Ministri - Preparing for battle

To mark the release of the EP "Crime News and Easy Listening" we met with Ministri at full strength. Federico Dragogna, Davide Autelitano and Michele Esposito kindly made themselves available for a long interview that, starting from the themes explored in the four new songs, touched on a number of topics of great interest: from the pandemic to the resumption of live activity, from the choice of opening bands to the current state of information in Italy…

Hi guys, thanks for being here. I'd like to start this chat by talking about the work you're presenting these days, "Crime News and Easy Listening." To begin with: why an EP?

Federico: Hi Claudio. It's an EP because, even though over the last year and a half we recorded a lot of material, we wanted to quickly bring together in the same release only what showed a shared spirit. And these four tracks have that: they have a strong internal coherence. On top of that, given the current situation, we wanted to come out with something that was truly a slap in the face, a bucket of cold water.

Federico: For us, aggressiveness and urgency have always been our way of saying things, of dealing with all kinds of different themes, even when it comes to talking about fragility, for instance. It's an attitude that comes out naturally when we're alone in the rehearsal room playing. In the new songs we find ourselves narrating, among other things, feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and other fundamentally negative thoughts, which we feel have been far too little explored during this recent difficult period. I've noticed that many have preferred to set aside the negative — already strongly present in our lives — to focus instead on a "lighter" narrative.

The title of your EP inevitably recalls the hit that Colapesce e Dimartino presented at this year's Sanremo Festival, "Musica leggerissima." Many argue that we need "light music" in this especially complicated phase of our lives. Yet in the end it was the guitars of Maneskin that won the Festival, proof that in times of isolation and restrictions people need jolts, energy, electricity, and guitars. The content of your new EP does seem to acknowledge that same need…

Federico: Guitars, and the rock trio format in general, are forms we grew up with and know how to express ourselves through: they certainly carry with them that yearning for freedom that many people were chasing at the end of the last century, but they can just as easily embody reactionary, static, deadening scenarios — a good deal of the Eighties bears witness to that. So for us they're not inherently a value in themselves: it depends on how you use them. As for Colapesce and Dimartino, they simply wrote a beautiful song, a very clever one too, perfect for talking about the strange — and dangerous — seduction that lightness exerts on us. Ultimately, we're talking about the same phenomenon, just from different angles.

Michele: Besides having an internal coherence, as Federico said earlier, the four tracks we brought together on this record struck us as perfect for the moment we're living through. They narrate this phase, and they're rendered exactly in the way we feel today, the way we want to come across today, after a year and a half of almost total inactivity. Even though, in reality, we've been extremely active — we've had a lot of time to work together. Anyway, the material here (he points to the record, ed.) represents us completely. It doesn't have the same ease as much of what's coming out these days; it certainly can't be read as "musica leggerissima," but we wanted to be provocative in making that choice. Musically, we went looking for this sound and these tones because the very light narrative we constantly hear around us doesn't feel real to us. When we get together in the rehearsal room we talk about the things that happen to us and around us, and we don't perceive all this lightness. I'm not just talking about the pandemic and the problems in hospitals, but about each of our own lives, especially after such a difficult period. So we chose to be ourselves, real, without flag-waving, without slogans like "everything's going to be fine." Today there's really nothing to wave a flag about.

"So the ballads are being saved for another occasion?

Davide: Not including ballads, or tracks that might have pulled things in another direction, was a clear and deliberate choice. We did write some ballads during this period, but then there was a moment when anger turned into urgency, exactly like when we started out. For us it was a kind of new genesis, and I think that comes through clearly on the record. What happened over the past year made us want to start over again, in every sense. The expressive forms we chose are the most primal ones, but with a new truth inside them, because what's changed in the meantime has been a lot.

"So during this period you've actually produced a lot of other material, and not always so raw and direct...

Federico: Yes, there's actually a lot more, with different flavors and tones. After all, ever since our first album - which everyone remembers as incredibly aggressive but which actually contained quite a few pretty soft ballads - we've shown how much we enjoy writing in different registers. Consider that to this day our most-listened-to song is "Una palude", a ballad, precisely. When we found ourselves having to pick the material to put on this EP, someone pointed out to us that with a summer ahead in which audiences will surely have to sit down, producing such a forceful record probably wasn't the smartest choice. It was advice, food for thought, reasonable too, if you like. So, partly as a provocation, we chose songs that ask the audience to get up and throw themselves into it. It's all deliberate, meant to bring back a whole set of emotions that have always been with us. We'd like to get back soon to doing everything we used to do, without feeling guilty about it.

