Fabio Zuffanti - The factotum of Italian neo-prog

Fabio Zuffanti's is an adventure, almost an epic, still unfolding, a multifaceted journey that goes well beyond neo-prog alone. From the glorious Finisterre to Höstsonaten, from laZona to Aries, through countless collaborations, into the industrial wastelands of the R.u.g.h.e. project, the rock opera Merlin, and the song-oriented turn of his late solo career. He tells us about it himself, in an exclusive interview.

A standard-bearer of Italian neo-progressive rock with the historic Finisterre, but over time the driving force behind a composite, unstoppable journey still in progress, one that has led him to conceive projects such as Höstsonate, R.u.g.h.e., Aries, laZona, the rock opera Merlin, and a tribute to the classic Battiato's song-oriented turn on La Foce del Ladrone. Fabio Zuffanti tells us his story.

To start, welcome to our webzine Fabio, all good?

All good, thanks Michele. I'm truly honored to be a guest on the pages of OndaRock.

Making sense of your manifold, multifaceted and eclectic discography is no easy task. A blunt question: where do you find the time to manage so many projects?

Quite simply, I devote 80% of my life to them. About ten years ago I found the courage to quit my 'normal' job and focus solely on music. From that moment on, I haven't stopped giving myself body and soul to our beloved art. Partly out of unbridled passion, partly out of sheer survival, I spend almost all my time dreaming up new records and projects, always learning new things and living off what I do. On top of that, I'm someone who works very quickly (sometimes too quickly), so I soon find myself with a huge amount of material that I then unravel over time. In short, a thoroughly enjoyable, never-ending tour de force that gives me just the right vital drive.

Can we call you a "one-man project(s)"?

Well, usually "one-man (something)" refers to someone who does everything on their own. I compose alone, but to actually make my records, or those of the bands I'm involved in, I absolutely need the invaluable help of the musicians I usually work with. Their contribution helps turn my abstract (and sometimes rather confused) thinking into something concrete. And even though there are a few cases where I've made albums in complete solitude, it's thanks to them that my ideas become reality.

Tell us off the cuff something about your very first beginnings, your musical education.

I started playing electric bass at 15 because my older brother owned one and played it. A couple of years earlier, again thanks to my brother, I'd picked up the basic rudiments of guitar. I don't know why, but the bass appealed to me more as an instrument, so as soon as I felt ready I started strumming away at it with real dedication and commitment. All self-taught, of course. At 17 I put together my first school band, in which we played covers of U2, Pink Floyd, Cure, etc. Things carried on with ups and downs until I was 22, when I joined Calce & Compasso, a Genoa-based outfit playing a kind of blues-pop-psychedelic singer-songwriter sound. Not long after, in 1993, the band would shed its skin, changing both genre and name to become Finisterre.

Finisterre, also covered on these pages, were your baptism by fire. Looking back, what was your intent with the band? And how did your style evolve over the years? 

Finisterre was the band with which I recorded my very first album (Finisterre, 1994, Mellow Records). They've held a special place in my heart ever since. The group is a good example of my non-central role in certain bands I play in that, from the outside, are often seen as my own projects. The group's main composer was always pianist Boris Valle, and I think it's thanks to him that Finisterre never became just another new-prog band — there was always a particular sound that made us a bit different (in some cases, very different) from the genre at large. Boris has always been a huge fan of contemporary music, electronic music and minimalism. For my part, I brought a love of "classic" prog, while guitarist/singer Stefano Marelli brought Pink Floyd-esque inflections, pop, and at times a singer-songwriter sensibility.

After the self-titled debut, a distinctly prog album, Finisterre began experimenting, and already on the second record, In Limine (Mellow Records, 1996), there are plenty of free, industrial, minimalist, jazz (a rather abstract jazz) and folk moments. After all, isn't progressive rock supposed to be a genre that absorbs many others? It's quite strange, from this point of view, that the band was heavily criticized by its more "hardline" fans every time it tried to step away from the classic paths of symphonic progressive rock to explore new musical territory.

With the third album, In Ogni Luogo, released in 1999 on Iridea Records (and reissued last year by AMS Records), we made a real leap forward in quality. Recorded in Milan and produced by the legendary Roberto Colombo, with singer-songwriter Francesca Lago contributing vocals, it tried to push into less experimental, less classically prog territory in favor of more pop-oriented moments — in many places, close to what would later be called post-rock.

