I Hate My Village - Cosmopolitan math rock

The multidimensional guitar work of Adriano Viterbini (Bud Spencer Blues Explosion), the sprawling percussive groove of Fabio Rondanini (Calibro 35, Afterhours), the collective know-how and saturated bass of Marco Fasolo (Jennifer Gentle), the guitars and the increasingly significant vocal contribution of Alberto Ferrari (Verdena) are by now a well-established reality. But let's not be misled either by these experienced names, or by the inevitable fading of the surprise effect that fired up spirits back at the time of the first album. The cosmopolitan math rock of I Hate My Village is the result of a research that capitalizes on the pleasure of working together and channels it into a continual search for something innovative, on an emotional level as much as in terms of sound choices. The audience has clearly caught on to this.

From the Ellenic Festival in Agrigento, to Estate al Castello Sforzesco in Milan, from the Anfiteatro delle Cascine di Firenze to the Salento region's SEI Festival di Coolclub, via the SuperAurora Art & Music Festival in Rome, the Color Fest in Maida and the ever-present date at the Locus Festival in Locorotondo, I Hate My Village are in the midst of an Italian tour that will run through to autumn, and at every stop they set fans alight with a tight, energetic and creative set. There's no doubt the project appears to have found its ideal dimension: the live show. We caught up with them "in the middle of the journey" of their tour.

What we can tell you, in terms of how we experience being on stage and above all the kind of energy we bring to our shows, is that playing live is like a form of compensation, to put it ironically. It's as if direct contact with the audience pays us back, and in some way also frees us of all the responsibility, the effort, the commitment and the dedication that goes into making a record. That doesn't mean there's no rigor, no method, no real work involved - but there's no question that being together on stage carries considerable weight, especially when you've spent so much time making the record.

And what about your internal dynamics? Have they evolved over time?

More and more, we're a real band. We've never liked the "supergroup" tag that gets pinned on us from time to time, even if, well, on paper the project might have looked that way, especially in the beginning. In reality, though, our story didn't start out like that - it's always been rooted in the desire to make things together. At a certain point, in the middle of the journey of our lives, we literally "found" each other. We're four completely different people, each with our own character, who nevertheless get along well, are able to engage with each other, and manage to keep a high level of focus while also leaving room for plenty of messing around. And even though we're all past 40, it's as if making music, creating in the studio, and above all sharing the stage together, reignites us - reignites our desire to imagine things, to make plans. We've built ourselves a little paradise of sorts to fantasize about.

Clear enough. One defining trait of your evolution seems to be the growing role of Alberto's voice in the new compositions.

Absolutely! On the first album, Alberto came in when the material was pretty much ready, because the idea of using vocals came later. Now we're a band with a singer, and we write with the voice in mind right from the start. In our repertoire there are even, if we can call them that, actual songs.

So you're heading down the Lunapop path, then.

There it is, well put. (we laugh)

In the meantime you've also landed on television. On "Propaganda Live" you looked completely at ease, and the tour was still yet to come.

Exactly, you said it yourself, that's precisely the point. We got there with an enormous desire to play live, to let the music come out in its purest form, which is that of the live performance. The context was almost secondary, even though Propaganda was certainly the right kind of venue, run by people who knew who we are, who were willing to showcase us, understand us and put us in a position to do well. Beyond that, our music is a suit we've had tailor-made for ourselves, and we're always happy to wear it and feel comfortable in it.

Building on this "tailoring" reference, and paraphrasing the title of one of your tracks, I find myself wondering whether rock music is "a minimal art". In other words, is your approach to music a craftsman's approach?

In itself, rock music is too grand, too spectacular a thing to be called a minimal art. There are, however, countless forms of small-scale craftsmanship that never make the news—in fact often go completely unnoticed—yet happen all around the world. The world doesn't pay them any attention, but they exist and they matter. The care these craftspeople take, their patience, is something you can draw inspiration from, always trying to find the beauty in things, to put it into whatever you do, and to treat it with the utmost respect.

Over time your performing approach has become increasingly unpredictable, including in terms of tone and timbre. Is that a deliberate choice?

Partly, yes. Each of us, in this I Hate My Village setup, now tends to play his own instrument as if it were a different instrument, taking risks and heading down paths other than the ones he already knew. That responds to a creative need, and in that sense you could call it a choice, but it's nothing planned out in advance, nothing predetermined at a desk. Taking risks is sometimes a necessity in life too, and music, after all, mirrors our lives. One trait we share, as musicians and as human beings, is facing the future with great curiosity. Barefoot. Or rather, in shoes that are a bit too tight.

There's something I've been wanting to ask you for a while. Listening to all the polyrhythmic interlocking of "Water Tanks", it made me think of the gamelan of King Crimson's "Discipline". And reading the album's track titles, when I saw "Eno degrado" I thought I saw a tribute to "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts", the masterpiece by Eno/Byrne. Is that right?

We'll be grateful to you for life for the "Discipline" reference, and to be honest it does make sense, but on "Eno degrado" we have to disappoint you. "Eno" stands for "enoteca", wine bar (laughs). We recorded part of the demos partly in a former wine bar in the area where Adriano lives, and partly in his father's garage-workshop. So all the ideas were numbered as "Enoteca 1", "Enoteca 2", "Enoteca 3"... all the way up to "25 Enoteche". Of those, we kept one, and it became "Eno degrado", a title that captures some of our more "primitive" tendencies, so to speak.

Speaking of primitive instincts, since you've also got the word "hate" in your name—which incidentally plays on the sound overlap between "hate" and "ate" as a nod to a cannibal movie poster—it seems only natural to ask. Do you ever argue while on tour or in the studio?

There's a lot of affection among us, mutual respect and admiration, and a shared desire to do things as well as possible. And to do them together. At a certain point, the closeness—like between siblings—grows, so you inevitably run into creative arguments. They're always constructive, though. We all have our own ideas, but the direction is very clear among us. It's not just that we all have our egos under control, so that even when you're in love with something, at a certain point you trust the experience and the perspective of the others—the main thing is really that we all come from situations where we carried heavy creative, personal and managerial responsibilities, whereas in this project we wanted to create a zone of extreme comfort on the relational level, so we could throw each other off balance on the creative level instead.

Do you also use that comfort zone live, to set yourselves new musical goals?

Always. Musically, we shy away from well-trodden paths and look for the uphill road instead. As people, though, we've been through a lot—we're grown-ups, after all. We tend to get along well, to talk things through right away, and if there's any friction, to smooth it over, because we need to work in a peaceful frame of mind. That's a job we chose for ourselves. It's not about looking for compromises so much as arriving at a synthesis that represents all of us—and one that, at least in our view, is the most beautiful thing we can offer an audience.

Was it difficult to adapt the new material to a live setting?

We recorded our latest album without ever thinking about how we'd play it live. The first album was a snapshot, so it was immediately reproducible just by following the pattern of the recordings—that is, starting from a riff and building a structure on top of it. This time it was much more complicated. There are keyboards on some tracks on the second album, but above all there's a peculiar use of guitars. Alberto's guitars seem to merge completely with his voice, almost as if he'd recorded voice and instrument together. It's a delicate balance, but a stimulating one to bring to the stage. That's why we didn't just value the idea of reproducing the songs as exactly as possible, but also the method of picking up on the various mistakes and using them to develop new ideas, expanding the songs' structures so they'd lend themselves to celebrating the moment of meeting the audience, almost like a kind of ritual.

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