Nicolò Carnesi - Pop, boredom and other amusing galaxies

Nicolò Carnesi arrives at his third studio album, titled “Beautiful boredom”. Despite being just 29, he comes across as extremely well-prepared, determined and deeply rooted, not only in his homeland, Sicily, but in a culture ranging from TV series to the subtleties of Italian singer-songwriter tradition of times past. Given an interviewee so capable of moving from one field of knowledge to another, the interview took on the shape of a conversation rather than a classic Q&A. A point in our favor: right from the first exchanges, Nicolò states that he's followed OndaRock since his teenage years, and stresses that the webzine has allowed him to discover a lot of music.

Your musical career began alongside Paradisi Artificiali, a clear reference to Baudelaire. Today your third studio album is titled "Beautiful boredom". I have to ask: is the boredom of this new record Baudelaire's spleen? Is it, in some way, a return to your origins?

I'd say no. Let's say that was a youthful phase, so much so that I didn't even choose the name of the project myself. I was making purely electronic songs, and I still didn't have a clear idea of what my path would be; it was with the first album that I started to have clearer ideas. Certainly, with "Bellissima Noia" there's this idea that boredom can act as a transmitter for ideas, that it can lead to doing something good, writing, creating, despite its classic negative connotation. I wanted to reflect on and portray the positive side of boredom, because very often it leads me to "do" all sorts of things, from writing to watching a film, as I also say in the title track of the album.

"Beautiful boredom": how was this record created? Was there, at its core, a kind of poietic boredom, so to speak?

I went looking for that condition myself. I was living in Milan, and I went back specifically to my small hometown in the province of Palermo, called Villafrati, where there's objectively very little to do and only three thousand inhabitants. In that place I started gathering ideas, because the previous four years of my life had been non-stop, I'd never taken a break between one record and the next, and I really needed a year or two back home, as we say around here. But in that context, where there are no more aperitifs to have or events to attend, I started reflecting on my life and on what was happening around me, in Italy in particular, though by now we're also receptors for what happens in the rest of the world, thanks to social media and the internet in general. That's how I noticed that a lot of what I saw, or had experienced, I didn't like, and from there came the train of thought that led me to write the first songs. A kind of self-criticism, but also criticism, of the way we live and communicate today, which is absolutely not close to the idea of boredom and reflection. I could even see boredom from that angle: a moment to reflect, to gather ideas. It shouldn't be seen in its other sense, that is apathy, which is different, not to mention total alienation.

As a journalist, given tracks like "Comunichiamo male", I have to ask: what does communication mean to you?

Communication is thought. Before writing or saying something, you have to reflect and inform yourself about what you're saying, and that's something that's disappearing entirely; nowadays we have the chance to voice our opinion instantly, so paradoxically we end up no longer trying to justify things, to educate ourselves on what we're about to say. The same reasoning can be applied to a record: there are artists who churn out music like a rubber stamp, just because they want to strike while the iron's hot, whereas I'm convinced that very often you need time to understand what you actually mean to do, making mistakes and realizing what doesn't work. That's what I tried to do. Unlike in the past — for instance with "I have a galaxy in my closet", right "on the crest of the wave", to quote your own format — where I'd stopped very little to reflect, on this record I started from an analysis. The songs went through an entirely natural maturation, and I had to feel ready, if not pushed, to release them. In fact, this boredom and this isolation were starting to lead me toward the negative side, toward alienating myself, and it was Donato di Trapani, who produced the record together with me and Fabio Rizzo, who brought me back into the real world. It reminds me of "Stranger Things", when the protagonist ends up in that parallel world; well, I was in a similar situation, where you can no longer find your way out on your own, and you need help from the outside to pull you out, telling you "Look, we're here, we can work on the record." From there began another phase, the one in the studio, which lasted just as long, about five months.

Staying with this parallel to "Stranger Things": in that parallel universe, the protagonists eventually find a monstrous creature. Does one become something negative too, a kind of "monster", while remaining in that dimension of alienation?

