Lili Refrain - Ancestral rituals

interview by Francesco Franchini

"Nagalite" is the seventh release by multi-instrumentalist, composer and performer Lili Refrain. The album follows the international success of “MANA” (2022), which led the Italian artist into an intense run of live shows, both as a headliner and as support on European and UK tours with Heilung and The Cult. Here's what she told us in this interview, touching on everything from her most distinctive sounds to kung-fu.

What was your first approach to music? At what age did you start getting interested in it?

I was told that to calm my movements in my mother's belly, my parents would often place enormous stereo headphones on her belly playing the Beatles and the calming effect was almost instantaneous. I obviously have no memory of it, but that was probably my first approach to music! I was lucky enough to listen to it from a young age, and it's always been a reason for sharing and many stories, especially from my father, who had built a quadraphonic sound system in the living room where we spent hours letting it wash over us. At 13 I was given a classical guitar as a gift, and from that moment on nothing was ever the same!

Your music explores a range of sounds: tribal, droning, blues-inflected. All of it always in service of a very personal formula. How do you generally go about composing tracks?

I don't really have a set rule and I don't impose genre limits on myself. I like to let everything I feel is right for expressing what I'm feeling in that moment flow in complete freedom, and that can happen in a thousand different ways. Sometimes I just start playing with no particular goal in mind, and things come out that I decide to capture and develop. Others arrive fully formed on their own, from a dream, a sudden idea, an image or a suggestion. Other times I get really technical, seeing what might come out of assembling rhythms and melodies in a certain way — it depends... Each of my songs has arrived in a different way, and each has its own story.

I imagine the live approach is very important to you, since it's a kind of ritual performance — how do you prepare?

Preparing for shows comes from the work I do almost every day, even when I'm not on stage. What I do live is quite complex to manage — it takes a lot of technical and physical preparation, a surgical sense of rhythm and ninja-like concentration. The live dimension is absolutely my favorite! It's much more direct than a record, it's a dialogue, a living, shared experience, and from my point of view the impact is decidedly much stronger. Since I play all the instruments myself and have to handle 5 different loopers in real time, with no computer or trick beyond my own physicality, I obviously need a lot of preparation. So I spend most of my time playing and practicing so that my body develops the muscle memory it needs to manage everything without too much difficulty, and without my brain getting too involved. That helps me channel the sound in a much more visceral way, because I experience it that way myself first and foremost, and it lets the repetition of the various loops produce its trance-like effect. It matters a lot to me that technique plays its part without being dominant, that it can look simple (even though it's anything but!) so that something else entirely gets to do the communicating.

Does cinema influence your music in any way? If so, which films and directors in particular?

Honestly, not directly. Obviously anything can be a form of influence, but I don't think I have an explicit tie to the language of cinema the way other artists do. That said, there are musicians who've written unmatched soundtracks, from our own Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota to Philip Glass and Michael Nyman. I really admire the ability to tell a story, to guide and stir emotions, regardless of whether that happens through words, sounds or images. I have a visceral love for directors like Kurosawa, Kitano, Park Chan-wook, Tarkovsky, Lee, Lynch, Villeneuve… But I don't know how much any of that really seeps into my music or my sonic imagination.

Which records would you call essential to your growth as an artist?

What a tough question! I really couldn't give you a list, it would be huge and incredibly boring… but let me try… The first records that shaped me are the ones I listened to as a kid with my dad, like the Beatles (“Abbey Road” and “White Album” above all), Led Zeppelin (“I“, “II”, “III” got played pretty much on a loop at home), Pink Floyd (“Atom Heart Mother” and “The Dark Side Of The Moon” are the ones I'm most attached to, absolutely), Black Sabbath (obviously “Paranoid“!) and Santana (“Abraxas” is without a doubt the one that blew my mind guitar-wise). As a teenager I taught myself guitar off tabs from Metallica records and by studying various guitar virtuosos like Satriani (“Surfing With The Alien”), but it's absolutely “Chaos AD” by Sepultura that shaped me the most during that period, probably instilling in me a love for acoustic percussion and a certain tribal approach to music.

Live shows have always had a huge impact on me, and as a teenager I saw a lot of incredible performances, thanks above all to the squatted spaces that in Rome have always been fantastic hubs of culture and experimentation, often far beyond anything the city itself had to offer. I think I owe a lot to bands like Concrete (Nuc Scio Tenebris Lux) and all those groups that maybe don't exist anymore, whose records you could only find at their own merch tables. From them I definitely learned a lot about the attitude needed to pursue a path and how to hold a stage in a certain way. Over time I also started listening to a lot of classical and contemporary music — Robert Fripp was very important, as was the minimalism of Steve Reich, the visions of Ligeti, and highly gestural, cross-disciplinary approaches to voice like those of Meredith Monk, Nina Hagen, Diamanda Galás. Swans and all their records were definitely a very intense listening experience for me, and I could go on with a lot, lot more, but I think I'll stop here!

How important is visual art to you?

