Fast Animals And Slow Kids - … and we come from Perugia

The year that's just gone by was a big, important one for Fast Animals And Slow Kids.

Since the release of the remarkable “Hýbris”, in this writer's view one of the best rock albums (not just Italian ones) of 2013, the band has embarked on a tour that has so far racked up around eighty dates and is still setting stages alight all over Italy. And they seem fully intent on keeping up the same energy.

We talked to three quarters of FASK - Aimone Romizi (vocals, guitar), Alessandro Guercini (guitar) and Alessio Mingoli (drums) - about growth and necessary change, intensity sought and found, and the epic nature of life on the road.

Let's start from the beginning: when, where and how did FASK come together?

Aimone: When: I think it was 2007, late 2007. I'm not fully sure.

The "where" was definitely Perugia, the city where all of us still live.

The "how" is the fun part: we were born as a reshuffle of several bands we'd already been playing in together (two at a time, in rotation). We all had different roles - the drummer was the singer, for instance - and we were at that typical stage in a musician's life where you're looking for new stimuli: FASK was meant to be the band that would get us out of the "rehearsing to play live" mindset and back into "rehearsing for the pleasure of it". We got very lucky, because by aiming for the second option we ended up achieving the first one too.

What was "Cavalli" meant to be, in your intentions? Listening back today, two years on, what's your impression? Personally I find it a very enjoyable album, interesting from a songwriting point of view, though at times let down by a production that's a bit too polished: the four tracks carried over from the "Questo E' Un Cioccolatino" EP sounded definitely better there.

Aimone: Look, "Cavalli" could simply have turned out better.

It's not so much down to the production as to the fact that we just played it badly. We were in a huge hurry to finish, we were as thrilled as we were intimidated by the people who were collaborating with us, and above all we didn't yet have enough experience in the studio. So let's say all these factors, combined with our chronic inability to handle stress, meant we lost some spontaneity and decisiveness along the way.

Maybe "This is a chocolate" sounds better to you precisely because we had more time and more beer to make it. I know it sounds silly, but it's no coincidence that for the second record we chose to record in a house by a lake, in a state of complete psycho-physical relaxation, and we came out of it really satisfied.

Alessandro: In our intentions "Cavalli" was a sort of "best of" from FASK's early years. We never thought of it as a proper album in its own right, and that's where the idea of also including the EP tracks came from.

These days live you only play "Lei", and the stylistic gap with the rest of the songs is huge. But there are gems that I think would deserve to be brought back; I'm thinking at least of "Guerra" or "Mangio", besides "Cioccolatino". What do you think?

Aimone: We completely agree with you, it's just that right now we find them hard to fit into the setlist. Let me explain better: the gap between "Cavalli" and "Hýbris", both in terms of sound and arrangement, is really noticeable. Putting a song from "Cavalli" right next to one from "Hýbris" during a show would basically cost us "pacca" [punch/impact]. And that must never happen, because "pacca" is the principle of violence, and violence is what needs to stay stuck in the heads of the people listening to us.

With "Lei" we manage to keep pace with the "Hýbris" songs (still speaking in terms of "pacca") because there's the singalong factor with the crowd to consider; with the other songs from "Cavalli" that factor would be missing and everything would come off flatter.

So, to wrap up, the only way to bring tracks like "Cioccolatino" or "Guerra" into a setlist on our current tour would be to lock ourselves in the rehearsal room for a few good weeks and rearrange everything. The problem is that right now we don't have time for anything: we're already writing the new record and we're in the van three days a week. Add on top of that the hassles of "real" life, and there you go.

Alessandro: For a short while, during the "Hýbris" tour, we put "Organi" in the setlist, but the crowd's reaction was so lukewarm that we decided to stop playing it. We really felt the disconnect with the other "Hýbris" tracks in the set, probably because of that whole "pacca" issue Aimone was talking about.

Alessio: often when we get the chance to play a full-length set we also do "Copernico", which in my opinion is a track that fits perfectly into a tight one-hour show. Other than that, I think the "problem" is that having only two albums out, so different from one another, creates a pretty sharp divide between the songs of one and the other. Except for the "Lei" and "Copernico" exceptions, it can almost feel like watching two different shows. Maybe over time, once we have more albums out, we'll be able to put together a more varied setlist, drawing from all our previous records.