Michele: Our choices come from the need to shake things up, and to shake ourselves up too, since we're all immersed in this general state of numbness that pretty much everyone feels because of the lack of social contact. We've gotten used to masks, to distancing, to not being able to hug other people, so the message is meant to be about trying to get back, even just emotionally, to normality, to everything that defined our lives before this health emergency.

Federico: We won't be sitting down, you can bet on that (laughs, ed.). As for last summer, it's true, I saw a few live shows myself, and it went the way you say: at times the choice to slow things down seemed to come even from the artist on stage. It's also true that I happened to catch a show like Lucio Corsi's, which was a really lively performance. Let's say that last summer we had just been through a trauma. It's not that today that trauma has vanished into thin air, but a year ago there was a strong sense of respect toward a widespread grief. Next summer that respect will still be there, obviously, but the passing of time brings with it the need to somehow get back to living, to get back to the much-hoped-for "normality". With respect for the rules, of course, but there's a desire to start over after losing more than a year of normal life. By now we're right in the middle of the second year...

Davide: Paradoxically, last summer was for me a moment of exploration, to understand how the whole system could work, and I have to say there were quite a few differences of opinion among us industry people. Our band, for instance, a year ago had no intention at all of playing shows under the conditions imposed by decree. Today, though, we've come to the conviction that music has to be made above all for other people, and we make music for other people: it's born from us and we bring it to the audience. Today live activity absolutely needs to start up again, shows have to happen somehow, because there's a whole sector that needs to get back on its feet.

Federico: A whole album demands time and attention: that was true once, and it's even truer today. But at bottom it's just a format born out of how many minutes a 33 rpm record could hold, not a law of nature. We like our records to be able to follow a narrative thread: we'll probably go back to the album, but a future made only of EPs wouldn't be so bad either...

Federico: We arrive at every release with far more songs than we need, so we've definitely never needed to "fill things up": if anything, we usually cut mercilessly. The truth is that every band has always carried forward, in parallel, songs that are very focused, direct, and identity-defining, alongside minor pieces where you allow yourself freedom with sounds, solutions, and tempos. We've been no exception. Obviously on this EP we preferred to keep everything tight, but there will be room and ways to go down different paths, and it's good that there are, as long as everything's done with the same care. I, for one, as a listener have always loved the minor, lesser-known tracks by the bands I love: to give just one example, with Queen, I've listened to "My Melancholy Blues" far more times than to a superclassic like "Radio Ga Ga".

The aesthetic of "Crime News and Easy Listening" is a tribute to some of the series published by the Einaudi publishing house, made unforgettable by Bruno Munari's graphic design. What motivated you to make this choice?

Federico: There were many reasons, all equally valid: the fact that the EP's title sounds like that of an old Einaudi essay, our love for that period, a reflection on what knowledge in Italy used to be and what it's become today, the desire to shed our skin and change fonts. And last but not least, the fact that Munari's work is simply incredibly powerful in any era and anywhere.

Who can tell me about "Bagnini", the second track on the record?

Federico: In "Bagnini" we talk about how absurd today's culture of doubt has become: the widely practiced "suspension of judgement" is generating a landscape in which everyone is firmly convinced of their own truth. You know, so many texts are being produced today - I think more than have ever been produced before - everyone feels obliged to write something, but on the other hand there isn't a big enough audience to absorb the entire output, and there's no real capacity to analyze and understand all this material, no patience left to allow for real discussion. Think about how much weight the title of an article carries compared to the article itself! An enormous amount. Almost nobody will read the whole article! Coming back to "Bagnini", we could call it the ironic track on this EP. The theme is serious, but it's handled with irony. It's partly about us: the character in the chorus making a scene in the shopping mall is me. We grew up in the '90s, reading books like Naomi Klein's "No Logo", getting interested in the no-global movement, so in how to live a life outside of globalism. Back then, keeping a coherent way of organizing your own life seemed like the fundamental project to be credible. Then we realized it's impossible to achieve that goal, unless you choose to become a hermit. We can't do it, we can't go through ethical and fair consumption at every single moment. Look, even right now: you and I are communicating using some modern technology. So we shouldn't act like lifeguards who, staring out at the sea, claim to be the only ones who truly understand it.

Michele: The clash between the concepts of coherence and truth produces a whole series of complicated effects. Coherence is a luxury for the few: it's really difficult to achieve a level of pure coherence in any aspect of our lives, in every single small everyday gesture.