In life, you mean? Enormously! I live surrounded by artworks, photographs and illustrations by so many artists. For my album covers I've always tried to collaborate with people I know personally and whose artistry I admire a great deal, so I have the great honor and privilege of having artwork by Francesco Viscuso, who did the covers for “Lili Refrain”, “9” and “ULU”, Fernanda Veron, with whom I collaborated on “Kawax“, Paolo Sanna, who did the cover for “Mana”, Error Design, a poster artist from Barcelona who created all the rich artwork for “Live In London”, and Nicola Alessandrini, a street artist who, in defiance of the AI so widely used these days, instead used his immense artistry and a huge amount of pencil and liquid graphite to hand-draw the cover of “Nagalite”.

The album “Mana” was a turning point in your career - what memories do you have today about making the record and its concept?

“Mana” was the first record where I deliberately moved away from the guitar, which had always been my main instrument of expression since 2007. With this record I started using, for the first time, instruments like percussion and synthesizers that I'd never used before, and honestly I didn't think it could work so well or that the album would have the impact it did. It was a gamble, if you like, and it definitely put me to the test, but I admit I learned an enormous amount thanks to everything that came afterwards.

I know “Mana” is dedicated to the discipline of kung fu. Can you tell me when you started practicing it?

“Mana” is dedicated mainly to migrants, travelers and all those who cross borders and break down barriers, and to kung fu as hard work and as an existential state for maintaining balance even when the world is shaking. I started practicing it in 2017 with a dear friend, who's also my sound engineer, Stefano Morabito - I owe him the discovery of this universe, and Si Fu Riolo for his generosity in teaching me hung gar. Kung fu is a discipline you carry with you in everyday life, and it has undoubtedly poured into my music a great deal too, both energetically and physically - not to mention that in “Mana”, among the many percussion instruments played, there's also the taiko, an instrument played using postures and forms that come directly from the martial arts.

You've played at Roadburn and with bands like Heilung and The Cult - what memories do you have of those moments?

I have some incredible memories. With Heilung I ventured for the first time into an amazing three-month tour, one of the biggest productions I'd ever worked with. Christopher and Maria were in the audience at a show I played in Copenhagen shortly before making my first appearance at Roadburn to present “Mana”. Honestly, I hadn't recognized them, and when they came up to me after my show and asked if I'd be interested in touring with them, I nearly fainted on the spot when I realized who they were! It was a magical experience, I owe so much to all of them, because I truly learned a great deal during the months we spent together, and I realized what making music at other levels really involves. A beautiful friendship also formed with The Cult, especially with Ian Astbury and his team. I toured with The Cult for about a month, and Ian later invited me back for the Death Cult anniversary too, and I admit that tour was even more fun and exciting.

Ian Astbury, always very attentive to new musical proposals, chose you to open some dates on the Cult. Did you get a chance to talk to him, perhaps about spiritual themes?

We talked a lot, mostly about the world and music and ways of doing things, not so much about spirituality, because that was already very much in the air around him and there was no need to spell it out. He's a truly wonderful person, deep and extremely generous. He dedicated a song to me from the stage every day to thank me for being there, a gesture that honestly has always left me speechless.

The new single “Nagal” is out, anticipating the release of the new album “Nagalite“. Can you tell me about this track?

“Nagal” is a complete track, where I use the full range of instruments at my disposal, adding for the first time the use of electronic drums, which I'd never used before. It's a technically very complex track to perform, and I feel it as a sort of great sonic summary of everything I've done up to now - there's the compositional complexity of “9”, the nod to metal of “Kawax”, the ritualism of “Mana”, and a use of voice that's definitely more conscious and also deliberately more Mediterranean: it's a track born of the entire journey made so far, and within the context of the album, which is a suite of transformation, it represents its brightest moment.

The video for “Nagal”, shot in black and white by Carlo Settembrini, reminded me of certain English folk horror film imagery, like “Eyes Of Fire”. Do you agree?

I don't know the film you're referring to, and honestly I don't have a huge knowledge of folk horror cinema - perhaps the only genre film I've seen in that vein might be “Midsommar“... I've already worked with Carlo on my previous videos, we made “MuL” and “Ahi Tapu” together, and I later lent one of my tracks for the soundtrack of his short film “Ad Meata”, which won several festivals, and we've always gotten along really well together. Besides being an excellent director, Carlo is also a very good photographer and an amazing illustrator: I've always admired his ability to keep an immensely painterly eye on reality, he manages to infuse endless poetry into everything happening on the other side of the camera. This time too he managed to perfectly translate the idea of the concept I'd written and everything I wanted to express through the video for Nagal. And if everything turned out so beautifully, I personally owe it above all to the extraordinary Rachele Fabozzo and Leonardo Salani, who lent their luminous presence to make this video with me, and to those who don't appear on screen but were essential in making it all happen, namely Giacomo Salani of Fucina Studio in Empoli, who connected all of us, and Nicola Bracci, who made his splendid self-built theater available to us.

(April 19, 2026)

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Francesco Franchini, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition