El Topo - Jazz-rock in Pajamas

Among the most interesting acts to have emerged from the Italian music scene in recent times, we surely find El Topo, a band that started out as a duo and then expanded both in lineup and in its noble musical ambitions. We reviewed their latest work, "Pigiama Psicoattivo", which struck us very favourably. So we tracked down guitarist and composer Adriano Lanzi, who kindly granted us this interview.

Adriano, first of all, congratulations on your new record. A complex, intelligent work. Do you find it difficult to bring El Topo's music to the stage?

I'll take the compliments, thanks, and pass them on to the band. I act as spokesperson, and I handle most of the public statements, but let's be clear, the record isn't "mine", it's El Topo's record, whose pieces are composed by a duo (Omar Sodano and myself), played and arranged by four people, including Andrea Biondi and Francesco Mendolia. Sure, it's also "mine", very much "mine", it's a creature of mine too... Whatever difficulties we might run into, with certain venues, promoters and so on, probably have to do with the fact that our output isn't easy to pigeonhole. To some we're perhaps too jazz, to certain jazz purists too rock, and to fans of radicalism at all costs, who get off on self-flagellation like medieval friars, we might even come across as too easy — and I tell you, that's a good thing: we insist on presenting El Topo as something more approachable, less forbidding than one might expect, despite the clear experimental traits and the fact that we obviously don't play what you'd call "commercial" music, but instrumental music with plenty of room for improvisation.

An obvious yet unavoidable question. El Topo after Alejandro Jodorowsky?

Yes, it's a transparent homage to Jodo. Omar and I had already titled a track "El Topo" on our previous album as a duo. That piece has since migrated into the quartet's live repertoire.

Your guitar sound is very modern and personal, yet your influences still come through. Which guitarists have inspired you the most?

Thanks! As for inspiration, I could give you the same names that many others would mention. In general, I look to musicians, not just guitarists.

As for guitar, a very partial list of players I admire would include Richard Thompson, John Fahey, Sonny Sharrock, Fred Frith, Philip Catherine and many others. Since we're on the subject of guitar, let me clear something up. In the review of "Pigiama Psicoattivo" you also credit me with the "slides". That's not me! Hand me a bottleneck and at best I'll make a few splashes of colour, sssssdooooingg, with no real idea what I'm doing. If you reread the press notes, you'll see those parts are the work of Mike Cooper, another musician I adore, one of the leading figures of the British blues revival of the '60s and later of radical improvisation, who has lived in Rome for 20 years and honoured us with his collaboration, with the generosity and humility typical of the greats. He truly is a master of bottleneck control and Pacific Island slack key techniques.

Tell us the story of El Topo, and how the band grew from you and Omar into something bigger...

El Topo did indeed grow out of the Lanzi & Sodano duo. Omar and I shared a number of experiences together, soundtracks for shorts and documentaries, improvisational workshops where we hosted all sorts of different musicians and recorded the sessions, right up to an album for Klangbad, the label run by Hans-Joachim Irmler of Faust. After a certain number of shows as a duo, the format no longer felt like enough, for a thousand reasons, but above all it wasn't enough to convey effectively and credibly the complexity and the almost orchestral quality of some of our compositions. We tried various collaborations with talented musicians, but none of them turned into anything lasting.

An interesting setup took shape with Andrea and Francesco, both artistically and on a personal level. Their contribution gradually became substantial and consistent, both in terms of arrangement ideas and personal involvement, in various capacities, in the project. At that point we were no longer a duo with guests, and we named the quartet El Topo precisely to define it as a band and clearly separate it from the duo project.

Andrea Biondi indulges in both jazz and classical-contemporary leanings: he plays vibraphone and percussion, quite schizophrenically, for as long as his body can take it, in fairly disparate settings, from the PMJO to Ars Ludi (an ensemble of contemporary percussionists working mostly on American minimalists), from Luigi Cinque to Ennio Morricone & Roma Sinfonietta. Francesco Mendolia also moves with great agility from jazz to funk (and even fuses the two, in his fine band Sun Energy), from electronics (he collaborates with composer Mino Freda, who among other things scored Monicelli's last film) to a sea of session work in rock, pop and soul that I won't list here.