In 2004 came the latest chapter (for now) of our story, La Meccanica Naturale, produced by Franz Di Cioccio and released on his label, Immaginifica Records. It's an album of songs in which, I think, all the various musical territories we'd explored on previous records coexist in excellent balance.

The band then went on hiatus for several years, and it was only in 2011 that we got back together to play, taking part in the French festival 'Crescendo Festival'. It was a huge success and a great satisfaction for us, as we were given a rousing ovation by more than 2,000 people in attendance. At this point, we're hoping to get to work on a new album soon.

Höstsonaten could be seen as your "ambient" side, or at least your more contemplative one. How did you arrive at blending all the influences one can hear in it? I'm thinking especially of albums like "Mirrorgames" from 1998.

Höstsonaten was, a couple of years after the release of Finisterre's debut album, the first solo project I devoted myself to. It's a project in which I'm something of a deus ex machina, but one that has also involved, and still involves, other musicians — some from Finisterre itself, others from the most disparate musical backgrounds. As I mentioned earlier, in Finisterre I was the one who brought the main prog influences, which were then blended with Boris's and Stefano's to create our sound. In Hostsonaten, on the other hand, I allowed myself the luxury of devoting myself entirely to my love of progressive music. In reality, though, even here the detours have been numerous: Breton folk, jazz, chamber music and much more. Let's say, however, that the main fabric is prog in its most symphonic sense.

After the first two albums, released in 1996 and 1998 respectively (Hostsonaten and Mirrorgames, both on Mellow Records), from 2001 onward I threw myself into making four almost entirely instrumental albums, each dedicated to one of the seasons. I released them separately in 2002 (Springsong), 2008 (Winterthrough), 2009 (Autumnsymphony) and 2011 (Summereve) on AMS Records. Put together, these works form one giant suite lasting almost three hours, and I won't hide the fact that one of my dreams would be to record the whole thing with a symphony orchestra. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm about to set sail on a new Hostsonaten project in which I'll be setting to music the famous English poem The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in its entirety. It's another project told "in installments", since it will consist of two separate albums, one coming out in the first months of next year and the other in 2013.

Also interesting is laZona, whose discography is limited to a single album, "Le Notti Difficili", from 2003. In your own quick impression, is there any correspondence between this project and the "Zone" of Tarkovsky's films?

Andrei Tarkovsky is without a doubt my favorite director and one of my greatest artistic and life influences. Over the years I've scattered various tributes to him throughout my work. In the future I'd love to put together a proper tribute to his great art, composing different pieces of music inspired by his films.

The name of the group laZona is clearly borrowed from the almost metaphysical place found in Stalker, his 1979 film, and it aims to translate into music the suspended, slightly unsettling atmosphere that pervades the film. The project was born one evening when I and a few members of Finisterre (drummer Marco Cavani, keyboardist Agostino Macor and guitarist Stefano Marelli) shut ourselves in the studio with nothing to go on but a few notes I'd jotted down about the structure of what we were supposed to play. From there we launched into a long improvisation that, after various rounds of editing and with the valuable contribution of trumpeter Michele Nastasi, turned into the album. The work (titled "Le Notti Difficili", after the short-story collection by Dino Buzzati) was released in 2003 by Mellow Records, and it's an album I'm deeply fond of — maybe because of its nature as a "one-shot project", maybe because of its atmosphere, which is very dear to me. It's a record I still love to listen back to.

La Maschera Di Cera is another adventure, this time in a more symphonic vein, within so-called neo-prog. It's also a chance to talk about your recent tour.

With La Maschera Di Cera and Finisterre, we've had no shortage of satisfying live experiences. We've toured — besides Italy — in Spain, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, the United States and Mexico. Our music is very well received in these places; we've had a large audience following and appreciating us for years, and there have been many wonderful moments I've experienced, and keep experiencing, every time I go play abroad.

La Maschera Di Cera is a band I brought to life in 2001 with contributions from Finisterre's Agostino Macor on keyboards, Alessandro Corvaglia, an exceptional singer I had already brought on board for my rock opera Merlin, Bologna-based flautist Andrea Monetti (also involved in various kraut-psychedelic projects and, more recently, a member of the legendary German outfit Embryo), and drummer Maurizio Di Tollo, originally from Pescara but based in Genoa for some years now.

