Any Other - Everyone is the architect of their own form

A most welcome return, this one from Any Other. An interesting and already well-defined authorial and songwriting personality, based in Milan with a clear international vocation. A key musician for the ambitious Colapesce of “Infedele” and for the celebrated duo Colapesce Dimartino. A nocturnal, underground figure, in love with grime and puttan-pop with the outspoken, no-frills antagonist DJ collective Queermacete, but also featured alongside M¥SS KETA on “Ultima botta a Parigi”. Her solo songbook has so far consisted of two little indie-folk gems, “Silently. Quietly. Going Away” (Bello Records, 2015) and “Two, Geography” (42 Records, 2018). The third album, “stillness, stop: you have a right to remember”, again on 42, marks a further leap in quality compared to the already brilliant levels that preceded it. It's defined by a raw, tense and pliable voice, grappling with melodies that are oblique yet dense with expressive urgency and precision of intent. The lyrics and attitude have the visceral quality of the Cat Power, Smog, Alela Diane world. Surrounding, sustaining and giving deep resonance to the narrative are the singable, bittersweet refinements of the strings, born of the moodiness of a reference figure like Jim O’Rourke. The tour includes dates at Italian clubs such as Spazio Teatro 89, sPAZIO211 in Turin, Musici Per Caso in Piacenza, Locomotiv in Bologna, Officina degli Esordi in Bari, Angelo Mai in Rome, and Colorificio Kroen in her hometown of Verona. This will be followed by a series of German dates: München, Köln, Berghain in Berlin, Hannover. Any Other's live band is made up of “friends I've been collaborating with for more or less years now, all of them incredible. Arianna Pasini (she has a beautiful album coming out in March), Giulio Stermieri (Fort da, Yabai), Nicholas Remondino (Lamiee., McCorman) and last but not least my brother Marco Giudici, who co-produced the record with me... we can't wait to start playing!”. Our interview.

I'd say let's start by talking about the title of the new album. “stillness, stop: you have a right to remember” invites stillness, but it's like a battle cry, the assertion of a right, which nevertheless consists in saving or preserving something through memory. What meaning did you want to give to these words?

It's a title that came to me even before I finished writing all the tracks on the album. It was a sort of direction I wanted to give myself. I wanted to fight against the tendency to give equal weight to a series of things that aren't all equally essential. Sometimes your head imposes this excessive flow of thoughts on you, because unconsciously you're avoiding dealing with your deepest part, which isn't always easy to confront. So I told myself: “Now though, stop, and reclaim what truly concerns you as an individual”. Work that, in simple terms, ties back to the journey I've taken over the years through therapy. The title alludes on one hand to memories that have been erased, traumatic or unpleasant, and on the other to the right-slash-duty to reclaim oneself, the pieces of oneself that have been lost, or left behind over time.

It seems to me like a fundamental shift in perspective compared to the previous album “Two, Geography”, from 2018, where the number two alluded not only to the fact that it was your second album, but also to the underlying idea that the lyrics were a reflection on a relationship between two people through the geography of the other person's body. Here, however, on one hand the body is no longer the main subject, but something far more metaphysical and introspective. On the other hand, the subject is no longer the other person, but a narrating self, yours, that of a woman looking inward and telling her own story.

Yes, and actually I wouldn't even speak of a woman. That's a theme addressed in the album, the question of gender identity. Not explicitly, but it's an underlying subtext that the category “woman” feels too narrow for me in terms of identity. “Two, Geography” was about a relationship with a specific other person, but relationships inevitably always change something inside us, and so they set the stage for a reflection on one's own identity, not just the one tied to one's body, but above all the one that arises from one's inner self and personal history. Putting things in order, now that this work too has been finished for some time, I realize I needed to return to myself.

I'd add a layer of complexity regarding the interplay between your artistic identity as perceived from the outside and your personal identity as it actually is, that is, genderfluid, in the way you live it and talk about it. Regardless of your personal gender identity, over the years the Any Other project has taken on a pioneering connotation as a female artist who writes her own songs, arranges them, produces them, works for others, experiments, and in doing so paves the way for many women musicians in an environment where the gender gap is still, sadly, very much present. Do you find this potential complexity of stimuli surrounding your persona and your career inspiring?