Once the quartet had been recorded, we gathered the guests' contributions. I've already told you about Mike; right after that we captured the sound of Riccardo Lay, a veteran double bassist of the Italian and international ethno-jazz and improvised music scene, also generous with his time — and a fantastic, inspired improviser, able to grasp the feel of a piece after just one or at most two listens — although these days he's rethinking his existence and playing very little.

Then came Amy Denio's contribution, a dear friend and a born "collaborator", in the sense that she's full of energy and for 25 years hasn't turned down independent and underground collaborations that can still give her fresh artistic stimulus. Unfortunately Amy wasn't in Rome while we were recording, so her part was done "remotely" (we sent each other the various reference files), but I think it turned out spot-on, whether for the sax, the accordion or the brief vocal inserts, those extreme overtones... Finally, Anadi Mishra, an old friend and collaborator of the duo, came back to play udu drum on "Telegraph Dakar". At that point the dish wasn't quite done yet — mixed and cooked to perfection — but we had all the ingredients.

Going back to the electric guitar, what's your setup today?

With the band, aside from the sampler, I play a Les Paul, though it's worn me out. Physically! It's a wonderful guitar but incredibly heavy — to avoid feeling the weight I'd have to hold it down at groin height, metalhead-style, or up under the armpit... Neither position is exactly comfortable for playing properly. When I set it at the right height, after half an hour it wrecks my back. Anyway, the guitar runs through a fully analog Moog filter, also controlled with an expression pedal, and when needed it's soaked in delay. The amp is an old Polytone, with a foot switch for the overdrive channel. That's all.

The track "Scelsi" struck me in particular. A tribute to the late Giacinto?

Of course. Scelsi's figure has always intrigued me. He was reassessed after his death, and now he's even "fashionable" in certain circles, but I don't think he's been fully understood, decoded yet. In a completely personal way, he had enormous insights into the nature of sound, and what makes him so modern is precisely this emphasis, in composition, on the qualities of sound itself rather than on "structure". At least in his mature output. Those who had the privilege of meeting him describe a strange man, hypersensitive — which was good for his art and hard for him in everyday life, apparently — who saw himself, from his home on Via di San Teodoro in Rome, as standing right on the ridge between East and West, between archaic tradition and modernity.

"Crew'N'C'", with a solo of yours that's lunar, dark and beautiful. I almost hear a Marc Ribot-like sound here...

Could be. Ribot is another guitarist I like, like the others mentioned above, because he's anti-rhetorical, as is, for instance, Phil Miller (Matching Mole, Hatfield & The North...). All people who, when they play, don't tell you "listen to me because I'm good", even though they might well be excellent. They wrench the notes free from their fate and tell you, "Listen to me because I'm playing, and it's the only thing I can do, the only thing I have to do". There's a huge difference! In my own small way, I play like that too, at my best. Sodano could tell you the same things, applied to the bass — I'm sure of it.

What about progressive?

Nothing... 🙂

Plans for the future?

Concerts, as many as possible. And, personally, taking care of myself.

Tell me the 10 albums you'd take with you to a desert island.

Oh no, help, this is something I profoundly hate, also because ten minutes later I'd give you a different list. For whatever it's worth, off the top of my head and in no order of preference, let me try to get to ten titles. "Domino" by Roland Kirk. "The Singles" by Sun Ra, a compilation put together a few years ago, surprising, paradoxical, featuring his most "accessible" material from the '50s to the '70s (a reminder of that need I mentioned at the start, whereby experimentation, even extreme experimentation, shouldn't mean alienating the audience: and mind you, when Sun Ra wanted to be difficult, he went all the way, fearlessly). Schubert's "Voyage d'Hiver", in the Philips version with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau on vocals and Alfred Brendel on piano. Mahler's First Symphony conducted by Mitropoulos. "71 Minutes Of Faust" by Faust. "Liege & Lief" by Fairport Convention. "Axis: Bold As Love" by Jimi Hendrix. "Brilliant Corners" by Monk. "Sei minuti all'alba" by Enzo Jannacci. "Sulle Corde di Aries" by Franco Battiato. Ten minutes from now, none of these.

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