Eterea Postbong Band - Try to label us!

What if rock's most reckless drift were holed up in the cheerful northeastern town of Schio? That seems to be the case with Eterea Postbong Band, a musical ensemble that in recent years has won acclaim across the whole peninsula, with intense and outlandish performances (we can't help but mention Operazione Salsa Bianca, in which the four musicians squeezed in a series of 45-second gigs in a single night in front of sandwich kiosks between Verona and Venice). A few months ago they released "Epyks 1.0", an album that confirms the band's thousand faces and its experimental attitude. We chatted with the four guys (keyboardist Gg Funcis, guitarists Pol de Lay and LeleSd, and guitarist Rigon) via Skype for about an hour.

From the outset, it was natural to focus on the sheer peculiarity of their musical genre, still undefined and indefinable, which seems to have left half of Italian music criticism completely baffled: "Usually you're dealing with very derivative bands, for whom it's easy to find reference points. For us it's very different, we're stylistically free. The epithet postbong is an irreverent attempt to highlight this. The only derivation is from apes, for evolutionists, or from God, for believers". On stage and off, Eterea are extremely healthy and contagious carriers of irony. This, however, doesn't diminish in the slightest the high quality of the artistic product, always balanced on the edge between improvisation and intellect. And indeed the way the songs are written bears this out: "Everything starts from improvisation, which we record and listen back to. From there we pay particular attention to certain riffs, which we then refine and develop. It should also be added that there's always an a priori idea about what the theme of the album will be. In short, it's a fully two-way process, in which creative freedom is channeled by a few well-defined ideas".

Faced with a project of this kind, one wonders what other directions the four musicians from Schio might take: "The future? For us it's hard to talk about the future. Partly because of that difficulty in being pigeonholed, which keeps us away from any particular scene, partly because we've always played first and foremost to have fun, and we don't care much about what will happen tomorrow. Maybe, though, we do want to export what we do, to go beyond the Alps. We'll see".

Schio is a highly industrialized city, a historic symbol of the boundless productivity of the northeastern provinces. Is this what lies behind Eterea's creative approach? Is there some underlying frustration at the root of the four musicians' drive? "Actually, the drive should come from within, or at any rate from narrower, micro-social contexts. Sure, on the periphery - like the one we live in - you're freer. In Milan, you'd find a more standardized scene, already codified. In the provinces, on the other hand, there's nothing: and you still have to have fun. For us that's the whole point: we mess around, and we make sure that turns into some kind of artistic research".

Eterea are one of the most interesting names in Italian indie, among the clearest examples of how independent productions still have an important place in Italy, all the more so in times of crisis for the record market: "Yes, the mainstream is always the same, recognizable. The underground, partly thanks to the internet revolution, has splintered into millions of micro-scenes. The fact is that, either way, it will always be hard to find a cross-cutting audience that works for more than one band". And who makes up Eterea's audience? As indefinable as their genre? "In a way, yes, it's very varied. The peak came with the social media boom: we really had a huge following. But live, the enthusiasm is always the same. At the end of one of this year's shows, in Rome, a guy came up to us and said, ecstatic: Aoh, è stato come vede’ Biancaneve ar cinema ‘a prima vorta!".

And, all things considered, an Eterea show is a singular and thoroughly enjoyable experience. Despite the presence of electronics, everything is rigorously played live, alternating between gags and taut, nervy performances. "For us electronics is just a means, like any other. It's not dominant, we're a band with two guitars and we make them heard. There are drum machines and synths, which we play through and through regardless. If there are sync errors, we cover them up by pretending to joke around". Electronic music is among Eterea's most important listening influences, and they've also collaborated with DJ Ricky L. "The tendency for many bands, as soon as they discovered electronics, was to stick it onto rock, blending it in the simplest way possible: clicks and backing tracks. Actually, its pure use is far more interesting, as it was in the glorious years of the Warp label, with Aphex Twin and Autechre, or for the brash early days of Prodigy. On the other hand, a DJ is a musician in every sense, the moment they know how to stimulate the collective clitoris with the right mix. We saw that in a DJ set by Ricky, with whom we worked on "Cavalcata". Of course, it's harder, because if you don't do it well, people notice far more glaringly than they would with a rock band".

Before the year is out, "Epyks 2.0" will see the light of day, and the four guys from Schio are keeping just the right amount of mystery around it. No mystery, however, about the tour, which will see them on many Italian stages and at festivals.

(20/10/2010)

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