How have your listening habits changed between "Cavalli" and "Hýbris"? Because I remember that in January you posted a list on your page of tracks that had influenced you while writing the second album. To name just a few: "Celebrated Summer", "Bastards Of Young", "Wake Up", "Vixi", "Queen Of Hearts", "Born To Run", "No Future Part Three". What were you looking for with "Hýbris"? And did you find it?

Aimone: Actually, we haven't changed that much: I think we still like the same things, meaning that the filters we use to judge the music we listen to are the same as a few years ago. Let's say that what's really changed is just the quantity of music we've listened to. We've listened to more, we've found more gold to steal from the huge mine that is the world of music. That gold has been catalogued right there in the list you mentioned above.

As for the second part of the question, well, with “Hýbris” we were looking for a synthesis of what we truly liked, almost a summary of the emotions that the songs on the list you mentioned gave us.

We also wanted to make sure we didn't come away disappointed by how we'd played, by how we'd interpreted the songs. We wanted an epic record, with new sonic textures that we could only imagine and not yet play, and we wanted a record that was sad but at the same time hopeful, one that would encourage people to keep believing even when shit piles up on you and you don't know whether to breathe or eat. I can't speak for the others, but at least for us five in FASK, “Hýbris” currently makes us think of all this stuff, so to answer you: “Yes, we found what we were looking for, we're proud of it.”

And how has your approach to “making music” changed, if it has changed at all? With “Hýbris” you seem to want to mark a distance: from the lyrics and artwork of “Cavalli” — “have fun coloring us however you want, we're really likeable horses” (kudos for that, by the way) — to the “our band could be your life” message of the new songs. Did you decide to reveal yourselves little by little?

Aimone: There was a sharp break, unfortunately also stemming from some bad moments during the old “Cavalli” tour. Let's put it this way: the line of “goofiness” is too thin to walk without taking a wrong step. You have to be really good to be able to handle “ironic” music, and honestly, we're not up to it.

The point is that we've always wanted to make music in the spirit of “feeling good and having fun,” but never with the idea of “look at us, look how funny we are”; we would have liked to be more ironic, but faced with a total communication disaster in which people started seeing us as the “band of idiots” and weren't really listening to the lyrics, we decided it was time to explicitly explain what we meant, or at least how we saw things.

From a musical point of view, though, there's more of a chasm than just a different approach. We buckled down, playing a lot and sweating even more in the rehearsal room. We've now understood that there's a level of musical professionalism you only earn after playing a song a thousand times.

Your sound has become much more “choral,” but there's no doubt that one of the album's great strengths is Alessandro's guitar sound, which always takes centre stage alongside Aimone's lyrics, simple and effective. How did the songs come about?

Aimone: In two ways, which are actually the same ways the songs still come about now:

– Alessandro brings a track to rehearsal, we all rearrange it together, we play it, I hum something over it to get an idea for a vocal line, we record it and then I put the lyrics together at night. Deep into the night.

– I bring a track to rehearsal, same process as before but without the late-night lyric-writing, probably because in this case the song has already taken shape around a mental hook that will end up becoming the vocal line.

Between the two options, the first one turned out to be the winner for most of the songs, also because, let's face it, Alessandro is a damn little genius.

Alessandro: Sometimes I record parts on Garage Band with drums out of time and unlikely arrangements, I send them to Aimone and he sends them back to me with the idea for the lyrics the next morning. He's a good lad too.

For “Hýbris” you put together eleven tracks that, in more attentive times, would deservedly make it a cult classic (and it might still become one, actually). Among my favourites are “A Cosa Ci Serve”, “Canzone Per Un Abete, Parte II” and “Calce”, a song that's only rarely played live. What about yours?

Aimone: Come on, that's not true at all, look, we've actually gone back to playing “Calce” lately!

Plus, it's amazing when everyone sings along with us, it gives us an incredible boost.

As for the question: honestly, we really wouldn't know which one to pick. We love them all, otherwise we would never have put them on this record. Before recording, we'd made a pact that if even one of us wasn't fully convinced about a song, it just wouldn't be recorded. And that's how it went.

