T by DRKHN (which is our black metal duo, released by Olivia Records in 2020). I recommend the live session shooted that day, we had so much fun. Scilla & Cariddi was recorded the previous day, righ away when we arrived after 13 hours in a Fiat Punto travelling from Bologna to Messina. Scylla and Charybdis are two mythological monsters living in the strait of Messina, so we thought it was a good name for a split album realized between Reggio and Messina. The split was released by Toxic Industries which is one of our favourite harsh noise labels in Italy. It’s run by Fukte, who makes amazing noise. He handcrafted a limited edition tape wrapped in recycled moquette and canapa thread, a real piece of art.

“I can’t point at any stylistic connection between Valadja Petrescu and Tacet Tacet Tacet. The fact that I decided to create a new moniker was because I felt I couldn’t use the ones I already had to release that specific music. Maybe it’s a consequence intended as a reaction, as if to say “i’m tired of ambient, i’ll do harsh noise”… But that’s of course an oversemplification of the process. To be honest, it’s already complicated for me to handle a question that contains 3 different monikers of mine, they just don’t overlap in my mind and I conceive them as separated containers, characters, topics of discussion. So I hope this interview in its whole can help the readers to understand the rationale for keeping up different projects with different names.”

Last release was Wɜrkaʊt, for Brazilian label and in digital format. It moves in recurring harsh noise land, with a darkly ethereal and polymorphed form. There is an evident effort to annoy your audience in the name of a nihilistic camaraderie, powerfully macist with experimenting attitude. There could be any reference with black metal sonorities for its more meditated structurure, in a chacophonic and majestic way at same time. Can you speak about the creative process of this track?  How did this contrast/association of its elements happen?

“My personal idea of performed Harsh Noise probably reflects the one you find in Incapacitants: a lot of gestures, a lot of big drama. Valadja is supposed to sound goofy and rude. Once again, the process is pretty simple: just plug the gear, enter the right state of mind, and squeeze the shit out of those preamps.

“It’s curious that you mention the macist vibe cos I didnt’t think is really there, I mean is somewhere in an ironic frame in my mind, can be a trait of the charachter if you intend it as brainless agressivity and futile display of (poor) physical power, a festival of dumbness.”

TONTO

TONTO live. Credits: Carmelo Tempio

Share This