My ambition with MDC was simple: I wanted to make an album that, if you didn't check the release date on the cover, you'd swear had come out in 1973. Hardcore, no-frills Italian prog, with the sounds of that era, tailor-made lyrics, vintage instrumentation. More than a tribute, it was a pure act of love for a genre in which we're regarded as masters abroad.

No sooner said than done: we made our first album (La Maschera Di Cera; Mellow Records, 2002), which was an immediate success. From there, what was meant to be a one-off project turned into a proper band. Over the years three more albums followed (Il Grande Labirinto, Mellow Records 2003, Luxade, Immaginifica Records 2006, and Petali Di Fuoco, Aereostella/Edel 2010, the latter featuring the addition of guitarist Matteo Nahum), which saw MDC achieve great results in terms of both critical and public response. Our music gradually drifted a bit away from Seventies prog, but we've kept certain traits we love unchanged, and they're what have made us recognizable.

From the 2000s onward, your solo personality comes to the fore more and more. I've always been curious about your first and, so far, only rock opera, which you mentioned earlier, "Merlin". How did it come about? Did you, so to speak, join in on that musical-operatic reinterpretation that so many artists have attempted over the years (including prog bands themselves, like Pfm)?

I have a great love for musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, The Phantom Of The Opera and many others. I love strong, intense melodies, and when they're expressed with the kind of pure, lyrical touch Andrew Lloyd Webber is capable of, I can't help but be moved and inspired.

In 1998, thanks to a collaboration with a theatre company that was willing to stage an unpublished work of mine, I put myself to the test and sketched out the outline for Merlin. The script and the overall setting came from the mind of English director Victoria Heward, and were based on a book about the character of Merlin that approached his story from a more psychological angle, less tied to the fantasy-fairies-elves framework we usually associate him with.

Once Victoria had written the lyrics, I added the music, and in a short time we managed to put the whole thing together, both musically and theatrically. In '99 we staged it with a series of performances featuring singers, musicians and a dance ensemble. We then restaged it in 2000, the year we also recorded the double CD (Merlin; Iridea Records, 2000).

I consider Merlin a good attempt, but to my ears the influences it draws on, especially from "Jesus Christ Superstar", are all too obvious. Let's say it's a good starting point, but I believe I can do better in the future. In fact, for some years now I've been writing a new musical-theatrical work based on Emily Bronte's famous book "Wuthering Heights". This time, though, it will all be in Italian, much less rock and more focused on the performers and the songs themselves, with less "heavy" arrangements.

These days I'm actually working on the remix and remaster of Merlin, which will be released by Ams Records in 2012. I took the opportunity to clean up the sound, give it the right dynamics, and bring out several musical parts that had been left a bit buried in the original mix.

The most curious project, on the other hand, is R.u.g.h.e., a completely different affair compared to the composure of "Merlin" — how did this hybrid, experimental creature built on almost post-industrial sound sculptures come about?

As you've probably gathered, I'm drawn to a wide range of musical genres, and I feel an irresistible urge to test myself against all of them. I don't do it to prove anything to anyone but myself. I really enjoy being able to see what I can bring to different genres that aren't necessarily prog and its offshoots.

R.u.g.h.e. has actually existed for many years; singer Carlo Carnevali, Boris Valle and I used to improvise together every now and then, somewhere between the surreal and the cabaret-like, with grotesque touches. At a certain point it occurred to me to document these little "sketches", coating them in a none-too-subtle layer of noise, either created from scratch or sampled from other records. My intention was to create a kind of abyssal sound, almost a pit of hell, out of which every so often something grotesquely ironic emerges, creating a thoroughly alienating atmosphere.

The CD (self-titled, R.u.g.h.e.) was released in 2010 by Niente Records, and it's clearly a work entirely removed from any notion of easy listening or commercial appeal. Still, I'm quite proud of it, because I love experimenting with sound and building particular atmospheres. The R.u.g.h.e. project will most likely have a follow-up: we're already working on some new songs (this time proper songs) that won't fail to surprise.

Finally alone: your solo career. Your first two solo records are Pioggia e Luce (2007) and Fabio Zuffanti (2009). Two albums that stand out for the meticulous displacement of song-signs, for an atmosphere as rarefied as it is cryptic, almost impossible in purely acoustic terms. What inspired you in this creative process?

