Disco Drive - Rock for export

While waiting for the third Disco Drive album, we had a long chat with Jacopo Borazzo, the band's drummer.

Disco Drive, now a leading name on the Italian independent scene, are working on their third album. Thinking perhaps of the average housewife who stumbles onto your website and wonders what on earth this Disco Drive lot might sound like, you once said: “The Clash queuing to get inside Studio 54 meets Ian MacKaye unwrapping his birthday gift to find out it’s a Tito Puente album”. Maybe a lot has changed, but does that description still hold true in essence?

Well, actually Disco Drive have changed a huge amount from 2002 to today. That line was a nice bit of insight from Maurizio Blatto (Rumore, Label) to describe us even before we'd recorded our first 7", so almost 7 years ago now... in the meantime we've gone through several genetic mutations. We like to change a lot, not get fixated on what we've already done, even when we liked it and it turned out well. We try to explore new paths, new ways of playing, new instruments, new solutions.

In 2003 Disco Drive were a "classic" trio with guitar, bass, drums and vocals. Today we've added a second drum kit, a sampler, a synth, a computer, loops... and that's just to mention the "technical" changes... in short, we're constantly evolving. Still, I think there's a fairly recognizable style of ours running through all these changes, but yeah, we're happy to switch up the formula.

Can you describe in a few words who Disco Drive are, where the name comes from... in short, life, death and miracles?

Disco Drive were born in late spring 2002 out of an idea by three friends who were playing together in two different bands that were both falling apart around that time. From that moment on we never stopped: we did two European tours before we'd even recorded an album, we've played hundreds of shows and driven thousands of miles in a van, going through all sorts of ups and downs. Let's just say we've stocked up a wide range of funny anecdotes to pull out at dinners with friends, if you like. All sorts of things have happened to us, as tends to happen when you're on the road that much.

The name came up at the last rehearsal before our first show, because we couldn't put it off any longer. All the previous candidates had been rejected, so we ended up digging through the song titles of records we had at home, to see if anything sounded right, and Alessio came up with this Les Savy Fav song. And it won us over right away.

When "Things To Do Today" came out, I remember a mini-bombardment across Mtv and All Music, and I'm not just talking about niche shows like Brand:New, for your single "It's A Long Way To The Top". How do you explain that?

Actually the totally unexpected "boom" (if we can call it that) came earlier, with the video for "All About This", taken from our first album "What's Wrong With You, People?". I remember being at home one evening, I turned on the TV and the video was on All Music. I was stunned. Then we went on Brand:New with Paola Maugeri and also on Extra on All Music. It was unexpected also because we'd shot that video almost as a joke, without expecting anything at all. Back then (even though it's only three years ago, it feels like centuries) it really seemed incredible that a band like us could end up on Mtv. People we hadn't seen or heard from in ages wrote to us, literally unable to believe they'd seen us on television.

We witnessed that brief but important season when independent music (Italian in particular, perhaps) invaded TV. It didn't last long (it already feels like a distant memory), but it was incredible, even if it didn't really change anything (in terms of sales, for example). Still, I think the perception of a band like ours changed because of it too (from being good but unknown, to being good and famous, without realizing that going on TV alone isn't enough to make you famous, but that's another story...).

The video for "It's A Long Way To The Top", in that sense, was actually much more "professional", also given what had happened with "All About This". There was a whole "team" working with us, we shot it at Bologna airport and there was a lot of work involved in getting the various permits... in short, it was more "planned out", as a project. And luckily it wasn't wasted effort, since it got a lot of airplay and you can still catch it now and then, on those rare occasions when Mtv still plays music instead of Japanese cartoons...

