Nero Kane - Love, Death and Poetry

The Black Work

by Valerio D’Onofrio

Hi Nero, hi Samantha. It's a pleasure to meet you. Your project Nero Kane has reached its third album. Can you tell us how you met and how the idea of your collaboration came about?

NK – Nero Kane was born as a solo project in 2017/2018, following my previous experiences in other musical projects I had founded, with several releases behind me since 2007. My collaboration with Samantha specifically began around developing the promotional side, creating videos and photos for a release of mine from 2016. From there we started a parallel path that, at first, led us to combine our two worlds – my strictly musical background and Samantha's more performance-based path as an artist and performer – with the creation of the performance “Hell23”, presented in Milan and at the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles. After this first approach, our work continued, again in developing the promotional side and creating videos and photos for “Love In A Dying World”, my first solo album under the name Nero Kane, recorded with Joe Cardamone in Los Angeles. Specifically, Samantha put together a mid-length film divided into 10 chapters, one for each song on the album, shot during the two trips to California connected to the album's recording. After the album's release, I asked Samantha to join me live as well, playing keyboards alongside me to give a more layered sonic background to my guitar. From that first tentative step, things gradually became more solid, also thanks to the many thematic, aesthetic and musical influences we share, and so her presence became more and more integrated into the Nero Kane project. The work then continued with the release of two more albums, “Tales Of Faith And Lunacy” (2020) and “Of Knowledge And Revelation” (2022).

SS – Nero Kane is a solo project that I first joined purely as visual support for the launch of the first album “Love In A Dying World” (2018), recorded in Los Angeles, by creating an experimental film of the same title, in which we're both the protagonists, which I shot in the Californian deserts and later presented in various museums, art galleries and theatres in Italy and Los Angeles. I then moved on to accompanying Nero – guitar and voice – on stage in live shows, with my voice, organ, electric piano, mellotron, and I recorded the two subsequent albums with him. We've kept presenting the albums together on European tours, right up to the Eastern European tour we just finished, and I've put together further mid-length and short films to support our music. Alongside this, we've also performed together in more art-driven performances – I am, first and foremost, a visual artist and performer – including at the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles, up to the recent poetry reading “Racconti di Fede, Follia e Rivelazione”, which we're currently presenting in theatrical settings.

What's your musical background, or what are your favourite records? You get filed under the gothic, dark-folk banner. Do you recognise yourselves in this scene?

NK – My original background is strongly tied to garage rock and early punk, especially American, but over the years my listening has shifted heavily towards songwriting, blues and a certain kind of alternative rock. Among my biggest influences, I'd definitely mention Nick Cave, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Mark Lanegan, Nico. I think my music can logically be placed within a dark scene/lineage, because the aesthetic and thematic elements are absolutely relevant to it. That said, I still feel it's also different, more particular and contaminated, and less easy to pin down in a specific context, precisely because of the many influences running through it.

SS – My listening habits have varied a lot over time – my father is a blues drummer, but I've always leaned towards more dark-oriented sounds. Among my favourites: Nico, Swans, Nick Cave, Wovenhand, PJ Harvey, Lingua Ignota, Father Murphy, Joy Division. My favourite piece is Frédéric Chopin's “Funeral March”. I think the dark-folk scene is a fitting label, especially once my voice came into the mix, which many journalists compare to the vocal style of the “priestess of darkness”, Nico. That said, I think such definitions are limiting when it comes to contextualising Nero Kane's music, which is very cinematic, experimental, ritualistic and certainly dark. A friend of ours, an American journalist and producer we ran into again just a few days ago at our show in the gorgeous art deco setting of Palac Akropolis in Prague, described the current “Of Knowledge And Revelation” live set as “elektro ambient trance goth plainsong” – literally, a kind of “gothic Gregorian chant played through electrified ambient music”. Certainly distinctive, unusual, poetic and, as many journalists have said, a unique and strongly personal style.

Can you walk us through the arc of your three albums? What are the differences between your debut and the new “Of Knowledge And Revelation”?

