NichelOdeon - Claudio Milano - The performances of the "cantattore"

Claudio Milano is a cultural figure in every sense. His art crosses and synthesizes the most disparate disciplines, evolving into an unclassifiable, innovative music that found its most inspired culmination in the NichelOdeon project, founded at the turn of the millennium by the artist and performer, through whose ranks have passed some of the most fascinating names of the Italian underground. Just a few months after the release of the short live album "NO", we met him for a long interview, in which he described the multifaceted forms of his art, peppered with all sorts of insights and curiosities about the current state of the arts.

First of all, I read that you're "a bit of everything": music therapist, composer, instrumentalist, singer, painter, director, photographer. So, what are you really? Try to sum up your activities a little.

First of all, I don't deal with all these things, because I've actually set aside many of the experiences you mentioned! It would take a lot of time. Lately I work almost exclusively on vocal research and teaching in that field, although I'm still interested in music therapy and I'm certainly still a songwriter/composer, since I write music and lyrics. That said, "composer" is perhaps a somewhat demanding term; I definitely prefer to define myself as a "singer-actor" ["cantattore"], in the sense that I like to combine experiences of theatre and music, and this is probably my truest path. In any case, I come from experiences tied to the world of Fine Arts, since I studied set design at the Accademia di Brera, although I left that activity very quickly. I was a painter, I painted and started doing so very early, around the age of 13, but I stopped around 25, since the season of the European Transavantgarde, which I drew on, had come to an end. I then felt the need to find fresh energy to renew my path, and thanks to knowing some important figures – above all Roberto Sanesi – I understood that music was the ideal glue for everything I wanted to pursue. So, to answer the question, I am definitely a musician – because that is my path – and within my music I'm certain I can bring both a painterly and a theatrical dimension. Definitely not a photographic or directorial one, since I never fully developed either of those experiences.

But on your website I found more than one photograph…

Yes, on the site there are some photographs that were part of a series in which I captured images of shadows cast by self-made mobiles, reflected on sheets, and of lights obtained from objects capable of reflecting multiple facets, like fake crystals, which created a sort of kaleidoscope, all of it in a strictly dark setting. It was a series of "radiographs of a dream", and the whole series went under that name, but it was nonetheless a very brief endeavour. In any case, I can tell you now that in the next NichelOdeon album part of the artwork will be made up of my own photographs, so in a sense I've picked that very short-lived pursuit back up.

Staying on topic, I'm thinking of the artwork for "NO", your latest work and the first of yours I ever held in my hands, and it seems to me in any case that the design is extremely refined across all your albums. Do you draw on anything in particular for your artwork?

During my years at the Accademia I came to understand that today's artist is someone who needs to draw on multiple forms of expression, as if the concept of the total work of art – theorized at the end of the nineteenth century as a kind of utopia – had become something real, concrete, almost the only possible reality. A CD is made up of several parts, including the booklet, so this holds an importance I can't feel detached from – especially given my background. That's why I always rely on the help of some painter friends who give shape to my ideas: I end up either choosing from things they've already produced or "commissioning" them to create something that conveys the idea behind my work. For instance, the graphic designer I've worked with for a long time, Paolo Rosset, has created many works from scratch based on my directions, but on other occasions has also provided pieces of his own that I particularly admired, as in the case of the cover of "L'Urlo Rubato". Far more demanding, however, was the artwork for the NichelOdeon album "Il Gioco del Silenzio", created by an extraordinary Italian painter, Valentina Campagni (although the layout and some images in the booklet remain the work of Paolo), inspired by the pathology of the blighted ovum (a gestational sac without an embryo), that is, a form of psychosomatic pregnancy, with fully manifested and diagnosed symptoms, but in reality non-existent. The idea emerged after long discussions between her and me about the concept of the record, which wanted to convey silence also as noise, since silence can often be far noisier than sound; but also waiting as something that doesn't always lead to the fulfilment of something, a bit like the expectation at the dawn of a new millennium that in reality is slow to leave any concrete trace of itself. The triptych from which the artwork was derived was later exhibited in Berlin alongside video installations set to NichelOdeon's music. The cover of the latest album, "NO", was instead created by Marco Bettagno, a neo-expressionist/informalist painter, and is inspired by the idea of stone and scratch, which fascinate me for how they act as a link between the ancient and the modern, a phenomenon I find meaningful for the contemporary era.