I conceived my first solo album (and, before that, the EP) as a kind of waking dream. Back then, between 2007 and 2009, I was deeply absorbed in the glitch and post-glitch rarefactions of composers like Fennesz, William Basinski, Bernhard Gunter, David Grubbs and others. So I started thinking about solo works that would combine those influences with a certain approach to songwriting, and that would be as intimate and personal as possible. After years of more or less solo projects, I wanted whatever came out under my own name to be as fully "mine" as possible, with no mediation of any kind. In fact, up to and including "Ghiaccio", my solo records are played entirely by me. I really wanted to be alone with myself in these creations. Add to that a strong fascination with winter, its desolate landscapes, and reading Tommaso Labranca's book "Il Piccolo Isolazionista", which, among other things, describes the utter emptiness of certain urban landscapes amid industrial archaeology, rain, snow and fog. All of this fascinated me, and I decided to translate it into music, adding lyrics that, for the first time (unlike in my prog projects, where the words are always somewhat obscure and metaphorical), let myself come through fully — telling stories about my own life and describing my own feelings, with no screens or protection.

The EP (Pioggia e Luce, ed. note) was released in 2007 by the small but scrappy Genoa label Marsiglia Records, while the first album (Fabio Zuffanti) came out in 2009 on Ams. With these records I opened up a path towards an audience somewhat different from the usual prog crowd. In fact, there's almost no trace of classic prog in these works, and the biggest influences, aside from the ones already mentioned, are Robert Wyatt, the experimental side of Franco Battiato, certain Radiohead and Sigur Ros, and Brian Eno. All of it filtered through a personal vision that leaves plenty of room for electronics, sampling, and anything that conjures the snowiest, most wintry atmospheres possible.

Ghiaccio and then your latest album, La Foce del Ladrone, are records that, by your own admission, mark a return to a craving for melody. A vital need?

Look, after all the more or less experimental and "niche" music I've written over the years, and after two rather introverted solo works, at a certain point I genuinely felt an irrepressible need to see a bit of light. Ghiaccio still carries traces of the atmospheres of the previous album and EP, but it already hints at new directions and a greater openness. With La Foce del Ladrone, on the other hand, the cocoon finally broke open and I stepped out into the light. To do that, though, I needed to go back to my roots in a way.

What drove you to echo Franco Battiato (in the title, La Voce del Padrone vs. La Foce del Ladrone, and in a couple of harmonic progressions)? Do you feel some kind of "correspondence of loving minds" with him, perhaps even in relation to the path that – starting from those early experiments – leads to a more structured, reactive form?

I adore Battiato in every one of his incarnations. From the experimental to the pop, to the operatic, and everything in between. His La Voce del Padrone was the album that, at the tender age of 13, definitively opened up my passion for music. Thanks to that album I learned to truly love the seven notes, I learned to savour a record as a whole, and I caught a glimpse of what the future might hold for me if I followed the path of music. In short, an important record, an extremely important one for me, to which, exactly thirty years later, I wanted to pay a proper tribute in some way.

So I thought about writing my own songs that could nonetheless follow and recreate the structure and atmosphere of the ones on Battiato's record. In my first real encounter with pop music in the strict sense, I inevitably had to go through that territory. I've always listened to pop music made with grace and refinement, and I've always longed to make an album of simple songs myself. I love experimenting, I love everything I've done and I don't disown any of it, but measuring myself against pop was, for me, a long-craved (and also feared) challenge. I actually consider the simple pop song to be something far more difficult than all the other genres. Writing a twenty-minute prog suite isn't exactly a walk in the park, but condensing everything into three or four minutes and still striking a chord with people is definitely something far more complicated. Still, it would be a huge achievement for me, and a great source of satisfaction to add to everything I've done so far in the world of music.

That's how I conceived this record, with absolute honesty and a great desire to learn: to say my piece while also paying tribute to an album that means so much to me. I'm sorry that some people failed to grasp the great eagerness I had to put myself on the line, the strong irony running through every note, and the fact that I was only using Battiato as a pretext to throw myself into a cauldron I'd never explored before. Despite that, the record gave me great satisfaction; setting aside the artistic side of things, for the first time I had the pleasure of creating a small hit single (Musica Strana), which got great airplay on various radio stations, including national ones, and thousands of shares. Sales went very well, a new audience discovered me, and all of this definitively launched me on the path of my solo career (without, however, forgetting everything else).

