Babalot - Mutant indie pop from Nathan Never to the Sardinian caterpillar

Something that personally struck me is your claim of absolute eclecticism in your influences. Does this mean Babalot has no stylistic boundaries whatsoever?

I think I'd have some trouble tackling a spoken-word piece (spoken, declaimed, in the Massimo Volume vein, let's say), but apart from that... I'm not ashamed of anything.

Your music has been called pop in a number of quarters. Given how easily the term "pop" nowadays gets applied even to the least worthwhile products, and given the negative connotation the word consequently takes on, do you accept this label, or how would you otherwise define your music?

Pop, more than a definition, is a wish or a hope, as if to say "I'd like as many people as possible to enjoy it." If someone were to call me pop, I'd take it as a compliment. Plus, I listen to a ton of pop music.

"I make music with the computer. I have two guitars, a borrowed bass and not much else," you've said. Is lo-fi a deliberate choice or more of a necessity?

A choice born from an attempt to bring sincerity to the songs. The first record released on Aiuola, in my opinion, suffers from this underlying "lie", namely from an expensive production (even though it was generously offered to us by Fabrizio Rioda of Jungle Sound) applied to bare-bones songs, ones written for voice and guitar, or voice and computer. I think some artists, even when they write their songs at home, already picture them arranged in a studio, so it's only natural that they end up recording them in one. That never happens to me — writing a song one way and picturing it differently; I'd rather people hear it exactly as it was conceived, that's all.

How is the computer used in your music — as an actual instrument on a par with the others, as a tool to integrate and complete the other instruments, or something else?

I started using it as a recording tool, in place of tape. Then I realized it could also play, and a whole world opened up to me. I should say I spend my life glued to a computer for entirely different reasons, so I don't think of it purely as a musical instrument. The one thing I still prefer to do the analog way is lyrics... a sheet of paper and a pen inspire me far more than a screen does, who knows why.

Some critics have linked you to names like Daniele Silvestri and Federico Zampaglione, creating a sort of "Roman school" out of thin air… do you agree? And what do you think of the tendency among many critics to always try to "pigeonhole" an artist, or lump together a few names and invent a "scene" that doesn't really exist in reality?

Music criticism isn't any different from criticism in general, and since I'm part of that world too, I understand perfectly well why pigeonholing is common practice. It's an indispensable convenience, especially when you're paid to write, don't have much time, and don't want to rack your brain. You have to make your readers understand whether a given cultural object is worth their money and time or not, so comparisons and associations are necessary. We could debate the form these often take, which tends to be rhetorical: "The Pixies eating a pizza with Ben Harper while a broken radio plays a b-side by…" and so on and so forth.

In tracks like “Diavolo” or “Sigarette”, from a strictly vocal point of view, I pick up on a Battisti-esque echo, while, more generally, the irony of your lyrics, though more surreal and less immediate, brings to mind an approach close to Rino Gaetano. What's your relationship with Italian music, past and present?

Excellent, I'd say - I listen to loads of it, across the most diverse genres, picking things up pretty much everywhere, but mostly from the internet. I don't think a list of names would be interesting, and even less so a list of genres. What sets my approach to listening to Italian music apart from how I listen to music in general is that I pay very close attention to the lyrics - in fact, I'd say I base my judgment of whether I like something or not solely on the lyrics.

Given the originality and sharpness of your lyrics, do they take priority over the music, or are you after a balance between the two?

Dunno. Looking at what I've done so far, since there are no instrumental tracks, nor long instrumental sections within the sung tracks, I'd say that without lyrics I wouldn't know what to say. The fact that I can't play an instrument fits pretty well with that statement, so let's just pretend that's the reason.

Your lyric writing, tempered by a healthy dose of irony, comes across as moody, swinging from bitterness to outright nihilism, using surreal, naive language (“Vuoto”), and paradoxical, sharp language (“Ho Visto la Luce”). All of it reveals a sincere critical spirit that's simultaneously astonished and disenchanted. Is there a lucid analysis behind the lyrics, or are they the product of a momentary state of mind? Do you write them in one go? Do you go back and polish them?

There's no standard procedure. Sometimes a line leaves a gap I don't know how to fill, so I'll drop in a "fake line" - something nonsensical but metrically fitting - and rest assured, I won't change it. I'm not chasing some fully coherent meaning, and my attitude doesn't change when I listen to other people's songs either. It happens far more often that I dislike a lyric that makes complete sense than one made up of apparently (or deliberately) disconnected words.

Sticking to the strictly musical side of things, ranging into international territory, I'm curious to know what Babalot's listening background is.

In strict chronological order, I'll tell you all the non-Italian stuff I've liked for as long as I can remember, up until a few years ago (since the advent of file-sharing, I've listened to too much stuff to be able to narrow it down): Mozart, Beethoven, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Beatles, Depeche Mode, Guns n' Roses, Metallica, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Marilyn Manson, Primus, Nine Inch Nails.

You record for Aiuola, a small independent label. The phenomenon of labels like this is thriving, letting talent emerge from the underbrush of self-production. Alongside this, there's also the system of file-sharing, a sort of double-edged sword. Do you see it as a preferential channel for promotion, or, like many, as a threat to the record industry? And if you think it's a threat, who does it weigh on most… the small labels?

Making records is cool. You get to say things like "I've got a label that puts my stuff out", you get to read reviews of your record in magazines, you get to bug the graphic designer because you want the cover done this way and that way, you get to write the "credits", maybe even using pseudonyms, which is even cooler. That said, if someone gets into music solely and exclusively to make a record, in my opinion that's the worst kind of narcissist. And if, on top of that, they expect people to pay to listen to their music, they're also the worst kind of loser and the worst kind of greedy. That said, it would bother me not to be able to buy a record by an artist I like because it's become uneconomical to press it. But as long as there's a category of fetishist listeners who buy records, I doubt file-sharing can have a significant impact on the supply of music. In the most apocalyptic scenario, we'll be forced to have records pressed on demand, and maybe for small labels that's already the case (see the subscription campaigns launched by Aiuola and I Dischi De L’Amico Immaginario). If this is a sign of the twilight of the record as the privileged object for the "technical reproducibility" of musical works, well, amen, so be it.

Another thing I'm curious about: why the name Babalot?

It was and still is my nickname (with a lowercase "b"), picked up from a really old issue of Nathan Never, the sci-fi comic published by Bonelli. I thought it was a made-up word, but instead I discovered, a long time after I'd already adopted it, that it's actually an adaptation of a word in Sardinian dialect, referring to a kind of caterpillar or worm.

Also in your own words, I read: “My name is Sebastiano, I've made two records for Aiuola dischi. The first one was made together with a group of friends, the second one with help from other friends”. Does the Babalot project remain open to friends' contributions, or do you foresee it evolving into a fixed band?

Babalot were, for a few years, a band in the strictest sense, five or six members, counting the keyboardist too. All people I adore and still spend time with, when I can. To me, evolution means no longer thinking of it as a group, and I hope I won't have to think of it that way again in the future. Playing with Daisy Godzilla and with Alberto Motta, during the period I lived in Milan, was wonderful precisely because there was no notion of "group" at all.

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