Alessio: I do have a favorite: "Combattere per l'incertezza".

And the idea of closing the record the same way it opened?

Aimone: That's a little mental gem that Alessandro came up with, and it won us over right away.

He's obsessed with these details, seriously obsessed. I mean, he'd even worked out the connections between the songs before those songs were actually finished.

Alessandro: Actually, I think that one was really Jacopo's doing. I did suggest the idea that the record should end the same way it began, yes, but then he's the one who made it all happen. Another idea I'd come up with, which someone else ended up carrying out (Nicola Manzan, specifically), was to leave the violins on their own at the end of the last track, a bit like on the Ride album "Nowhere".

This time around Jacopo handled production together with Andrea Marmorini, but you also brought in some outside contributions: Simon Chiappelli and Nicola Cellai on horns for several tracks, Davide Zolli on percussion on "Troia", Nicola Manzan on violins. Where did these collaborations come from?

Aimone: Every collaboration has its own story, really.

In Nicola Manzan's case, well, he's basically a brother, there's not much to tell. We practically forced him to do whatever he felt like on the songs, and being the undisputed genius that he is, he came up with everything you hear on "Hýbris".

Simon and Nicola, on the other hand, were direct acquaintances of Andrea's, who brought them in to record. We clicked with them right away (they even joined us for several dates on tour!), and all the horn sections were reshaped based on their personal taste as well.

The thing is, we really loved this idea of total collaboration on the record: we didn't want to play conductor, because, first of all, we knew we weren't up to the job, and second, if you put your trust in people, you never go wrong.

Davide's story is the most absurd one: we knew Mojomatics well because they'd come to play in our area many times and we liked them a lot, but we'd never actually talked to them in person.

As it happens, Davide had to return a van to Andrea, and he brought it back right to where we were recording, at the exact moment we were overdubbing some percussion parts.

Hey, want to do whatever you feel like on this song here?

"Yeah, ok".

"Perfect, so while you record we'll make lunch".

And that's how it went. A plate of pasta in exchange for a killer drum fill at the end of "Troia".

What I found really interesting, beyond the free download everyone's already talked about, was the decision to release "Hýbris" on Woodworm under a Creative Commons copyleft license. How did that idea come about?

Aimone: Well, we've always been a bit wary of Siae. Let's just say we've never liked how it operates (and administers things), and we think it's genuinely harmful to the spread of new music in Italy: concert costs, unfair distribution of royalties, and all the stuff everyone already knows but usually doesn't care about because "eh, that's just how it is, there's no other way".

We talked about this with Woodworm, who basically got really excited, because they'd been waiting for exactly this: a band willing to tell that measly minimum Siae guarantees you to get lost, and instead back new forms of protection for releasing music, while also being happy for it to circulate for free online as long as it's non-profit.

So the idea came about together with the label, which from where we stand is clearly playing the long game, and thankfully isn't one of those "old school" outfits.

Speaking of web 2.0: your Facebook page, which gets a huge amount of traffic, is a constant, fun and passionate back-and-forth. It's an interesting dimension for a band like you, for whom contact with fans is a matter of vital importance.

Aimone: Actually, just today we were saying to each other that we don't have an audience, we have an army. It's honestly something we can't explain to anyone, how insane it is, but if we really think about it, we believe it's because the people who follow us on Facebook are, for better or worse, all people who've come to at least one of our shows, so we actually know them personally. And I don't mean "know" loosely, I mean it for real. I think I can recognize at least 100 to 200 people at a show, and with a lot of them I've built a genuine friendship. It's a really beautiful thing.

Honestly I wouldn't know how to explain it except with examples: like, it often happens that someone offers me a beer. The gesture itself doesn't mean much, because at the end of the day we're at a show and thankfully beer gets passed around like there's no tomorrow, but what strikes me is that it feels like I'm at home, it never makes me feel out of place.

Alessio: the great thing about a band like ours is that most of our online contacts are "earned" by playing live, and at shows we've made a ton of friends. Knowing we can count on 1,200 people is always a nice feeling.

On stage you're a hurricane, live is your natural habitat. And so is the van.

