Clark Nova - Escape into the Interzone

A band that takes its name from Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch", a film inspired by Bourroughs' novel of the same name, could hardly avoid being interviewed over dinner. The table, however, isn't ready yet, so we start our interview while we wait. Fully clothed.

Clark Nova formed in 1995. Eleven years is a long time to wait for a debut album.

There was a real chance no record would ever come out at all… Honestly, I don't feel like that much time has passed. You have to consider that there were quite a few experiences that kept the band's story from being linear: I lived abroad for several years, and there were plenty of line-up changes. Time went by without us really noticing.

The album was never really a priority: the point was to have fun, and since we always had a great time doing it, putting what we were doing onto a record didn't matter much to us.

We never went looking for a record deal, even though we stayed close to the labels that joined forces to release "So Young": they saw us as a live band.

Probably, until about two and a half years ago, we simply didn't have the material to actually put together a full-fledged pitch. It was only after recording a really high-quality demo - which took a huge amount of time and which we basically treated like an actual album - that we realized we wanted something more: instinctively, we wanted to record a real record. More songs came out of that, which we road-tested live as much as we could, and we decided to ask for real production, real involvement, a real commitment from the labels that had always supported us.

Here's how "So Young" came to be.

Despite the time that's passed, it's still "so young" after all.

I've seen you play live a couple of times and I really liked the slides projected behind you during the show. I also notice a lot of care put into the booklet. Images clearly matter a great deal to you.

Mh.

I take it you personally handled the booklet.

I couldn't even bring myself to consider handing the graphic design over to someone else, especially since we've always taken care of everything ourselves, including the production of the record.

Handing the booklet layout to someone else would have been... risky, especially because we're very demanding: we always want exactly what we have in our heads. Bringing someone else in, getting them to see things the way we wanted to express them, would have taken far too long and been far too complicated. The simplest solution was to make the booklet ourselves.

The slides are an integral part of the show: what we project live are visual extensions of what the songs are about. Maybe we use it as a device to offer another way in, especially since most people who see us live don't know the lyrics, and giving them something extra, another key to reading the songs, is something we're proud of regardless.

I'd like to build on that side of things, I'd like to use moving images if possible. I think the time is right, and I think something interesting could come out of it.

And yet you've been very careful not to appear in the booklet. Not even drawn or stylized.

...It's not something we focus on at all. I'd say it's consistent with a certain culture of not appearing, which also comes through in what we say in the lyrics: not appearing could itself be a form of communication. It could be.

And what about you, how did you approach it? You also worked on the beautiful booklet for the Rizophonic project. What were the differences in approach?

With Rizophonic I positioned myself as a privileged observer: Mario Riso is a great friend, the project is his, and even though I was very much emotionally invested in it, I was able to listen to what the finished product was actually communicating (the record is an endless parade of guests, and proceeds from sales will go toward building wells for drinking water in Africa, ed.), which made things much easier.

For our own record it was much harder, because I had to actually translate into images something that had always remained suspended in a kind of void, something that passed between us in the studio and that we still exchange when we play live. The real challenge was finding an iconography, images that we could all share, that could capture the sensations, the feelings, the passions that had, on an emotional level, given rise to everything contained in the record.

Was it easy?

It was fun. You should also know that I worked on it a lot in the days leading up to Christmas, when I should have just been enjoying the holiday atmosphere, and since I was going through a period of total mental freedom, it ended up being incredibly fun because in the end I... "explored" the record... It's a bit like adding an extra touch.

Honestly I'm not that keen on asking about lyrics, but I can't help asking what you'd been drinking before writing a song like "Mickey Mouse Was a FBI Agent".

(smiles) That song came out of a period when I was reading a ton of B-movie sci-fi comics, and it was funny to picture Mickey Mouse - who's actually the kind of character you always find really annoying - coming to bust your balls.

Mickey Mouse, off the page, is the classic uptight killjoy: he works with the police, always keeps an eye on the neighbor to make sure nothing's out of place... basically, not that positive a character after all.