NK – I like to think of these three albums as a kind of trilogy that starts from below, from the earth and the dust, and rises upward, towards spirit and the divine. A sort of ascent that concerns the protagonist – man himself – in his constant wandering through the world and through life. “Love In A Dying World” is undoubtedly a much more minimal, desert-like album (as the cover suggests), at times psychedelic, and tied to a more classic style of songwriting, partly because of the strong presence of acoustic guitar. In “Tales Of Faith And Lunacy” the desert-like matrix begins to blend heavily with a more mystical one (again, the cover, featuring the Madonna of the Seven Sorrows, is telling), also thanks to the addition of Samantha's voice, with its distinctly dark shades. This shift also happens on a production level, with denser sonic layering and more stretched-out tracks. In “Of Knowledge And Revelation” this darker, more mystical side takes over completely, and the tracks become an almost continuous flow. The album is a kind of dense, leaden, Mephistophelian Styx, but one also marked by a constant search for light and elevation. That's why I've often described it as a sort of suspended, foggy Limbo. The production on the last two albums, handled by Matt Bordin, was much more elaborate and experimental compared to the first. I do want to stress, though, that in reality all of these elements were already present, in some form, right from the first record. There's a kind of leitmotif that quietly runs through the fabric of all three albums and unfolds within them. A common thread that ties them together, that grows and becomes richer. Finally, the themes of the three albums are all connected in some way: Love, Life, Death, Perdition and Rebirth. These are, to this day, the cornerstones of my songwriting.

Yours is an audio-visual project in which the cinematic side plays a significant role, and this aspect is handled specifically by Samantha. I was wondering whether your typically gothic videos draw on any particular filmmakers.

SS – The visual side is certainly an important complement to Nero's musical project, which has a very cinematic sound, even though the term “audio-visual” makes me think more of electronic/experimental projects that are conceived from the start to pair visuals with a live performance. In truth, as I see it, the experimental films I make to support the music are conceived more with the idea of being experienced separately from the live show – I prefer for the full experience to happen in a museum or gallery, while, split into episodes, they're used as music videos for single releases. I think our shows work very well without any projection, because it leaves room for people to enter more intimately into the whirl of our sound, which many describe as hypnotic and, in a way, psychedelic. We use red lighting, which heightens that psychedelic feeling. I made an exception in the case of the sound-reading “Racconti di Fede, Follia e Rivelazione”, which we recently presented at Teatro Linguaggi Creativi in Milan, where I projected my films during the live performance, but that's a different kind of piece compared to a normal show – there I mostly read excerpts from texts by medieval mystics while Nero provides the sound. There are certainly references to filmmakers like David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, Bela Tarr and Alejandro Jodorowsky, none of whom are specifically gothic. One of my favourite films is Picnic At Hanging Rock by Peter Weir, which perfectly captures my own idea of an aesthetic that's classical, romantic, decadent and unsettling all at once.

Looking at your videos, there's a clear fascination with death, with the end. Can you tell us more about that? Are there any literary references?

NK – By nature – diabolically romantic and melancholic – I've always been drawn to death and its narration. It's as if part of me lives in a permanent autumn, inside a painting by Caspar David Friedrich or a novel by Goethe. My literary references range from the poeti maledetti to D'Annunzio and Leopardi, but also the frontier landscapes of Cormac McCarthy or the winter-lashed steppe of Pushkin, Tolstoy and the Russian writers. I'm also strongly drawn to painting, and a lot of my reading is connected to it. On the latest album, many of the references come precisely from that world – Gustave Doré's engravings for the Divine Comedy above all, but also Bosch and the Flemish painters. It's no coincidence that the cover of the latest album is a reworking of a 1670 painting by the French painter Abraham Mignon.

SS – I think reflecting on death lies at the root of all human philosophical thought. Ever since my varied artistic path began in 2005, I've always explored the concepts of transience and eternity. There are many literary and cultural references; I'm especially fascinated by the nineteenth-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (hence the white, virginal dresses you mentioned earlier in one of your questions). The Pre-Raphaelite painting “Ecce Ancilla Domini” (1850) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Antonio Canova's neoclassical, pre-Romantic sculpture “Maddalena Penitente” (1796) are among my favourite works of art. I'd also mention a film that both Nero and I love very much, “Death in Venice” (1971) by Luchino Visconti, based on the novel by the German writer Thomas Mann.

Who handles the lyrics — do you write them together?

NK - The lyrics are mainly mine, but Samantha has also written some over the last two albums, particularly beautiful and intense ones. The writing process, both lyrical and musical, always happens independently and separately. Only at the end, once I have an overall idea of the album and a number of songs I consider solid, do we start collaborating and bringing the various elements together.

You've been on the road for several months now with dates across various European countries. How's the tour going? I saw that you've played, and will also be playing, alongside international artists such as Jozef Van Wissem and Darkher.

NK – The tour supporting “Of Knowledge And Revelation” has been giving us a lot of satisfaction. In some ways it's as if a kind of addiction sets in. The more shows you play, the more you want to keep going. Over these months we've been lucky enough to perform in many different settings, to discover new places and new artists, to often receive excellent feedback, and to spread the word about this project, which is definitely distinctive and, honestly, not for everyone. For that very reason, we're now trying to be more selective about the venues, because all these experiences have taught us that there really is a strong bond between the music we play and the place and manner in which it's experienced. The upcoming dates will definitely be exciting, since they'll mostly take place in old churches and theatres. All the dates are always regularly announced on my social media and on the website www.nerokane.com.