We were talking about silence. Is this concept also an integral part of your music, particularly on the album "Il Gioco del Silenzio"? Did you try, in that case, to "set it to music"?

In that record, silence is expressed in the negative, since it's a wholly full sound that only occasionally connects with rarefaction. It's the closing of a circle that had opened a long time before, one that lasted almost ten years: it's no coincidence that many of the lyrics used on the record had already been recorded several times on earlier works before finding a definitive home, a key to their meaning that I can consider conclusive. I wanted to give voice to all the presences that inhabited this period, which all crowded together within a record that sits halfway between the claustrophobic — which is part of me, since I am indeed claustrophobic, though I like to recognize that as a personal trait and resource as much as a "problem" — and the quiet. Although there's very little silence in "Il Gioco Del Silenzio", there's plenty to be found elsewhere, for instance in the album "Adython", written alongside KasjaNoova and inspired by the path of Carmelo Bene, one of the most important figures in theatre, and one, incidentally, never recognized as much as he deserved.

Can we talk about your music as an art form in continuous contact with — if not actually encompassing — other arts, theatre in particular? How do these two passions coexist within you?

Well, my path began in theatre, although professionally I started out with a folk-prog band called Lethe, which managed to produce a single record and which I was introduced to by my mentor, Paolo Siconolfi. My time at the Academy as a set designer soon brought me into contact with the world of theatre, also thanks to the good fortune of having studied under a highly receptive artist like Romano Perusini, who worked in the seventies with Luigi Nono and put me in touch with many avant-garde figures, as well as giving me a key to understanding theatre and music centred on the importance of gesture and performative vitality. At that time I was producing music that pursued stylistic perfection, a dimension I gradually abandoned in favour of vitality, which also encompasses imperfection. An "imperfect" record that looks naturally at what surrounds it has far more potential to develop than a record produced and played to perfection but that somehow plugs up every hole — and those holes are exactly what keeps the whole thing alive. It's no coincidence that, starting with "Cinemanemico", every work I've contributed to has been recorded live or in a single take ("Il Gioco del Silenzio", "Adython", "Aurelia Aurita"). Theatre is action and real-time capture, but what unsettles me is how rigid its timing can be: when I started working in that field, the pacing of the action moved in lockstep with the script, and I find little satisfaction in a theatre that leaves no room for emotion and interpretation during the performance. To me, the most telling form of contemporary art is precisely performance art: it's magnetism that matters today, not the presence of a script — theatre happens and unfolds in the moment. The idea of the script is a very old one, but today it has run its course. So yes, I've worked for theatre, but today my goal is to carry that experience into my music, in the sense of theatre I consider ideal — namely the "performative" one.

Let's move on to "pure" music: NichelOdeon is a name that conceals a project, of which you are the director and mastermind. Who have your "actors" been, and how has the project evolved from its birth to today?

NichelOdeon was born out of my need to give a stable lineup to my first compositions, which were edging closer to the world of song. During a theatrical production of "Genesi", directed by Anna Traini and Laetitia Favart, I decided to write a closing piece on a religious theme — meant, of course, as "mysticism" rather than religiosity specifically. During that period I went on to write quite a few songs, which ended up on the CD "La stanza suona ciò che non vedo", which received virtually no response from critics. I realized the reason for that lack of success was probably that I didn't have a stable band behind me. During a heavily criticized performance at the Salone delle Arti in Affori, Francesco Zago of Yugen caught the show and asked to collaborate with me, and within a few months I managed to put together a stable lineup for about a year, featuring another member of Yugen, Maurizio Fasoli, and a talented jazz musician named Riccardo Di Paola. That lineup was nonetheless short-lived, since each member gave priority to their own projects, whereas for me NichelOdeon was the absolute priority, and I couldn't develop things as much as I would have liked. So in a short time Riccardo Di Paola left the lineup and the Turin-based composer Luca Olivieri, a collaborator of Yo Yo Mundi, joined in his place, and finally, given the extreme difficulty of getting everyone together due to Yugen's rapid rise, the whole lineup came to an end. One thing I can say is that NichelOdeon brings good luck to whoever joins it, because everyone who's passed through has quickly seen their own projects take off — somewhat to NichelOdeon's own detriment, forced as it's been to keep changing faces and actors (laughs).

