Lucy - Italians Around the World

We met Lucy on the occasion of his performances at Club To Club in Turin, at the Teatro Carignano and at the Jam, on November 3rd and 4th. Lucy is one of the surprises of 2011. Behind this moniker - perhaps better suited to a neoshoegaze act - is Luca Mortellaro, a producer born in Palermo but now based in Berlin after a stint in Paris. His "Wordplay For Working Bees" received glowing reviews pretty much everywhere, not least on OndaRock, so we decided to have a chat with him to find out more about his path, his experiences, and not least Stroboscopic Artefacts, the label he founded, which has released some of the emerging names of international electronic music. We also talked about the current moment in electronic music, in particular this disorienting and original blend of dubstep and techno, one of the most interesting new developments of recent times. What emerged was the portrait of a versatile guy with clear ideas, and of a label that will surely keep delivering great music. One name above all? Xhin...

Who is Luca Mortellaro? Introduce yourself to OndaRock readers.

I was born in Palermo, then I moved abroad, first to France and then to Germany. I've now been living in Berlin for three years, and it's here that I launched Stroboscopic Artefacts.

Why did you move to Berlin? For musical reasons, personal ones, or also related to the political and social context of this period?

Well, let's say that leaving Italy in particular was also down to political reasons, in the sense that I don't like the undemocratic direction the country is taking, without going into too much detail. Aside from that, after Paris, the choice of Berlin was driven by musical needs. Already in Paris, when I started thinking seriously about music, that is, considering it as a profession, I had in mind to launch something like a community of creative minds. That took shape as an actual record label, Stroboscopic Artefacts. I launched the label a year after arriving in Berlin, just enough time to sort out the organizational and administrative side of things.

In Berlin you got in touch with people from the city's music scene...

Sure, that's the beauty of Berlin. It welcomes you with pretty much open arms. Even though the scene is packed with labels, artists and clubs, there's no real sense of competition. It gives you the feeling of being part of an underground community, where people can help each other out - and do help each other out - a lot. Berlin is always ready to embrace new things, there's an audience well versed in electronic music, they expect innovation, so they're ready to listen to riskier stuff, which is exactly what we love releasing on Stroboscopic Artefacts.

Is there a concept behind the label?

Well, let's say there's always a concept in some sense, in that at least this kind of honest and sincere reality, in the underground sense of the word, always has behind it the drive - almost the need - to say certain things in a certain way. The reasons and goals that led to the birth of Stroboscopic Artefacts were to build a sort of platform that on one hand would allow for the free expression of the artists, and on the other would define itself through their creative contribution, while keeping certain basic traits fixed, like the graphics and the mastering, for example, which help characterize the label. In this sense, we have the graphic design studio, Oblivious Artefacts, which brings me its ideas, Artefacts Mastering (the mastering studio), which works in a certain way, and of course the artists, who sometimes present me with things I wasn't expecting and that surprise me. There's a sort of multi-voiced dynamic within the label.

How many people work at Stroboscopic Artefacts?

Well, there's one person who helps me handle the administrative side, Xavier, a French guy living in Berlin. Then there's a girl from London who handles press releases, and then there's a booking agent, who handles booking for Stroboscopic's main artists. Together we work with Apelago, an agency that handles the showcases as well as the booking for Lucy, Xhin, and Markus Suckut. Then there's the graphic design studio, Oblivious Artefacts, which is a collective of artists who work on the visuals for the showcases, and who developed the graphic concept of Stroboscopic Artefacts. And then Artefacts Mastering, the mastering studio that handles post-production, run by Dadub, two Italian guys (Giovanni and Daniele).

In the age of rampant downloading, can you actually make a living from music?

Yes, you can, at least so far... The music business doesn't rest solely on record sales; there's a whole apparatus in which the booking and gigs side has taken on considerable importance. Then there are other aspects like publishing, graphic design, and other kinds of work. Let's say that nowadays a label has to work on every front, not just on selling copies of records.

Tell me about the Stroboscopic Artefacts artists…

Xhin was the first artist to work with Stroboscopic. I'd been in touch with him long before I founded the label, basically since the days of Meerestief, a label we both worked with. Xhin's productions had impressed me so much that I'd told myself: if I ever launch a label, Xhin will be the first artist I ask to work with - and that's exactly what happened. After a first couple of EPs and various tracks and releases, he became one of Stroboscopic's flagship artists. The next step is his album, expected in November.