Federico: The only coherence we feel able to manage, and to guarantee, is our artistic coherence: for 15 years we've made music without ever having to become the face of a product or a brand. The only thing that matters to us is being able to have the time we want for creating and producing.

In other tracks on the new EP your observation of the world is less gentle. In "Inferno" you throw out some other provocations...

Davide: For me, hell is first of all an imagery: the one we've lived through over this past year and a half. We live off contradictions, and that's our hell, an everyday life made up of indecision: we find ourselves stuck in a box, and when the current emergency ends, getting out of that box won't happen so quickly.

Federico: Actually, apart from "Bagnini", the other tracks on the EP are really dark, bitter, even though the sound then leads to a reaction. That bitterness was something that interested us: we didn't necessarily want to hand out solutions, but rather place ourselves inside the problem. In "Tempi bui" we said "e son diventato buio anch'io", because we don't speak from atop a pedestal, and in "Idioti" too we said "ci trascinate giù con voi". Our fear as people is being dragged along by the spirit of our times, especially when vitality is being lost. If we've been a band for this long, it's also because we help each other avoid that happening to us.

Davide: This was for me a period of major reflection on the artistic compromises a musician often has to face. We come from a place where the genre we play is the norm. At a certain point in our career, someone asked us to "adapt". But the moment you "adapt", usually you lose the ability to stir people's spirits. During the pandemic, the theme of truth became central. It became important to talk about the anger that was building up inside each of us, but also about everything we were repressing. Many people, though, never picked up on those things. By this I don't mean to argue that inadequacy should be embraced as a virtue, but rather that we shouldn't insist on pretending nothing's wrong: let's shout out our discomfort! That's what we tried to do.

During this period with live shows on hold, many musicians turned to streamed concerts. Why didn't Ministri go down that road?

Davide: There's something irreplaceable about the way music is made live. If someone wants to invent alternative methods, maybe because technology makes it possible today, more power to them. But at a certain point, a system built on the direct relationship between artist and audience - well, you can try to alter it as much as you like, but if that relationship ends up missing, or starts to drift away, in the end something breaks.

Federico: At some point we need to understand the question of risk. Let me give you an example. Today I'll meet a certain number of people, I'm here with other collaborators, then I'll go out, have an aperitivo, go to dinner, and all the risks that come with that are considered acceptable right now. On the other hand, being in a park with other people, listening to a band play, is considered to carry a much higher risk. But let's even grant that this risk really is higher: at some point it becomes a matter of opening up a discussion about how we want to live. Let me explain: certain fears existed even before the pandemic, but we had different risk thresholds back then. Today we see people around us going back to doing everything, without crossing themselves every other minute, so people going back to work, going to the supermarket, traveling, even going to fairly crowded places. Other people, on the other hand, are very frightened. Being able to do things with others, to share them, brings great joy. Joy is what brought tens of thousands of people out into the streets to celebrate Inter's scudetto. We want a world back where people can celebrate the release of a new record too. Culture is a bit isolated right now, so it's struggling more than it used to.

Sorry, but don't you think that in the complicated situation of these past months, artists as a whole might have missed the chance to rewrite the rules? Don't you think they opted for a strategy that was too wait-and-see?

Davide: The waiting let us understand just how important music is. In the past we always felt superfluous, a kind of luxury for society, something for when it decides to unwind. But actually, no: we're not purely entertainment, and we've realized that over the years, doing this job. During the pandemic we were the first to shut down and we'll be the last to start back up. But we're not purely entertainment: we've realized that making music today isn't just important, it's necessary and culturally foundational. We're the first piece, the fastest one, because we're immediate: we're not a book you have to read, we arrive in three minutes, and all of us have listened to a huge amount of music over this past year and a half.

When will you be starting back up?

Federico: On July 8th we'll be playing at Magnolia, in Milan, for the live club's anniversary, which is incidentally one of the places where we grew up, and one we're particularly attached to, even though the people running it have changed in the meantime. This is a first date we can officially announce today: we'll finally be back with the distortion pedals switched "on" and Michele pounding away on the drums. We're working out the best way to manage everything, but making an announcement like this today feels a bit like being reborn.

But right now a huge problem is about to emerge. On one hand, we have all the musicians and industry workers who need to play, and are all set to get going again. On the other hand, unfortunately many live clubs are destined never to reopen, strangled by the long shutdown and unsustainable costs. So everyone will want to play, but the venues to do it in risk shrinking drastically. What scenarios do you see right now?