For a number of reasons, ranging from other people's lack of awareness to some people's outright refusal to think of individuals in non-binary terms, there can be a gap between who you know yourself to be and how the outside world perceives you. And that's something you can only control up to a certain point. I also know that the visibility I have in certain contexts can benefit queer people, but also women musicians, who certainly shouldn't be a category apart, yet inevitably still are. I say this with a note of melancholy, but I think that, in terms of awareness around certain issues, there's still a long way to go. Not only is working life still based on the male-female categorization, but there's also a lot of imbalance in terms of opportunities, all to the disadvantage of women. So, even though the definition of gender feels too tight on me personally, I still consider it a victory that my artistic project can send out its own signal against inequality.

Talking about it with you now, I realize that six years have passed since "Two, Geography". I have to ask you this. Why did it take so long?

These aren't six years in which nothing happened, either on a personal or a global level. There was that terrible one-two punch of the pandemic years, which I think brought everything to a halt for a lot of people, musicians and artists especially. The first tour with Colapesce e Dimartino was scheduled for 2020, and my new album for 2021. Then everything got shuffled around. I started working on it again roughly halfway through 2022, but then a thousand things always creep in. Aside from the tours with Colapesce e Dimartino, I did a lot of studio work, and I started doing film scoring, for instance for a beautiful project with Modena's music center, which involved scoring Hitchcock's "The Lodger". They were years that let me grow a lot, and in a way they flew by.

And now that you've stopped to look back, what's the fondest memory you'd like to share with our readers?

There are so many good memories, but there's one in particular whose beauty lies in its intensity, one I think I'll carry with me forever. It was back in January 2023, when Marco and I started recording. It wasn't a happy time for me. What will stay with me is the strength and support I got from working with Marco, on a human level too. Something precious.

You two played pretty much the whole album yourselves...

Yes! Then there were contributions from other musicians here and there, for the strings, the drums, a bit of acoustic Rhodes piano. But basically we did everything ourselves in our studio in Milan. Marco and I have been playing together for ten years now. I like to say the two of us share a single neuron.

I'm struck by the string arrangements on the album. Since you're solely responsible for the writing, I'd like you to tell me how you composed them. I find them very emotional, and it's almost as if, in a way, they too are singing along with everything else...

That idea of the strings singing is spot on. I wrote the parts by singing them, improvising vocally over the tracks. Basically I'd send myself the tracks, hit Rec, and sing over them. Out of that mass of improvisation I'd pick out the parts I liked and rewrite them, so to speak, in a clean copy. Usually when I write for strings I work with two or three voices. On "Two, Geography" I used three voices; here it's almost always two, played by Giulia Russo on violin and Federica Furlan on viola, two dear friends of mine as well as two incredibly talented musicians. With them I also went over the more technical details, like fingering and positions. Generally, whenever musicians have come into the studio, they've always given proactive feedback. I'm very proud of "Two, Geography", and even years later I still enjoy listening back to it. But I know I was missing a certain lightness and openness to input from the people working with me, something I'm learning to have today, which also comes from the greater experience I've gained over the years, which gives you more confidence and lets you make choices with less pressure.

And how do you see the first album today, the one that captivated all of us back then and was almost a kind of self-introduction to the world?

We'd recorded it in two days, vocals and everything included. Two days of live takes. We were very young and a bit crazy, but above all driven by the need to open up a channel of communication. I still like it, precisely because it's an album of that age of recklessness.

A strong element of identity that ties the three albums together, beyond the differences in sound and songwriting, is the credibility of the vocals, which I'd describe as closer to American English than British English. How has your relationship with that choice evolved?

Like roots, really, which underpin my musical education, the music I listened to as a teenager, and which still accompany me today. A very American idea of folk, where the singer says, "now I'm going to split my belly open and show you my guts." It's not about giving, it's about putting everything out there, and being as transparent as possible. As much as having no filters isn't always entirely healthy, personally I don't like putting any up. The way I sing is somewhat a combination of these two things: my character and the influence of the artists I've learned from.

Speaking of artists you've learned from, what do you think you've taken away from working with Colapesce and then with him and Dimartino?