At the time it really felt like a kind of revolution to me. Discovering that the schedule of a commercial TV station like Mtv could be shaped by artistic preferences... there's this stereotype that to get on Mtv you have to pay or pull some kind of shady deal (one of the typical comments was: "How on earth did you manage that?"), whereas we'd simply written a song, shot a video, and sent it to the right people. Then again, maybe it really was just a "moment", when the artistic and commercial direction decided to push indie music, betting it could be successful. And in some way it did shift people's tastes, especially among younger listeners. Since we ended up on Mtv, the average age of the audience at our shows has dropped considerably. If you reach kids, it means you've stepped outside the indie-rock "ghetto", which is generally made up of thirty-somethings. But it was an unfinished revolution, in a sense, because beyond a handful of things (the more "commercial" ones, so to speak, like various English bands or stuff like MGMT...), and a general attention to a certain aesthetic (looks changed a lot in recent years too, and became deadly standardized... this probably isn't down to Mtv so much as phenomena like Myspace and Facebook, but I think the crack opened right around that period...), the commercial success of alternative bands and sounds has remained limited...

I found your latest record very much in line with certain psych, funky waves, a bit like Liars. It blended fairly different influences quite well, without ever sounding tacky, but rather well structured. How important is it for you to range widely and experiment, even within the same song?

A lot, and I think it shows. After all, we range widely, experiment and improvise a lot live too. Our shows, especially on this last tour, are more like one long jam than a collection of songs. The fact that we rehearse very little (in fact, almost not at all) means that all our creativity gets poured into the shows and into the moments of writing and recording. We're a bit obsessed with keeping things fresh. We like repetition, but not having to do the same things over and over. We often change how we play, how we write, which instruments we use, and our arrangement choices. We also change the setlist, and even the songs we play live often have improvised parts within them. Change, change, change.

You'll soon go into the studio to record and then mix your third album. What will be the core idea running through it?

We're already at work on the new album and we're very pleased with it. For the first time we more or less have a studio at our disposal, which makes the writing process very different, once again. We went into the studio starting from scratch, without necessarily having songs ready to record. Some tracks we wrote, arranged and recorded within two hours. We like that feeling of spontaneity. Other tracks maybe grew out of a loop, with all the rhythmic interlocking that involves... and then we threw the loop away and realized the track actually worked even better on its own!

In short, as usual we're experimenting a lot and it's paying off. It'll probably be a very varied record, like "Things To Do Today" already was, but even more mature and psychedelic, in a way.

Is the record that's going to come out in the coming months influenced by what you've been listening to lately, by certain particular musical trends or new ways of playing?

We always try to set aside what's currently trending. Especially if "currently" means what's around in 2009, even though of course there's a lot of new stuff we really like. But we don't want to make a record that's a "child of the moment". That's a mistake we naively made with our first album (even though when we wrote and recorded it, in spring 2004, the whole funk-punk ferment was just getting started and we were only partly aware of it, and the fact that it then came out a year later burned us a bit, because naturally some people thought we'd wanted to jump on the winners' bandwagon...), and something we'll try not to do again. But of course, listening to other things is essential to figuring out where you want to go. Lately we've been listening to completely different things, like African or Brazilian music... and even though some tracks definitely grew out of cues of that kind, I don't know if that will still be true of the final result.

Can you give us a rough release date, or tell us which label it will come out on?

It will most likely come out in autumn on Unhip Records.

Regardless of how your listening habits influence your music, what would you recommend to OndaRock's readers, or in any case, what have you been listening to most recently, or simply what do you love most?

Ah, the playlist moment! Well, lately I've been listening a lot to Neu!, who I always recommend to everyone. Same with Can, of whom you never get enough. Or also Silver Apples, who I discovered late and now I wonder how I managed before... I also discovered I'm an admirer of the Congos, something I would never have imagined until a few years ago. And I'm trying to educate myself on African music. I recommend the three-volume collection "Nigeria Special", to go beyond Fela Kuti and Africa 70. Then a fairly recent love is Steve Reich. Speaking of more current things, I really like the new Animal Collective album, as well as Mi Ami (ex-Black Eyes, from San Francisco).

There are finally interesting things happening in Italy too. The Blake/e/e/e album is one of my all-time favorites from 2008, and it's gorgeous. Movie Star Junkies are one of the most electrifying live bands I've come across in recent years, and even though their album ("Melville") doesn't fully do them justice, it's still a great record. I also expect great things from the new Drink To Me album, which Alessio is producing these months.

