Bad Love Experience - The Theory of Evolution

Ivan: I think evolution or change is inherent to the way Bad Love Experience approach music. The type of change or direction probably depends on the influences, listening habits and research of that particular moment. “Believe Nothing” comes from the desire to try making a mid-70s rock record, experimenting with electronics, with song form, with the lyrics. The tracks Valerio had written already lent themselves to that in the writing stage, so it all came very naturally. 

 

Ivan: It all started from the demos Valerio sent me periodically. This is the fifth Bad Love album by now, but since I live in Milan and Bad Love Experience are based in Livorno, we had to work out a method based on exchanging Pro Tools sessions. Valerio sketches out ideas, goes into the rehearsal room with the guys, and they refine the demos, then send me the session, I add my own ideas – mainly synths or a drum machine – and send the session back. They work on it some more and so on, until we go into the studio. For the making of the record we moved between different studios, depending on what we needed to do. For instance, we absolutely wanted to record “real” analogue synthesizers rather than use virtual synths. So we went to Mono Studio in Milan, which I know well and which has a great synth collection. Production wasn't a linear process, we tried things over and over, changed our minds many times. We all love being in the studio and experimenting a lot. 

 

Gabriele: It was a hard time for the band. We'd just come off the tour for “Pacifico“, and our energy had really run low. We were tired of being managed by someone who wasn't giving us any real support, we were frustrated on various levels, we'd poured endless amounts of energy into preparing that record, those live shows, that promotion, all as true perfectionists. We were tired of the many mechanisms that govern music in Italy. On top of that, we were moving from an age where you can call yourselves kids to one where you're called men, with all the mental consequences that come with it. After more than ten years of constant activity, for the first time, we felt the need to stop for a moment to catch our breath and figure out what to do. With the risk, of course, of never getting back on track. It was a stalemate that lasted more than a year. Slowly, then, accepting various dynamics, coming to certain realizations about ourselves and, in particular, about music, along with a healthy dose of disillusionment, got us back on our feet. We realized that once you stripped everything else away from the band, what remained was simply the music, and that we loved making it. In some way we still had things to do and to say. We had demos of the Believe Nothing tracks which we sent over to our producer, Ivan Rossi. His enthusiasm about wanting to produce them was contagious, and within a few months we were back in the studio…

 

Gabriele: Ivan joining the Bad Love Experience project was simply the natural evolution of a relationship that had already been building for a few years, starting, let's say, from the recording sessions for our previous record, “Pacifico”. We clicked with him right away, especially because of the musical affinities we share, our common passion for the recording studio understood also as an “instrument”, and the desire to experiment. He's a producer who's very skilled on the technical side and, in a way, also demanding towards the musicians. He's very good at channelling our ideas to make them concrete; with him there's a constant back-and-forth, a continuous process of trial and error until we reach the right point. He often gets us involved in building soundscapes that push us to challenge ourselves every time (like our versions of “Il vento” by Battisti or our contribution to Beck's Song Reader). He'll be pleased if I say he's a bit like Godrich for Radiohead…

 

Gabriele: Inner Animal Recordings is at once a brand new venture, just a few months old, and something that has practically existed since we first picked up instruments as teenagers. It's a collective of musicians who have known and worked with each other for a long time, and now we've simply given ourselves a name that represents us. It draws a lot of inspiration from those suburban scenes in the United States in the 90s, those collectives of indie bands and musicians (in the true sense of the word) promoting a certain sound and a certain way of approaching music who, by banding together, could finally achieve a recognizable identity (see, for example, Elephant 6). It's a simple, no-frills approach, without any particular set goals — everyone follows their own path, and the humanity and all-round exchange between the various members pays off far more than all the “talk” of recent years. In some ways it's a return to Do It Yourself, and given its historic scene, it's only natural that a venture like this was born right here in Livorno.

 

Gabriele: Right now we're actually working on taking the Believe Nothing live show outside of Italy. Nothing is set in stone yet, but for the coming autumn season it's very likely we'll be touring Europe for a while, and if all goes well, we'll also be playing in countries where we haven't had the chance to perform yet, like Spain.

 

Gabriele: For us, getting the chance to cross paths with cinema has always been a dream come true. Past experiences have worked out well and we had fun with them. Having your own track as the backdrop to a scene in a film is a truly exciting experience. At the moment, though, we're in talks about something new for us as well, still in the world of film but with less “fiction”… if it goes the way it should, it'll be really great!