Davide: This is a really important issue.

Federico: As you well know, this was already happening before. I don't want to point fingers at anyone in particular, but think about how many people put up a thousand posts about small clubs shutting down, and then the next post, or the one from the night before, for three or four years now, has been about what to watch on Netflix that evening. So the first problem to solve is shaking people up: come on, let's try to start leaving the house again, let's go reclaim these places. We personally will do everything we can to contribute: when we get back to playing, we'll try to help out in any way possible. It's an idea we've had fixed in our minds for months now. In our own small way we've already done a live presentation, playing in person at Off Topic in Turin, a tiny place we're very fond of. Just as we're very fond of all the other small venues that host music across the whole country.

Davide: Having started out in tiny clubs ourselves, and gradually moved on to playing bigger venues, we know very well the value of small live clubs. We also know how much they've been neglected in recent years by many emerging bands, some of which were pushed straight onto bigger stages, often ahead of the real experience they had, skipping the necessary groundwork you have to put in out on the road. We'll offer our experience and our nostalgia, but that alone can't be enough to get out of what is clearly a state of crisis.

You've always been an extraordinary live band, among the best in Italy. Unlike many other musicians, you've never had any qualms about having skilled, well-prepared bands open your shows. I've seen your concerts opened by Fast Animals And Slow Kids back in the days of "Hybris" or by Winstons. Many bands would feel uneasy with such strong opening acts. You don't fear the comparison — if anything, you seem to feed off all that energy to raise yourselves to an even higher level...

Michele: We were given that opportunity many times ourselves in the past, so now we like the idea of being able to grant it to other bands. There's no fear, no hesitation — if anything it's a way to measure ourselves against others, and to give visibility to other acts that we think deserve it. We, for instance, once got to open for Verdena...

Federico: Just last night we were out with a friend, Francesco Motta, who reminded us of the time we went to his dressing room, back when he was playing with Criminal Jokers. We'd seen them perform at an edition of MIAMI and asked them to open a show of ours, which then took place at Flog in Florence, if I remember correctly. We do this partly to give emerging bands an opportunity, and I have to say many of them have gone on to carve out their own path, but partly we also do it because it's great to have someone tear the place apart before you go on, because then when it's your turn you're forced to raise your game, you go on fired up. But not in the sense of "X Factor"-style competition, it's not a challenge. On stages where rock music is played there's a kind of unwritten rule, according to which when you start playing you have to live up to whoever came before you. If some dud performs before you, you might walk on stage thinking you've already got it in the bag — but no, you have to come on like a house on fire.

But it's also true that many bands, especially the more famous ones, are somewhat afraid of this. For instance, I've heard of opening bands being deliberately made to play at noticeably lower volumes!

Davide: For me though, when music turns into a competition it loses some of its value. A decent opening band should above all serve as motivation. And let's not forget that a concert is first and foremost a show, an event the audience will remember — in fact you've shown that you remember these particular episodes very well yourself, while you'll have forgotten others. It's nice when they end up being memorable. Also consider that the audience goes to a show partly for what happens beforehand too: I'm first and foremost someone who has gone to see concerts, loads of them, and opening bands have always been an extremely formative part of the experience. Bear in mind that an opening band usually has humility on its side, and at the same time also greater creative freedom, since it's in a far less pressured position than the headline act.

Michele: On top of that, the audience that comes to see you deserves a full, well-rounded show. If you offer not just the band people paid to see, but also another act of a certain caliber, the night can become even more unforgettable.

Davide: I can tell you that the best shows I've ever played were as an opener, not so much as a headliner, because in that situation you're completely free, all you have to think about is giving everything you've got. From the headliner's point of view, it's great to know you might have put a kind of seal of approval on a project driven by that kind of urgency to express itself. You feel like the father of something, sometimes even of a whole scene. And it's not about competition: competition on this front is a dynamic that happens more in the urban music world — in rock, I'd say not so much.

Nowadays musicians earn a living almost exclusively through live activity. One of the main problems for Italian musicians, compared to those in the Anglo-Saxon world, is that they have to survive in a much smaller market. Is there really no way for the best Italian artists to break through abroad and reach a wider market?

Federico: Sure, but consider one thing: every now and then I look at foreign bands I've loved and followed, who sing in English, so potentially with the whole world open to them. Well, they struggle too. Being a rock band in Italy, and managing to release six albums and two EPs, I think is already something of a miracle, so we really can't complain.