At a certain point I realized the project was destined to be an ongoing work in progress, and so it has been, with an expanded lineup that has included Max Pierini, Andrea Murada, Francesco Chiapperini, Andrea Illuminati, Lorenzo Sempio, Luca Pissavini, and Fabrizio Carriero. With this new, ever-shifting axis, we managed to carry the project forward over a longer stretch of time, during which a genuine cultural workshop took shape, out of which many other projects developed. The cross-project involvement of Stefano Ferrian, who later founded dEN Records, or of Luciano Margorani, the historic guitarist of the Milanese rock-in-opposition scene, or again Carola Caruso, an extraordinary jazz singer, Estibal Igea, a Spanish soprano who worked on the project, Claudio Pirro, Antonello Raggi, Lionello Colombo, Marco Tuppo, Stefano Delle Monache, Alex Stangoni: all collaborations that helped keep the group continually alive. Not to mention the directors: Marc Vincent Kalinka, Andrea Butera, Luca Cerlini, Gabriele Agresta, Frank Monopoli, Charles Napier, Paolo Martelli; the painter and musician Ambra Rinaldo, who created live paintscapes; the contribution of Manuela Tadini and her theatre of the absurd; the body painting of Giulia Caruso: in short, a truly vital experience. Then came a shift, again due to the takeoff of more "exportable" projects — albeit of the highest quality — born within NichelOdeon, and the project is now living through a further third phase that will lead to a new album, expected in 2013.

The extreme difficulty of classifying your music makes this question a little obsolete, but I'll ask it anyway. What are your influences, if any, when it comes to your music — be they musicians, genres, movements and so on? I know, for instance, that you're a huge fan of Peter Hammill…

My references are well known and there are many, layered on top of one another, because I try to bring together as many experiences as possible. There are several artists who influence me, coming from many disciplines and not just from music. One constant point of reference for me is certainly Nico in her collaboration with John Cale during the period of "The Marble Index", "Desertshore" and "The End". Then Scott Walker's "The Drift" — probably my favourite album of all — Univers Zero's "Heresie", another absolute beacon for me; certainly Hammill, far more for his live communicative power than for his studio recordings, for his ability to express weakness and inner strength with enormous intensity. Hammill is probably the most important dramatic performer in the history of rock, and he's profoundly human, true to what he does, in his performing mistakes just as much as in his vocal talent. I love Diamanda Galas because she has an extreme, restless and undeniably one-sided vocal style, given that she's also unsettling in an exhibitionistic way, but she fascinates and strikes me for her performative side — I think in that respect she's the greatest, alongside Meredith Monk. On the other hand, I don't care for singers in the vein of Bobby McFerrin, who approach singing in an almost purely technical sense — something I consider emotionally sterile. These are my reference points par excellence, together with Artaud, Carmelo Bene, Danio Manfredini, but I could mention many others, from King Crimson to Virgin Prunes, from John Zorn to Dead Can Dance, to early Battiato, Cccp, glitch aesthetics, esoteric drone, modern sound art, and I also listen to a great deal of contemporary classical music: Penderecki, Ligeti and Messiaen in particular. I also love tango, above all Piazzolla, and free jazz — hence John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. Lastly, but not least, from my point of view Tim Buckley is the most complete vocalist in the history of rock, thanks to his effortless way of uniting technique and spirit like no one has ever managed before or since.

Defining NichelOdeon's music, as already noted, is a complex matter. Personally, I believe it's one of the musical expressions that best fits — for all the reasons already discussed — the definition of art-rock, in its literal sense. What do you think?

