Massimo Volume - Post-rock and Literature

On a sunny afternoon we meet Emidio Clementi, frontman of Massimo Volume, who has just settled into the hall of the Teatro Lauro Rossi in Macerata, waiting for the show organized by Hamlin Fest.

Mimì generously agrees to a long chat, while we sit in the theatre's seats watching the frantic work unfold on stage. It promises to be an unusual evening for the town and for the venue itself.

I really appreciated “Aspettando i Barbari”: I found it direct, cutting, at times even vicious. It surprised me, because if there's one thing I wouldn't have associated with your music, it's immediacy. And yet I found it surprisingly easy to get into.

Based on statements you've made in the past, this record came about with very different premises compared to its predecessor, “Cattive Abitudini”. You've also repeatedly described this latest effort as colder than the previous one. Can you tell us a bit about the differences between these post-reunion works?

The direction we took this time was actually dictated by “Cattive Abitudini”, which is a record I'd make exactly the same way again, but perhaps it set something of a limit for us. That's because it has a very warm sound – whether that's down to the analog recording process or the way it's played – and it's also very intimate. Still, it also felt like a bit of a constraint, one that led us toward something we weren't entirely convinced by, with the vocals so present, so close, so low in register.

So the idea was to restore some distance. The first choice was therefore to go digital, which in fact also shaped the songwriting. “Aspettando i Barbari” is a record we made somewhat in vitro: we didn't have much chance to work together at the same time, a lot of it was done individually, and we worked extensively on the tracks. This last aspect was less evident on “Cattive Abitudini”, where instead we recorded many takes, which made the live shows much easier afterward, because once the album was finished we were already ready to play it. This time, on the other hand, we actually had to learn how to play the new record.

Indeed, you can hear a fair amount of work with overdubs on the new album.

Yes, there's plenty of that. But maybe for the first time in our lives we managed to keep hold of the reins all the way through, right up to getting exactly what we wanted. In the past, after starting out with some general ideas, the record would always end up taking on a life of its own, pulling away from our original intentions. This time we wanted, all the way through, a more compact record, with a jagged, hard sound, without any of the more rarefied moments we'd had in the past. Maybe the one exception is the closing track, “Da Dove Sono Stato”.

That's exactly why I found it curious that “Aspettando i Barbari”, which is a more elaborate, more deliberate record than a “live-take” work like “Cattive Abitudini”, generally comes across as more immediate and less difficult.

I think it really helps that it's a faster record, which generally makes it a lot more accessible. Also consider that it's a record we worked on for almost a year of recording, obviously spread out over time. But it's also a very thought-out record, one I find very communicative, even beyond the lyrics. In any case, it had that effect on you as it has on others, but I won't hide from you that plenty of other people have actually found it more difficult.

It also seems to me that here the lyrics are better blended with the music compared to the past.

Yes, that's thanks to having had a lot of time available for making it. I had all the calm and peace of mind I needed to record the vocals, when the music was already largely composed.

So I imagine that, already having a structure in place to work on, you felt it was easier to fit your voice in as well as possible, also in order to refine the melody. For instance, there seems to be an unusually careful attention to rhyme.

Absolutely. The music gives you a lot of pointers on how to work on the lyrics, it gives you a lot of clues. It's like working in a furnished room: you still don't know how your characters are going to move around, but you already have a rough path laid out. You're not facing the classic blank page.

I've always wondered how an artist knows when it's time to stop…

Do you mean for good?

No, I mean putting an end to the process of making a record!

Well, in any case, figuring out when to stop as a band isn't exactly a minor problem either! (laughs, ed.)

Anyway, going back to making a record: the way I picture it, when an artist is grappling with their work they'd always want to add something, refine this or that aspect a bit more… but how do you know when it's time to wrap things up and finish?

You know, it's true that after a while things start rotting in your hands. That's when you have to close it off, and usually you can feel when it's the right moment. But, as with writing, there's also a revision period that's very important, maybe even more important than the writing itself.