Aimone: Absolutely, we don't plan on stopping before April. We've still got room for a few more motorway service-station sandwiches.

Alessio: our real natural habitat is probably the van, honestly, we spend way more time in it than on stage.

I've seen you live on four occasions, each memorable for different reasons (Magnolia, Tambourine, Lio Bar, Arci Tom). Here on OndaRock, meanwhile, we covered your opening slot for Ministri at the Atlantico in Rome. What memories are you bringing home from this tour around Italy?

Aimone: It's amazing that you came to four dates! Thank you! And what's more, you picked shows that were completely different from one another. Magnolia, for instance, was gorgeous. Loads of people, totally into it, singing at the top of their lungs. We also remember this year's Lio Bar date with real joy: there were maybe 100 people there at most, but every single one of them was buzzing like a hornet's nest — within the first two songs they'd wrecked the only two monitors we had in front of us and knocked over four drinks, creating an infernal puddle on stage.

We're into that kind of slightly violent stuff, in fact I'd also mention the most recent shows we played, like Padua at Studio 2 or Arezzo at Karemaski: all small venues, but places where you can really feel the crowd passing their energy on to you. When that happens, the shows genuinely take on a different weight.

Then, well, there's Alcatraz, the Filagosto Festival (whose organizers are truly amazing people), the live show in Trezzo, and all those dates that landed us in huge venues in front of massive crowds. At first there's fear, then everything goes blank. Those are also things you don't easily forget.

I honestly wouldn't know what we'd bring home: right now I'd say a lot of satisfaction, and a strong desire to turn this music thing into an actual job, more or less.

Alessandro: From the Tambourine show, I personally came home with a dislocated shoulder and a nice trip to the ER, and I could probably have done without both of those. Still, it was one of the best shows of the tour.

Alessio: This tour is one of the best things that has ever happened to us — watching people grow with each date, watching them sing every song along with us, talking to some of them who drove 1,600 km to see us, sweating together, it's incredible. Honestly it's hard for me to pick the best dates because there are too many, but talking about the most recent ones, Tambourine, Studio 2 and Karemaski are unforgettable.

As we mentioned above, the setlist is an almost complete run-through of “Hýbris”.

In Mantua, though, you slipped in a surprise cover of “Territorial Pissings” by Nirvana, with Aimone on drums, Alessio on guitar and Jacopo on vocals. A real blast. How did that come about?

Aimone: It's a funny story. We were about to play a beautiful festival held in Monopoli called Dirockato. Peak summer, and the headliner was our big brother Appino. Obviously we were thrilled, both because it was him and because it was clear we'd end up doing something together. That something turned out to be one of his songs (“Andate Tutti Affanculo”, with us playing the instrumental part), one of ours (“Calce”, with Appino on vocals) and finally a cover: “Territorial Pissings”. Because Nirvana are Nirvana. For everyone.

Alessio: I can add that after that day we kept playing it, maybe partly because we love it so much — it's a song that works as a release, Jacopo (Gigliotti, bass, ed.) screams into the mic like there's no tomorrow, Aimone gets to play drums, an instrument I think he really misses, and I get to enjoy the beauty of singing right in people's faces.

Speaking of which, there are people who'd pay to hear “Uomo Pera” live, the track you contributed to the tribute to the great Laghetto.

Aimone: Ha! I don't think that will ever happen! We believe things like that should always stay tied to the place and the occasion they were reinterpreted for. Actually, let's put it this way: personally, we hope it's Laghetto who end up playing it again someday.

Alessandro: I don't even remember the chords or the tuning I used to record it!

In one of the rare breaks of an endless tour, I read that you found the time to write something new (or maybe you were lying!). What should we expect?

Aimone: Tomorrow (January 10, 2014) we're going back to rehearsals, after months and months.

We're always on tour, but we'll set up a makeshift rehearsal room with instruments borrowed from friends, just so we can keep working on the new songs. Right now we've got about 9 tracks more or less finished.

It'll be a sad record, and we don't want to say more, mostly because we don't know more ourselves.

All photographs are by Alessio Albi, taken from here, as pointed out to us by Fast Animals And Slow Kids.

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