Yes, art-rock might be an apt definition. I can't quite pin down a precise definition myself; I think the difficulty we have finding anyone willing to book us to play is telling proof that the band's genre is really a non-genre. The progressive rock festivals — a genre many have filed us under — reject our presence because they don't consider NichelOdeon a progressive band. Rock-in-opposition festivals won't let NichelOdeon play because they don't think we're rock-in-opposition enough, and the same thing happens with alternative and jazz circuits. So it's a project destined to play rarely and to produce music only sporadically, and fortunately to enjoy the kind of worldwide response that has allowed us to build our own niche of loyal fans — something that could never have existed without strong support from critics, both specialist and otherwise. That's precisely been our good fortune: being embraced by fanzines, webzines, magazines and newspapers covering the most disparate genres, from dark to electronic, from jazz to the avant-garde, from progressive to rock-in-opposition. To me that's telling: this is an extremely hybrid project, whose theatrical nature is perhaps the very thing that sets it most at odds with the cultural system we live in today, especially in Italy, where the link between music and theatre is on the whole viewed very negatively.

Another field where you've worked a great deal, you told us, is music therapy. Can you tell us about that experience, how it works, and how much of a frontier you think it could still be?

That's a question that would deserve a whole scroll of an answer, so I'll try to be really brief. Music therapy began spreading in Italy in the '70s, and the pioneers of this practice had the good fortune of being able to carry it out in a strictly medical way, with genuine interest and consideration. Even today, the literature followed by those who study music therapy still draws on the research of those early figures. My own approach to music therapy derives from that of Barbara Eleonora Pozzoli — to whom I owe heartfelt thanks — who was my teacher and managed to blend different methods in a fascinating, personal way, along with the results achieved through her own work. As for myself, I've had very little opportunity to introduce or experiment with anything new, aside from using microphones in working with autistic children, also because in recent years I've moved away from the world of music therapy to focus instead on integrating certain "difficult" childhood personalities within their respective social groups (classes, ed.).

My experience with psychiatric cases lasted several years, but it inevitably ran up against an extremely "irresponsible" environment like the Italian one, where music therapy is understood mostly as a discipline akin to New Age practices, and where there's an extremely limited understanding and poor application of these paramedical disciplines. Generally, in fact, the whole thing is practised within institutions — after payment of questionable sums — in far too casual a way, with no distinction whatsoever between the conditions being treated, and in groups of even thirty or forty people overseen by a single practitioner. That runs against every standard of medical evaluation; it's a world that has truly left its mark on me because of the ignorance and exploitation that define it, at the expense of people who are genuinely struggling and are told that all they need is the love of those around them. While that may well be true, it's equally beyond doubt that these people need proper support, and music therapy can provide that if practised by at least two or more people, backed by medical professionals — not just the therapist alone — and with adequate methods and seriousness. In Italy, all of this is routinely ignored, once again at the expense of people who, instead of benefiting, risk being harmed by it.

My own path — which I have, in any case, temporarily set aside — has mainly focused on autism, which I've found to be the area that responds best to activities like harmonic singing and the use of the voice combined with emotion and physicality, which is certainly my main field. Explaining how it works, as you asked, is something quite impossible: I could tell you it's an inner journey toward releasing many small emotional and physical blocks that occur in the relationships between different "selves". It's a path that's sometimes fun but sometimes difficult too, one that can lead to not always predictable reactions, but that is, without any doubt, fascinating.

Having gone through your multifaceted career, I feel I should close with a particular question. For an artist who has crossed so many disparate languages and forms, what, truly, is art, and what might its frontiers be today?

In today's notion of art, substance and form coincide, just as creativity, professionalism and economic weight do. It's no longer possible to think of the artist as someone who doesn't appear, repeating certain dynamics and being immediately recognizable. Art today is a mirror, the expression of a society that we're told "creates itself", but which is actually subtly "facilitated" by skilled salesmen. To me, art remains the invention of new languages of content and meaningful form, capable of shifting our capacity for vision and perception even just one step further. There are plenty of musicians who still do this today, who sadly find few means of reaching a wider audience. It would be wonderful if music criticism had a sense of its own history, the way criticism dealing with the visual arts does.

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