Lorenzo and I have been friends for many years now; we were just thinking about it on New Year's Eve, we played in Pesaro and thought, wow, it's been about 7 years that we've been playing together. I'll always be grateful to Lorenzo, because he gave me responsibilities right from the start. And that trust, instinctive at first after all, since he'd just seen one of my shows and then I'd gone on to do some vocals on "Infedele", has lasted through the years. When the duo Colapesce e Dimartino took off, they were never tempted to put together a band of session players. They've always surrounded themselves with people who have their own artistic projects. Now, it's clear I can't give back what a session guitarist might offer, someone who perhaps can do that job like a machine, much better than me. But I can offer something else. Plus, the atmosphere in the band is a friendly one. On the 2021 tour everything felt a bit strange, since we were still in the pandemic and there was seated-only audience. But the last tour was fantastic. We always had an absolute blast.

And what has stuck with you instead, since we're on the subject of fun, from your collaboration with M¥SS KETA?

I met her quite a few years ago. I think "Milano sushi e coca" had just come out. I was playing guitar and singing, it was one of my first gigs in a basement venue, and she was there watching. I was happy to contribute to "Ultima botta a Parigi", with all that underlying irony too, which is something I rarely put into my own work.

How do you picture a mainstream version of Any Other? Have you ever thought about it?

It would mainly be a chance to step outside my comfort zone, to do different things. I don't want to say I get bored with myself, but there will definitely come a moment when I need to explore other aesthetic forms. And it's not even certain I'd have to do it as Any Other.

When in the first track of the album you reference "Killing Me Softly" and sing "I'm not asking you to kill me softly/ It's an order: do not kill me at all", who are you addressing?

It's a "you" within the context of a romantic relationship. Killing me means forcing me to erase or hide parts of myself because they aren't accepted within that relationship, especially my being queer. If the other person doesn't want to see that part of you, they're effectively killing it. Instead, I say enough with making yourself small for others. If you want me, this is the whole package.

And who is the Zoe whose seeds you don't want to plant?

Zoe is one of the names of my best friend, who is the person I wrote that song for. At one point we'd had a falling out because of a boyfriend she had at the time. She'd given me this little packet of thyme seeds, which is a really lovely thing, very symbolic too. After the fight I was full of anger, and so also with the urge to nip in the bud any chance of growing something that would indirectly stem from my relationship with her. In the end everything worked out, I got our relationship back, seeds and roots included. It would have been impossible to give it up.

One of the tracks with the most anger is "Awful Thread", especially when you sing "You had no respect or remorse/ For the luck you were given". It's a very powerful line, as well as a beautiful one. Who is it aimed at?

My parents, especially my father. He's the one who had the luck, so to speak, of having a child. A relationship with a parent can often be difficult. Thanks to therapy I moved from frustration to anger, which I think is actually a very positive thing, because it's a starting point for reacting and, eventually, moving past it. Anger is a relatively new emotion for me, one I've only discovered in the last few years. I definitely knew what anger was as a child, but I think that, rediscovered as an adult and in the right measure, it's the emotion that protects you and helps you draw a line between yourself and the things that don't do you any good.

Is seeing yourself as good luck for someone also a kind of vindication, a redemption, a way of giving yourself worth?

Self-esteem is something you earn. It's not easy to tell yourself "well done", but I think it's essential to learn to give yourself worth even when you're not truly convinced you have it. In short, within that context it was a bit like saying "I can give myself worth, even if I don't yet clearly feel I have it, I still know it's there and that it can somehow be given back".

Earlier we talked about the string arrangements. What strikes me instead in a track like "If i don't care" is the fine detail work on the instrumentation and sonic balance, even within its minimalism. Is it hard to learn how to say "I don't care"?

I'm glad the care put into it shows, because getting the electric guitar sound right on the solo parts, for instance, took us an endless amount of time. Managing to achieve that essentialness on record, letting go of what isn't needed, creating space to focus on the things that matter, isn't easy. And it isn't easy in everyday life either. I'd say there's a two-way correspondence between the lyrics and the musical approach of the song. There's this, so to speak, layer of clearing things out, of putting things in order.

In "Need of Affirmation" you sing about wanting to be the person who shapes their own body. Could this be seen as a need for affirmation tied to the question of gender identity?

It means nobody gets to define me or see me as a heterosexual woman within a romantic relationship. There's nothing wrong with being that, but as a way of being it doesn't cover the whole of who I am. It's there too. But it's not everything. It's not other people who get to draw the outline of my life and decide what can make me happy.

How are you feeling on the eve of the tour?

So excited that I can hardly believe I'm going back to playing live. The information has reached my brain, but it's as if I still have to truly process it. So, a wonderful feeling!

(26/01/2024)

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google