English is the universal language. You, like many other Italian bands, write your lyrics in English. Where does this choice come from?

The choice is both stylistic and "political", if you like. I find it extremely limiting when Italian bands settle for only wanting to play in Italy, especially considering that being a musician in Italy is very difficult. I'm obviously not just talking about the choice to sing in Italian. There are other factors at play too. But of course that matters. I don't know if in Sweden they ask bands in interviews why they don't sing in Swedish. And it's no coincidence that there are dozens and dozens of Swedish bands who break through abroad, while there are basically no Italians who cross the border (except at an underground level). Maybe it has to do with our provincialism, or with the fact that nobody here speaks English well yet, so a song in English still feels like something foreign — but I find that very sad. And that it's precisely one of the factors affecting the impossibility of exporting music made in Italy (and I deliberately didn't say "Italian music"!).

I want to be clear because it's easy to be misunderstood: I have nothing against people who sing in Italian. It's that I find it strange that even today people still feel the need to ask a band that sings in English why they do it. And it pisses me off when I ask myself why major labels, in order to sign an Italian band, demand that they sing in Italian (when they release dozens and dozens of foreign artists who sing in English). Why radio stations, in order to play a single in prime slots, demand that it be in Italian, when they play dozens of foreign singles in English. Why record shops separate the "Italians" from the "foreigners" (with the result that we end up filed between Gigi D'Alessio and Dolcenera...). Why, on a "commercial" level, Giusy Ferreri works by copying Amy Winehouse (I often wonder what an English person would say hearing her... they'd probably find it ridiculous, and not without reason) while things that make far more artistic sense can't work. Why at Sanremo Afterhours, who've been playing for 20 years, show up as "outsiders" and as a novelty.

In Italy only Italian Music can work, that's why. With the vocals mixed 5 points louder than everything else, with terrible arrangements and lyrics that are all the same. There's no room for anything else. Tiziano Ferro sells millions of records, and Mojomatics, who tour and tour abroad, sell a few hundred. Yet in places where rock (in the broadest possible sense) is considered "culture" and isn't still seen as something threatening for young people/junkies/communists, it can reach incredible commercial levels without necessarily having to sell out. All of this makes me angry.

You have to get out of the ghetto. But if these cultural attitudes towards what is "foreign" don't change too, it's really going to be very difficult...

You've now been active for several years and have achieved a decent level of fame. Do you think there's expectation surrounding you? Is there a lot of pressure and competition within the independent music world?

Yes, I think there's a bit of expectation. Especially now that, for the first time in 7 years, we've taken a break from touring, people ask us what happened to us, they want to know. It's obviously nice, in a situation like today's, where it seems like if you stop for 5 minutes you're lost, that you'll be swallowed up by the next new thing and by new clones of clones vomited out of MySpace straight into the arms of some falsely far-sighted major label or management.

And unfortunately in the independent world, partly because of the generally limited success, there's a lot of competition and envy. And this too makes it hard to talk about growing a scene and making it capable of exporting something worthwhile. But in these past months there's been no shortage of expressions of appreciation from various quarters, so maybe something is changing, let's hope.

NME raved about your second album. How do you explain such a glowing verdict — an 8 and an enthusiastic review — from a foreign specialist magazine? Can Italy really have a say on the international stage?

Right, this is the other question that gets me talking non-stop for three hours. It's sad that it should be considered remarkable that NME gave us an 8. It should be the norm that a good record, regardless of where it comes from, gets an 8. But if it isn't, unfortunately, it's precisely because of the fact that Italy has never exported anything worthwhile in terms of rock music. NEVER. We might perhaps be able to say something on the dance music front, but in terms of rock we've never managed to get anything out beyond our borders. Then one can debate whether this should be sufficient reason to "ostracize" any product that comes from here. But it's a fact that the music press dwells a lot on "scenes" and on how important it is that something comes from a place that means something. Think of the invasion of English bands we've witnessed in recent years. It's obvious that the intrinsic value of those bands has little to do with their success. What matters, more than anything, is where and when. Or think of the Swedish bands I mentioned earlier. Or the Brooklyn scene which in recent years has produced so many interesting things (from Tv On The Radio to Animal Collective — and it's no coincidence that many of these bands are NOT originally from Brooklyn, but moved there precisely to exploit the where-you're-from factor...).