I've heard a few things by Xhin, and it seems to me that compared to your stuff he's more into pure techno, if such a thing as pure techno exists or has ever existed.

Yes, in fact pure techno doesn't exist. Let's say his sound is much more aggressive and cutting than mine. If I had to define it critically, I'd say he has a sort of surgical precision in sound engineering…

…It sounds more 90s to me compared to your sound, which instead seems more hybrid, especially with dubstep.

His roots are definitely in the 90s, in a certain kind of Japanese or English techno, but I still find him extremely contemporary. His first record on Stroboscopic, the Fixing The Error/Lynx EP, was really ahead of its time, in the sense that it's a sound I saw take hold in the underground six months later. The great thing about Xhin is that he doesn't worry about what would be right or in line with the times. He simply does what he's inspired to do. His advantage is that he lives 'isolated' from the rest of the techno scene. He's from Singapore, where the scene is basically just him - there's nothing else. That lets him gain in originality, because it's his own world that comes out on his records. Other people who've worked with us from the start are Dadub, the duo who also handle production and mastering for us. They're working on some beautiful stuff, they'll do a remix for Xhin, and they've done some great live sets at showcases - at Sonar in Barcelona, at Melt in Germany. Then there's also Pfirter, Perc, Markus Suckut... we're a nice family.

What were you listening to before you started working on Lucy?

Well, when I was younger I listened to a lot of Warp Records. Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Squarepusher were my daily bread, and Boards Of Canada and Plaid still fill up my iPod on trips… Besides that, I listened to a lot of trip-hop, Portishead, Tricky, a lot of Brian Eno, Steve Reich and things like that, more on the classical side.

Rock?

Apart from a bit of psychedelic rock from the past, very little.

On the post-punk/new wave side? Cabaret Voltaire, Clock Dva, the classics that also inspired 90s electronic music?

Hmm, for one reason or another those records weren't in my collection...

...You skipped over the fathers...

...Let's say I went to other parents, like Kraftwerk, Cluster and things like that.

Then I imagine you went through the Detroit scene of the 80s...

Yes, quite a bit, sure.

Yes, absolutely, because dubstep is having a considerable impact on the underground. Obviously when a huge hype descends on a fairly new genre, what happens is that alongside the more underground and beautiful dubstep, a ton of mainstream, tasteless stuff gets produced too. When I talk about dubstep, I mean things like Shackleton, Kode9, Burial, Shed. I think Shed is the strongest connection between that Berlin-style techno (Basic Channel) and the more English dubstep rhythms. If you think about it, even Surgeon is deeply English in his way of making techno.

As with Burial, I also see in your music that panoptic gaze over the illuminated metropolis

Sure, it's the places we live in that inspire and dictate our way of making music. I think that kind of dubstep, whether Burial's or Shackleton's, could only have been born in London. Just as certain techno could only have been born in Berlin. You can no longer think of making music that's detached from its environment. The environment shapes 100% of the music you make, it gives it form, it gives it a scent.

The titles, read one after another, with pauses placed in just the right spots, form a sentence. It's a sentence by a Greek philosopher.

Which one?

Heh, find out yourself, I don't tell anyone...

I read in another interview that you don't like everyday routine, getting up in the morning, going to work, earning a living...

Yes, let's say it's not a matter of earning a living, because what I do, contrary to what people might think, is very demanding work. Going back to the album's title, I can't be a worker bee, I can't live by the same rites and rhythms year after year, because it feels like I've got chains on me. The great thing about working in the arts, especially at an underground level, is that you create your own work. It's not something where they hire you for an office job, you have your contract, you get your pay. And it's not just about money, above all you're doing something that satisfies you emotionally.

So does the album also reflect the sense of anxiety caused by this process of forced routine that we're all more or less subjected to?

Sure, the album was meant to be a snapshot both of the feelings I have when I look around and see how almost slave-like the way the world works is, and at the same time it wants to put forward emotional solutions

for getting out of it. Even though I'm not proposing any political manifesto, propaganda or revolution. It's simply an inner revolution, in the sense that maybe certain feelings evoked through music can also redeem you, in some small way.

