Blue Willa - An art-rock projection

The debut albums "Baby Blue" and "Come!", produced by Paolo Benvegnù, the breakthrough with the eclectic "We Don't Know" in 2010, and finally the consecration with the new "Blue Willa", which also becomes the name of the project. Serena Altavilla, Mirko Maddaleno, Lorenzo Maffucci and Graziano Ridolfo, from Prato, have traced in the space of a few years a musical arc running from minimal blues to detuned folk, from a skewed, theatrical singer-songwriter approach to art-rock. A trajectory that dodges genres in favor of experimentation, forever and stubbornly chasing the rarest and most precious element in the contemporary landscape: originality. We talk to Serena, Mirko and Lorenzo just days after the album's release.

Let's start with the name: we knew you as Baby Blue, so why this change of identity? And what does Blue Willa mean?

Serena: We changed our name precisely to be able to carry on the story of Baby Blue and give it continuity; the time had come for our creature to develop, and like every baptism of fire, it had to be accepted and savoured. In short, it's not a change of business name but rather a change of life direction, and in life you need clean breaks and fresh starts.

Lorenzo: Willa is a female name (maybe it's a corruption of "Willow"?) that carries a whiff of archaic, rural, riverine America. Clearly it's an America we can only know from the margins, and it's what stuck to our hands after watching, rewatching and mulling over the film "La morte corre sul fiume" [The Night of the Hunter] — in the end, a collection of visions that, surprisingly, we found resonating in a striking way with the settings that were gradually taking shape. The decision to partially unmask ourselves, to adopt this new half-identity, came when the album's recording was nearly finished, when it had become clear just how much the new tracks, in their new forms, represented something genuinely new in terms of our approach.

“We Don’t Know” was an exuberant album, capable of juggling light and shade with obvious skill in a schizophrenic motion that could shift from a crooked nursery rhyme to furious rock accelerations. In “Blue Willa” all of this is made even more explicit, almost as if it were a natural path, already written, perhaps even brought to completion. Was that the case? How do your songs come about?

Mirko: “We Don’t Know” definitely contained many of the seeds that gave rise to “Blue Willa”. Looking back, it seems to me that on that album we tackled a series of barriers that were starting to close in on us, and we headbutted them without caring about timing, economy, or sometimes even common sense. In the end they came down, and I think this record is the beginning of rebuilding a music free of those barriers. Beyond them, we also found Serena again as a songwriter and guitarist, and Lorenzo on bass.

S: “We Don’t Know” was conceived and recorded in a very different situation compared to this record, and the circumstances and their fumes seep into the songs and never really leave them. It was structured with much more rigor and meticulous attention to detail, whereas for this latest record we let things find their own breathing space; our main thought was always to stay as close as possible to the original idea, to the spark that ignites a melody or a story.

Looking back over your discography, one notices a process of moving away from the rock-blues of your origins towards an increasingly radical and instinctive experimentation, almost as if at a certain point you decided to follow expressive urgency alone, setting aside any pre-established schemes. How much is calculated and how much is spontaneous in your art?

M: What you're saying is certainly evident in the final result, and we kept it very much in mind during the writing and arranging process, but it would be false to call it something calculated: the truth is we never even talked about it, since it seemed obvious to all of us that that was the direction we wanted to go in. That's why, when the idea of Carla Bozulich as producer came up, it felt natural to everyone.

L: When looking for models or mentors, we like to single out artists who clearly understand that the fundamental leap lies in carrying forward a discourse (even a limping one, even a sketched-out one, it doesn't matter) that is torn apart by a real, total eros. "Grace", or "strength", or "coherence", or whatever you want to call it, follow naturally in those cases.

S: We treated these songs like so many theatrical pieces, monologues, dithyrambs, dialogues, without forcing their nature in the slightest — if anything, letting the very nature of the piece override everything else.

In your music, rhythm seems to carry the same weight as fragmentation, as does the relationship between what's there and what's missing. What role does emptiness play in the creative process and in the final result?

S: We've always been moved by the sudden, abrupt shift within a track — the fact that a song can touch both fullness and emptiness is stimulating and motivating, and it fits well with our musical and animal instinct.

M: For me, emptiness is the most precious thing there is, because it's where all the infinite possibilities of music are contained. Emptiness destroys everything that is false or partial, stimulates the imagination, and therefore creates worlds. To bring out what's missing (which is actually there, but only in potential) there's no other way than to work on its relationship with what is there. That's what we do, albeit in an almost entirely instinctive way.

Is there a common thread running through the various tracks on Blue Willa — for instance, the menagerie of animals that get mentioned — or are certain similarities simply unconscious or coincidental?

M: I'd say they're unconscious, but we certainly can't say whether they're coincidental or not.

S: All the animals and the almost-human (but only almost) characters on the record were, first and foremost, sounds that guided us, and now here they are!

L: In an early phase we tried to establish quantitatively whether, and what, was inside or outside the playing field of the record (that is, what might define a concept, even a loose one), but we soon gave up and let the assonances seek each other out on their own, with no mediation other than that of analogy or timbral assonance.

If you had to choose just one adjective to define your music, what would it be and why?

S: "Onomatopoeic", because that's how we understand each other best.

M: "Essential", because we always try to dig deep to reach and bring out the essence of the songs, stripping away everything that's superfluous.

There's been a lot of talk about the fact that Carla Bozulich herself produced the album. What extra dimension did her presence and experience bring?

S: It was an experience we still haven't fully processed; Carla is a wild, captivating woman, with a delicacy and total devotion to music. She gave us her experience and her essence with total naturalness, never holding back, and above all she never forced the songs — if anything, she knew how to inhabit them and let them fly.

M: Her whole life revolves around music, and as a result she pours her entire being into it. With a person like that you have to be ready to give everything, there's no chance to hide. That's how she worked with us — she was like a power plant you were invited to plug into, and that gave you the strength to record a track at three in the morning after a whole day spent working on another one. Working with someone like that is an experience whose value goes beyond the record, and one we'll carry with us from now on.

Your passion for cinema is well known, and indeed your live shows are never short on theatrical flair, especially through Serena's stage presence. Which director would you like to compose a soundtrack for, and which film from the past would you like to draw on for inspiration?

M: Werner Herzog's Fata Morgana.

Serena: I'd choose a soundtrack for David Lynch inspired by Lynch's own Wild at Heart.

In recent years, Tuscany has stood out for the quantity and quality of its new musical talent. How important has it been for you and your growth to be part of that ferment?

S: Yes, it's true, we're in great company and we feel strong and lucky, because having so many musical people around you is stimulating!

L: The city we live in and/or scrape by in is, both in human and urban terms, a colossal provincial town sprawling between Florence, Prato and Pistoia, a plain (which around here we call "piana") this side of the Apennines that, starting from the late Nineties, has been fertile if disorderly ground for the germination of a host of small-scale experimenters and big-time hopefuls. Enthusiasm, genuineness and cheek have had to make up for the shortage of so-called "spaces" (not always a real problem) or the ineptitude of so-called "promoters" (a rather more concrete problem).

We wouldn't call it a genuine "scene" in the strict sense, so much as a cluster of small, admirably stubborn, resilient outfits that has, every so often, let slip a spokesperson or two. What's happening in this plain today, in recent months, is even more compelling, because it involves the direct mobilization of a very young generation — digital natives, infinitely more switched-on than us old-schoolers — who, jumping from one thing to another, keep hitting, more and more often, on the fact that the only viable path today is that of discrepancy.

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