After all, our NME review says it clearly. It starts off by saying that, apart from France, the English don't consider music from anywhere other than the US and UK at all. And that in our case that's a mistake. But if Italy wants to start having its say, a big effort is needed from many sides: musicians, the music industry, institutions (in many countries music is subsidized like theatre and other more "high-brow" cultural activities, whereas obviously here we're at the very bottom of the pile), and ordinary listeners.

The live dimension for a band like yours is without doubt fundamental. You're certainly among the Italian bands that make concerts a memorable, fierce and furious experience — in a word: punk. What does playing live mean to you, and what relationship do you have with the audience that follows you?

Well, as I think is easy to guess for anyone who's been to one of our shows, it's obvious that for us the live dimension is fundamental. What's more, on the last tour, as I already said, we started jamming even more than we used to, so the show was really a "journey". Now we'll try to set things up differently, precisely because we like to change and try different things. We'd like to try doing much more "quiet" things. Which is much harder. It's easy to throw everything at energy, especially when you've got two drum kits, a bass as big as a house, and all the fuss we make. It's much harder — and therefore more stimulating — to try to grab attention by making a lot less noise, by doing a lot less, generally speaking.

We have a good relationship with the audience. Then again, we're pretty shy and reserved people, so maybe we tend to keep to ourselves, and that can often be read in the classic way: "They think they're too cool." Which is pretty far from the truth and has more to do with our character, which isn't something that changes just because you're on a stage playing…

Internet and peer to peer. Personally, I believe it's more of a resource than a harm for an artist. How do Disco Drive see it?

Personally I have mixed feelings about it. It's clear that it's not something negative or positive in itself, it all depends on how it's used. If anything, the potential is basically positive. But I'm a bit skeptical about all the rhetoric of "the democratization of music" and "free music" that goes along with it. Personally I download a lot, but I also buy records, as I've always done, within the limits of my modest financial resources. In fact, let's say I spend money almost exclusively on records and books, but how could I spend it better? Meanwhile I know tons of people who haven't bought a record in years. And I'm not talking about people who don't listen to music — quite the opposite, I'm talking about people who are always hunting for new things… I have my own theory that the whole internet system (besides p2p, social networks like Myspace that mean a band can go from the garage to the whole world in 5 minutes, often without the seasoning that used to be necessary to get noticed, and so being totally unprepared) has dramatically increased the possibilities at play, but without increasing talent, skill, or knowledge. Spreading a merely superficial kind of knowledge far and wide. I mean, p2p could be an enormous resource. Since I started downloading I've discovered entire musical universes I probably would never have found otherwise. But then I dug into them, I read up on things, I sought out the records. Otherwise it seems to me it remains a sterile resource. If you just download the singles you hear on the radio, without going any deeper, the only effect you get is to sink the record industry, without producing anything culturally relevant.

I'm still attached to the concept of the album. If I download or buy an album, I listen to it from beginning to end, as a whole. When I was a kid and maybe bought one record a month, for that whole month I'd listen to it all day, every day. It got under my skin. That's a kind of listening that seems to have disappeared today. It makes sense — back then I might wait months before buying the record I was after, and when I finally found it, I'd soak myself in it as much as I could. Today you can find anything you want with a five-minute search on the internet. But then what's left of it? The records I listened to at 15 I still know by heart from start to finish. The ones I've downloaded in the last 6 months, even if they're definitely better records, I'll never know them as deeply, they'll never be part of me the way the NOFX or Clash records I listened to at 14 are.

Thanks, and good luck with the record!

Thanks.

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