My favorite track is "Mas". There I thought I could sense a kind of hope compared to the darkness of the other tracks.

That's exactly what I meant in my previous answer. The album isn't simply a "dark" acknowledgment of a state of anxiety and suffering at seeing the world as it is, but there's also an attempt to find emotional solutions, a way toward the light.

Your favorite track?

I can't say, because to me the record is a homogeneous corpus, in my mind the tracks aren't even separate. It's a single emotional mass.

Any cinematic influences? I'd ask about Lynch, but that seems almost too obvious...

Yes, I'm a die-hard film buff and Lynch is one of my biggest inspirations. Actually, I like a good deal of the sci-fi/dystopian strand, from classics like "Blade Runner" to "Matrix". Especially "Blade Runner", with that atmosphere of strobe lights, neon, a black-and-white world, a caged world...

I bet you also like Wong Kar Wai...

Absolutely, he's one of my favorite directors.

I have to ask you about a couple of artists who feel more or less close to you: Shed and Shackleton.

They're both geniuses. Shackleton in particular has been a huge source of inspiration. What's more, I'm quite lucky, because we're almost studio-mates, in the sense that my door and his are just a few meters apart. We're pretty close physically too. I know him personally, very well, and he's been an artistic mentor to me. Shed, on the other hand, I only know through his productions. The Traveller is a remarkable album in terms of exploring other territories. While Shackleton is thoroughly English in his brand of experimentation, to me Shed is the one who built the bridge between that kind of English bass music and the typically Berlin-style Basic Channel sound. Shed's role is a very important one in today's underground culture.

What have you been listening to lately?

A lot of it's fairly old stuff, like Popol Vuh, Cluster and kraut-rock. As for stuff more connected to the club world, there are several labels doing great work right now, starting with CLR, which I think has never been as prolific as it is now — from Chris (Liebing, ed.) himself to Tommy Four Seven, they're really doing beautiful work. They've put out some excellent remixes. Or Ostgut Ton too, up until about a year ago — I listen to and play a lot of their stuff. Then part of the Electric Deluxe catalogue, Sandwell District, Surgeon, who's really impressive in terms of quality — his latest album, "Breaking The Frame", is really excellent.

What's your relationship with social networks?

I think they're one of the most powerful media around at the moment, especially for their direct to fan potential. This possibility of going straight to the fan through the record label is a beautiful landscape. Social networks have plenty of negative aspects, but if used a certain way they can be a good way to spread your music without spamming, letting people reach your music without you having to knock on their door.

What's your relationship with downloading? Don't you think the ability to listen to everything at any moment is killing off desire?

Well, look, I think it's easy to get saturated these days, and because of that you have to be a bit careful what you devote your time to during the day, but at the same time I find it an extremely democratic way of approaching music. In the sense that you have the chance to really weigh up what you want to buy or support and what you don't. Also because supporting a record means supporting a community that expresses itself through that record. So this direct communication tool with fans is one of the positive sides of the digital revolution.

Before the digital revolution there was a tighter link between music and the territory that produced it, something that seems to have been somewhat lost following the internet revolution and the globalization of side effects that came with it. Couldn't this cause (or maybe it's already causing) a standardization of output?

I actually don't think this danger is really a danger, in the sense that, if you think about it, the exchange might be faster now, but this has always existed. Think, for example, of how techno spread across Europe, passing through certain artists. Now these branchings happen faster, but the scenes still exist. The place where you are still matters for the music you make. If I'd stayed in Paris, my music would sound different from how it sounds now, same thing if I'd moved to Rome rather than Berlin or London. I would certainly have had different kinds of influences. It's true there's more direct communication between different scenes, and that leads to strong cross-contamination, but there's a huge difference between contamination and standardization.

What are your plans after "Wordplay For Working Bees"?

My first post-album release just came out, Monad X on Stroboscopic Artefacts. Then I'm working on some really interesting remixes that will come out in the next few months. For 2012 there's something even more experimental and less dancefloor-oriented in the works. There's a project going on behind the scenes at the label that will focus on other aspects.

A new Lucy album coming up?

Definitely, yes, I already miss working on an album. It was a truly wonderful experience working for a long time on a unified project, building more complex architectures than what you can do on an EP, where you have much less room to express things. So definitely by 2012/2013.

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