That's true, there are always things I would have liked to write differently, even on this very record. But then if I think about how many things came out even at the mixing stage… for instance, I think of Egle's guitar, which modulates that feedback a bit in the opening track (“Dio Delle Zecche”, ed.), which basically resolved it somewhat. That's a guitar part that emerged from listening to that track over and over during mixing. Egle said to me: “Listen, can you leave me a channel, I've got a guitar idea?”. And that was a contribution added right at the last minute, like many others afterwards, so I think in the end there are more things we gained along the way than things we sat down and reworked, though there are some of those too.

Anyway, I also think about what O'Connor used to say: “A good story never ends, you can never put a full stop, because it has these ongoing lines of flight you can exploit”.

Speaking of stories. When you were promoting your book “La Ragione delle Mani”, you said you felt at home with the short story format, with its conciseness. Thinking of the parallel with music, and considering how central the lyrics and your characters are to Massimo Volume, have you ever been tempted to make an actual concept album?

On one hand it's an appealing challenge, on the other I'm afraid it would constrain me, that it would become a limitation, a blueprint I'd then be forced to follow. If one day I had an idea, a theme strong enough to carry through and recur across several songs, maybe that's when the groundwork for it could be laid.

For instance, I think of Flavio Giurato, whose records I like a lot. There's one I actually don't know, set in Rome during wartime (his first LP, “Per Futili Motivi”, ed.). Now, that one instinctively interests me a little less to dig into, because I sense it as forced, though maybe it isn't…

The big risk with a concept album is that the individual tracks lose their strength once pulled out of context. Only the best records manage to offer songs with a personality of their own that still work within the overall design.

That's exactly it! And also, it's something that many times ends up bordering on ideology, something you have to stick to no matter what. Anyway, I don't rule it out for the future.

Still, it often happens that a record has a dominant theme even if it's not explicitly stated. For instance, in “Aspettando i Barbari” the theme of waiting comes up again and again. I'm thinking of the title track, but also “La Cena” and “La Notte”.

Yes, but also the theme of utopia, of the dream that some of the characters I mention achieved through sheer tenacity: I'm thinking of Füller, Mao, John Cage…

But there are also stories that end differently. I notice in many characters a sense of disillusionment, wrapped in a decadent atmosphere. You openly like to dwell on the aftermath rather than the crucial moment itself, as if you were framing a shot where the focus is on the final situation, with the past blurred into the background, something you merely allude to. And yet here the theme of waiting completely flips the perspective, casting the gaze toward a looming near future that seems anything but rosy.

That's true, that's exactly it. Let's say what terrifies me most is the very instant things happen, because I don't feel all that capable of describing it, probably due to some technical limitation of mine. So I always shift the point of view, forward or backward.

I have to say that on the last two records I've struggled less than in the past to write my lyrics. I think I did well to avoid the situation where, as you work, the lyrics you still need to write pile up, for as many as 7-8 songs. This time I managed to keep pace with the sketches of the songs, as they came out, giving them lyrics as I went, which let me make sure the whole work stayed consistent. It's the words that dictate a song's structure and balance, and without them things get a bit difficult, because at a certain point they need to be in place so you can start figuring out where to cut or do whatever else the production stage of a song requires.

I wasn't familiar with Coetzee and, intrigued by the reference to the novel of the same name, “Waiting for the Barbarians”, I looked into it. I found myself thinking about the story of this magistrate who for years lives within the small confines of his own reality (a frontier outpost amid a war between the Empire and the barbarians), ignoring the bigger picture beyond it. I get the feeling it's a situation similar to how our own era is often described: we find ourselves lost in our small everyday routines, drifting along passive and indifferent to what's happening out there, fearing that sooner or later we'll be presented with a bill that could be quite steep. Am I off base?

No, not at all. I read his book years ago and what stayed with me was the general atmosphere it describes. That's what I drew on when writing the lyrics for the title track. I like the way he often does this: he manages to stage a world you can't quite place in time. Is it ancient? Is it the present? Honestly, I don't remember well whether he specifies it or not. Anyway, I started from that element, and everything is anchored to the final line: "Now that evening shortens the shadows we withdraw and, before the mirror, like brides we dress our hair in honor of the barbarians". The lyrics were born starting from that conclusion.