Now let's talk about collaborations. It all began, if we can put it that way, with Tommaso Labranca, a project of poetry readings you set to music, which spawned a couple of records (though your Aries project also feels more like a marriage between your sound textures and the voice of a singer like Simona Angioloni). With Boris Valle it's a different matter altogether. It's music that's multiform and static at the same time. Would you call it a stylistic fusion?

As proof of the collaboration with Labranca, actually, even though we put together two readings together, with his texts and my music, no CD was ever released. The pieces we made together (Appelsina in 2008 and Una Zampa Più Corta in 2010) were based on music taken from my first two solo albums, stripped of their vocal parts and reworked as a backdrop for Tommaso's spoken words. Both texts described imagery very close to his aforementioned Il Piccolo Isolazionista (Castelvecchi, 2006), a book I highly recommend.

As for Aries, it's the project – aside from my latest, Foce del Ladrone – that comes closest to a certain pop world. A brand of pop with prog, trip-hop, and gothic influences, somewhat close to the more accessible work of This Mortal Coil or Cocteau Twins. Aries is basically a duo made up of me and singer Simona Angioloni, and we've released two albums, Aries (Mellow Records, 2005) and "Double Reign" (AMS Records, 2010), the latter a concept album based on one of my favourite books, Il Doppio Regno by Paola Capriolo. The project with Finisterre pianist Boris Valle has so far yielded just one album (Boris Valle e Fabio Zuffanti), released in 2011 on AMS but currently only available on iTunes. It's a work very close to the atmospheres of Eno/Budd or Sakamoto/Noto. Boris recorded a long piano track and I worked on it, splitting it into nine parts and treating it electronically with reverbs, delays, and various other filters. To the piano tracks we also added a four-part suite for wind instruments, guitar, and electronics that we'd put together back in 1996 but which had sat in a drawer all these years. The album can be found here.

In the three projects I've talked about, the stylistic fusion, as you put it, between my world and the contribution of Tommaso, Simona, or Boris, is very important. In a way, I step into their musical or poetic universes and shape them, trying to create something unique. The result is a whole that once again gives me the great satisfaction of learning something new and putting myself on the line.

Very recently there's been a mini-CD of covers. What does reinterpreting other people's songs mean to you? Perhaps a retrospective glance?

The title of the EP (released only in digital format and available as a free download here) is I Will Never Do Cover Versions, a phrase many people have heard me say often over the years. There's one thing I'm particularly proud of: having carved out a small place in the sun in the crowded world of music by always and only offering my own material, and never stooping to the compromise of the cover version. Obviously, live, on the odd tribute album, or in the homage to La Voce del Padrone, the odd one has slipped through here and there, but let's say that's a tiny percentage of my overall body of work.

That said, I'm someone who likes to go against the grain and, at times (a bit inconsistently), to contradict myself. No sooner said than done: I pulled out of the drawer a few other people's songs that I'd recorded over the years within the walls of my studio, either for fun or because they belonged to old tribute compilations, and I gathered them into the aforementioned EP, which I decided to give as a gift to the people who have followed me so affectionately over the years. The artists I chose to pay tribute to are Robert Wyatt, Alan Sorrenti (the exceptional one from "Aria"), the usual Battiato, and Pink Floyd, featured here with no fewer than three songs. Nothing more than a game, really, but one that surprised quite a few people, used as they are to that phrase of mine mentioned above.

What are your next moves for each of these projects?

I think I've already answered you about Finisterre, Hostsonaten and R.u.g.h.e. in the questions above. Maschera Di Cera is working on new material for a project that I think will delight a great many prog fans, but it's too early to talk about it for now. As for solo work, I think I'll wait a while before diving into a new record. When I do, I'd like to make something with the same "lightness" as La Foce del Ladrone, while at the same time capturing the distinctive atmospheres of my first two albums - we'll see.

Musical matters aside, I'm about to make my debut in the world of writing. A few months ago I sent a letter titled La Casta Musicale to several newspapers and blogs. Over time that letter has become quite famous and has been shared by a huge number of people online (you can find it here).

A long piece of mine expanding on that letter should be published in 2012 by Vololibero Edizioni. A first section containing my own reflections will be followed by a second one featuring interviews with DJs, producers, journalists, musicians and industry professionals.

Thanks for your time, Fabio, and sorry for all the things, projects and ideas of yours - finished or not - that we left out! It's not easy to capture and contain such a varied talent in a single interview!

Don't worry, Michele, I'd say we more than made up for it! Take care, and best wishes to you and the whole OndaRock team - keep up the great work!

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