That said, I think Ministri are part of the very small circle of Italian musicians who manage to make a living from their art. But I imagine that once the album-and-tour cycle is over, it's tough for everyone, right?

Federico: It is. It's getting tougher and tougher, especially if you want to try living a regular adult life, with a house and kids. It's been even tougher with no concerts, and with the few crumbs that come in from streaming. We'd like to be able to just be musicians without having to do advertising, if at all possible.

For instance, how many physical copies does a new Ministri record sell these days? "Per un passato migliore", for example, how many copies did that one rack up?

Federico: You should ask Warner, who had that album under license.

Most of Ministri's lyrics are written by Federico, but it's always Davide who sings them: how hard is it to interpret, and deliver on stage, words that you didn't originally come up with yourself?

Davide: Honestly, for me it's the best thing in the world. Believe me. Being able to sing something that isn't already in your own head means communicating implicitly with another person. It's a virtuous mechanism, almost like a form of sublimation. Then what Federico has in his head sometimes becomes something different once it passes through mine, and it redraws certain balances, right down to the level of meaning. The way he conceives the words is sometimes different from how I conceive and deliver them, but in the end the substance is the same.

Michele: Honestly, we have incredibly long discussions among ourselves to make sense of everything, and to help Davide with his interpretation: it's an ongoing preparatory process, and a fun one too.

Davide: Either way, it's an honor for me, and behind it there's a lot of important teamwork, constant communication. Sometimes artists who don't have this kind of exchange, and complete themselves entirely on their own, end up burning out fairly quickly, whereas this way we keep regenerating ourselves continuously.

Can I ask for your opinion on the state of the media, not necessarily music media, in Italy?

Federico: The world of media is really in an embarrassing state right now. Not even in Victorian England was credibility this bad. My guiding light in recent months has been "il Post", which I think is the only outlet in Italy doing sensible reporting. Everyone else really ought to search their conscience, assuming they can find one first, because they've been an absolute disaster. We know full well that things are tough for anyone doing journalism too, especially financially, so they're forced to chase clicks, and that's a problem that affects everyone in the digital world. But we have our own struggles to keep going too, and we do talk about that in the track that closes the EP, but from a purely financial standpoint we don't sell our soul to the devil. That's not an issue for outlets like OndaRock, which do music journalism and therefore carry different responsibilities regarding the consequences of what gets said or written. You have the privilege of telling only the beautiful side of life. But everyone else should take a hard look in the mirror, if they even have a conscience to begin with.

Michele: During lockdown we found ourselves pitted against each other. Sure, there were rules to follow, but it really bothered me to constantly read mutual accusations like "you went out, you were out and about", which is actually what we talk about in the chorus of "Peggio di niente" when we refer to trampling, or not trampling, on others.

Federico: even the daily update on infection numbers is something that increasingly resembles an addiction. I wonder why the Order of Journalists hasn't officially stepped in on issues like this.

Not just Ministri. These days has seen the release of the first Vasco Brondi album made under his own name. Federico is behind the boards as producer, as he already was back in the days of Le Luci della Centrale Elettrica. Tell us something about how you two met and about this collaboration, which has been growing stronger over the years and has helped broaden Brondi's horizons. Do you contribute on the compositional side too?

Federico: It's a collaboration and a friendship together, even though either one could easily exist without the other. With Vasco, I simply put my musical sensibility at his disposal, my ideas about soundscapes, my melodic taste and a few other things I've picked up over the years. We discuss the lyrics together, especially how they work in relation to the music behind them. But it seems clear to me that on that front Vasco has a clarity that few people in Italy have today.

Whereas for "Crime News and Easy Listening" the production choices weren't entirely yours alone...

We made this record with Ivan Rossi, who we got along with brilliantly, and he translated exactly what we had in mind at the level of production and recording. If you could have seen the care that went into every single track, both these ones and the ones still to come! In every second of recording, in the placement of every single microphone, there's a level of care that clashes with today's world, where people no longer spend much time on these precious details.

One last question: given all the quality material you've put out in this first part of your career, do you feel you deserved a wider level of recognition? Or is what you've achieved the right level, one that lets you avoid compromising with the demands of the market?

Federico: We don't know what a band should "deserve": we're simply happy that there are people for whom our songs matter so much that they listen to them the moment they come out, study them, learn them, play them themselves, get them tattooed on their skin. And we know that our audience, even if it's numerically smaller than that of many other artists, has a respect and a passion for us that time doesn't dull. And I find that far more precious than a number with a lot of zeros.

(May 2021)

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