Then there are a lot of personal things inside it too: the image of arms that seem like tired wings is almost private, born during a holiday in Greece while I was watching my wife sleeping next to me. Either way, the record lives a lot on these two faces: one is the "grand scenario" you mentioned, the other is my private sphere. They seemed like very distant worlds, but I found it interesting that they could mix, that I could insert my private sphere into the general one.

Changing subject, I'll wrap up by turning to a few questions from our own Claudio Lancia, who has written so much about you for OndaRock. First of all, about your way of singing, declaiming, which was relatively uncommon when you started out. Today, on the other hand, there's a real proliferation of this style. It's easy to point to Offlaga Disco Pax, often associated with you, but also to Vasco Brondi, Il Management Del Dolore Post-Operatorio and others still. How do you see this evolution, do you feel like a pioneer?

Well, yes... but we in turn had inherited it from Starfuckers and from certain things by Cccp even before Csi. We certainly didn't invent it.

You know, we were just talking a few days ago with our sound engineer about how strange it seems that what many people see as an obstacle to approaching Massimo Volume's music - namely the fact that we don't sing, and that our music can therefore come across as heavy - is actually close to the most accessible form of music right now, which is rap. There too, in the end, you're basically talking, just more in time; and timing is what determines whether something is boring or not.

The real difficulty lies in the fact that this kind of message breaks down that perspectival distance a bit, with this voice that you always feel right on top of you. As the author, you have to be very careful to use the right words to restore that distance somewhat. Otherwise the risk of coming across as rhetorical and pompous is high, creating a sense of annoyance in the listener by being too much in their face. Even the word "declaiming" is pompous in itself!

Speaking of which, even Manuel Agnelli, your friend, precisely on the occasion of his appearance at Club Privé...

...there's also a declaimed track on one of his albums, if I remember correctly.

Exactly. It's funny how, even though back then he was acting as producer, it ended up that a few years later, on Afterhours' "Quello che non c'è", a declaimed track actually appeared: "Ritorno a casa". Did you have a hand in that?

No, maybe not a hand in it exactly. It certainly gave me great pleasure to hear it, just as in the beautiful album "L'erba" by Fausto Rossi, who had collaborated on "Along the Edges", there's a spoken track. God, maybe he'd written it before, but either way it was a real pleasure to hear it.

Of course, hearing someone like Manuel do it inevitably makes you proud...

Thank you for your time, Emidio. Ready for tonight?

More than ready. It's the first time we've played in this place. I like it a lot, even though it's strange: in a club you have contact with the audience, while in a theatre you can feel a bit isolated, from the stage it feels like being in an aquarium.

Either way, it's nice to be here, I'm practically at home, even though I've only been to Macerata a couple of times. Tomorrow, though, I'll be heading back to my own San Benedetto del Tronto!

Despite Clementi's worries, the concert is a success. Massimo Volume deliver a rock-solid performance, running through almost all the tracks from "Aspettando i Barbari". Live, the record confirms an even greater viciousness, notwithstanding the considerations about its particularly layered production.

A great deal of space is also given to “Cattive Abitudini”, an album much loved by the band's fans, judging by their reaction when “Litio” kicks in, not to mention the predictable outbursts of joy for the tracks from “Lungo i Bordi”.

Particularly decisive is Vittoria Burattini, a powerhouse on percussion and the band's true engine. Despite the constraints imposed by the seating of the Teatro Lauro Rossi, the crowd is a field of silhouettes shaking restlessly, driven by the obsessive rhythms of the drummer from Ancona.

The final enthusiasm is such that, once the show ends, the applause and ovations carry on for several minutes even after the second encore, “Ororo”. Clementi then returns to the stage for one last farewell to the crowd, visibly moved by such warmth; the long wait to have them back here hasn't dampened in the slightest the desire to witness a piece of Italian rock history.

(Macerata, April 29, 2014)

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