SS – We're delighted to be opening the Milan date on 21 May 2023 at Arci Bellezza as part of the new tour of an artist we love very much, Jozef Van Wissem, who has also collaborated with a director we love, Jim Jarmusch, on the celebrated soundtrack to the cult film “Only Lovers Left Alive”. Nero Kane had already opened for him a few years back, but on that occasion I couldn't play because on the same day I was presenting one of my own performances at the Museo Madre in Naples together with choreographer Matteo Levaggi, with whom I've been collaborating for 15 years… in fact, just these past few days a new project of ours debuted on the prestigious stage of Teatro alla Scala here in Milan. Getting back to the shows, throughout 2023 we'll be guests at various European festivals in truly striking venues — churches and ancient ruins — that will provide the perfect backdrop for our sound. Among these, “Ancient Echoes: A Spectral Folk Gathering In The Ruins” has just been announced, taking place near Leipzig, Germany, on 8 July 2023, where we'll be opening for the talented and gorgeous English songwriter Darkher. Another wonderful venue that will host our music is the Eglise du Gesù in Toulouse, France, where we'll be playing on 10 December 2023 for the Setmana Santa festival, where Van Wissem himself is playing these very days too. Honestly, I'm very happy about all of this. It's the fruit of passion, authenticity, suffering and determination.

I've had the pleasure of seeing you live, and I have to say everything is curated down to the smallest detail, from your outfits (kudos for Samantha's fantastic white dress) to the videos that accompany your music. Have your live shows always been like this, or have they evolved over the years?

NK - Basically, our live shows have always been very clean and minimal in terms of staging. Red light has always been the defining feature of the atmosphere and backdrop of our concerts. We like to create a kind of suspended, hypnotic mood that pairs well with the type of music we make — solemn, cyclical, dark. A limbo where the listener can lose themselves or find refuge. What's changed the most over the concerts is the layering of sound. I work a lot with loops and certain guitar dynamics, and Samantha has gradually expanded her range of sounds through the use of new keyboards, particularly the mellotron. What we present on stage is a world that actually represents us completely. There isn't much distinction between stage and life. Attention to detail is part of our constant pursuit of beauty.

I also caught a different kind of performance of yours, a mix of readings and music. Is that a project that will continue?

SS – Yes, that's the sound reading piece “Racconti di Fede, Follia e Rivelazione” I mentioned earlier, where I read excerpts from the writings of three medieval German mystics, Christina von Stommeln, Mechthild von Magdeburg and Hildegard von Bingen, alongside some texts written by Nero and me, with our live sound accompaniment. The show also features a few songs performed by us, taken from Nero Kane's last two albums, “Tales Of Faith And Lunacy” and “Of Knowledge And Revelation”, which are thematically connected to the mystics' writings, and — to tie back to your question about my videos — I project the experimental films I shot in the deserts of California, as well as some churches in Italy and southern France. A kind of “folk liturgy” that, after its Milan debut, we'll be presenting again on 27 May 2023 at the Teatro degli Occhi in Calvi dell'Umbria, an intimate and evocative space that suits our vision perfectly, housed inside a former 16th-century church. Both Nero and I love historic places and feel more in tune with our cultural past.

Are you working on a new album?

NK – I'm currently writing new material and recording some pre-productions. Actually, perhaps for the first time in my life, I don't feel a desperate urgency to get back into the studio. The last album was an important milestone for me, also considering that sort of trilogy I mentioned earlier, and now I need to properly figure out how to continue on this path, because there are many possible directions. And I think that to really understand that, we need to slow down a little and take our time. I'd also like to ramp up the live side of things more, especially since everything ground to a halt for quite a while because of the pandemic. In any case, I remain extremely curious to find out what comes next.

Thank you for your time — of course, you're always welcome at OndaRock. I'll close with the fun desert island game. Can you each name three records you'd take to a desert island?

NK – Thank you for the space you've dedicated to us. I'll give you four, I can't do less. The Stooges, “Funhouse” (1970), Nick Cave, “Murder Ballads” (1996), Johnny Cash, “American Recordings” (1994), Neil Young, “Harvest” (1972).

SS – Nico, “Desertshore” (1970), PJ Harvey, “To Bring You My Love” (1995), Father Murphy, “Rising. A Requiem For Father Murphy” (2018). Thank you so much, Valerio and OndaRock, for supporting Music, Art and Beauty.