There are so many female presences in "So Young". Why so many women? Where do they come from?

...I don't know... A lot of the time songs are about women too. You try to see the female point of view. It's probably a subconscious search to understand women (smiles). Women are the undisputed protagonists, both in a positive and a negative sense.

The most intriguing point of view is the female one. Obviously, those are the eyes watching us.

All right, so. After all these women, I wonder what your relationship with groupies is like. Do you welcome them, or should they take the fierce lyrics of "Fancy" as a clear warning to steer clear?

A dear friend of mine, Barbara Tomasino (author of the book "Groupie, ragazze a perdere", ed.), tried to analyze the phenomenon from the inside, and I have to say it's genuinely interesting, because you're dealing with a certain type of woman, a certain type of girl, who is institutionally adrift. It's a bit like an insect circling a light and ending up burning itself.

It's the desire to understand what being a groupie might really have meant, and what it might mean today: music has changed so much, and there are no more billion-dollar super-circuses flying bands around the world on private jets. Those bands were, in effect, the "aristocrats" of the rock world. Obviously, just like in any Royal House, there are Ladies-in-Waiting, so it's only fitting to have groupies.

Today being a groupie is even harder, in my opinion, because you have to reckon with your own passions rather than any financial payoff.

"So Young" is such a varied record that you have to wonder whether you're not afraid of losing yourselves among the many influences and references packed into it.

No. I don't think so. The references that are there were, first of all, well received, which is a surprise, because the press understood perfectly what we were talking about, and also because there aren't actually that many of them.

A lot of references were found probably without us even intending them: we wanted to express our love for Pink Floyd, Spacemen 3, Jesus and Mary Chain... all bands we really love. But, for instance, I don't hear anything from Mercury Rev in there!

I don't feel the weight of the references, because maybe there's really only one that was deliberately sought out: the Spacemen 3 one. We even asked Pete Kember (aka Sonic Boom, singer and guitarist of Spacemen 3, ed.) to use the original lyrics of "How Does It Feel?", and if that reference came through, it means we learned the lesson well.

The record is very varied because it came together over ten years, it's like an anthology (smiles). There are tracks that were recorded two and a half years earlier, with different equipment. We re-recorded them, but we chose to use the original versions because it seemed to us that the new recordings didn't have the same impact, so we remixed what we'd already recorded.

Have you already started working on the next record?

Yes. Actually, we never stopped writing. We've disciplined ourselves a bit, because we're huge time-wasters, especially in the studio (smiles).

We have four tracks left to polish. Obviously we're all for the long record, so we're far from saying we're at a good point.

Let's talk about the video for "The Poser".

The video was shot by the Engioi collective, who gave us endless support...

Why did you choose to shoot it in Barcelona?

Actually the band was born in Barcelona: that's where we wrote our first song, during a carefree holiday in '95, so we went back there after ten years. Also, I lived in Barcelona, right on Diagonal 461 (which gives the title to a track on the record, ed.). Barcelona was a very easy choice.

Stefano, it's time for the obvious question.

Why singing in English?

Because it's impossible, in my opinion, to make this kind of music in Italian: it's a genre born abroad and I find it too pretentious to try to localize it.

What are the advantages, if any, and disadvantages of making independent rock in a country that, from this point of view, has always been peripheral compared to the real creative centers?

The advantage is not dying of frustration if you don't make it (we laugh), in the sense that you know you're doing something niche anyway, and you also have the freedom to do something niche.

In England it's easier to end up lumped into big cauldrons of cliché even if you're making alternative music: if you're in a country where alternative music has a strong market, inevitably the chance to do something different - and to have the freedom to really do it - is much more limited.

Here in Italy the market isn't developed, but there's a freedom to produce and create that I think is enviable. In fact, the less you fit into a set track, the more labels see you as an interesting proposition.

Where the market is more developed, you can't completely turn things upside down, unless you actually have something really strong to offer.

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