Exactly, it's a double-edged sword! While at first it was helping me understand a lot, to be lucid, later that stopped being the case, because I was isolating myself from everything and I no longer had the ability to connect with what was outside myself. At that point your thinking becomes self-referential, and that's never a good thing — there has to be a balance with the outside world, and I realized that, otherwise the record would never have existed, I would have turned into an amoeba on my couch (laughs).

In many songs the theme of digital communication emerges, between backups, bloggers and a network to escape from. What do you think are the consequences of technological mediation in human relationships?

First of all, I think the problem is a lack of understanding. We communicate badly with each other, because we tend to interpret what's written to us; aside from the more "human" ways of communicating, like Skype, we generally use instant messaging, comments on social media, tweets, which condense a concept into very few characters, trying to summarize everything, often without being clear. This, precisely, leads the reader toward a skewed interpretation, generating a vicious circle, where the underlying concept gets lost, filtered through countless other ideas. Let me give an example: you get a message from your girlfriend, and at that moment you're in a bad mood or on edge, so you end up assuming the same feeling is on the other end, and you'll tend to read a "hi" or a "good morning" negatively, interpreting it your own way, with no direct feedback from hearing a tone of voice or seeing a look in someone's eyes. There's an evident dehumanization in the way people approach the internet; you see it in the ease of insults, in baseless arguments. So even in mediated communication you need to take some time, thinking it through and understanding whether it's worth expressing yourself and what's the most appropriate way to do so. Very often there's no need to, and there's not even respect for others. Thankfully this still isn't the case in person, but online it gives rise to much more serious situations, leading to suicides, depression, and it shouldn't be underestimated for humanity. Like every innovation, it needs to be metabolized and understood.

It's no coincidence that the invention of the printing press fueled phenomena like the Reformation and Counter-Reformation of the Church; sometimes technological innovations need to be "digested" by civilization.

Yes, and by the way, many of the ideas about communication that I brought into the record came from Michel Houellebecq's novels, which deal precisely with these subjects: dehumanization through technological progress. He even imagines a world where religion no longer has any reason to exist, because in "La possibilité d'une île", he imagines a human being who, through technology, manages to achieve immortality, ending up no longer fearing the unknown, that is, death, which is the true, foundational fear behind all other fears, so you no longer need a god to lean on. When I premiered the track "M.I.A.", which is about this machine that absorbs the whole of human legacy and ends up alone because nothing exists outside of it at that point, I actually introduced it with a line from a Houellebecq book, "Les particules élémentaires".

"Beautiful boredom" has a heterogeneous sound, with echoes of sounds from other eras, but also more contemporary electronic incursions. How has your sound changed since "I have a galaxy in my closet", and what are your new stylistic destinations?

There are two or three key points to this shift. One is definitely that I went into the studio with a band and a lot of musicians, whereas on "I have a galaxy in my closet" I'd played almost everything myself, since it was a self-produced and "self-played" work. "Beautiful boredom", on the other hand, is a choral effort; written and conceived by me, but played by many musicians, all from Palermo, friends I'd played with in the past too, but because of the distance there hadn't been another chance to record something together. Then there's the strictly analog sound: the use of an analog mixing desk, nothing digital, modular synths, everything tangible, and this nods a bit to a trend that's coming back in international music, thinking of records like those by Tame Impala or Alabama Shakes, or above all, Bon Iver. He, incidentally, was brilliant on his latest record. He pushed the digital to the extreme, to the point of exasperation. He even gives you the flaws of digital sound; if you've happened to listen to the record, sometimes you hear digital distortions that recall the sound of a skipping sound card. He brought in an interesting concept that hadn't really been fully explored in music before, while still keeping a nostalgia for the songwriting of other eras. I hear a lot of 70s soul in some of the vocal melodies, which is also partly what pushed me to write "Beautiful boredom". One of the records I drew on most as a reference was "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye, especially in terms of the rhythmic side, the percussion and the choruses — I took a lot from Motown in general. But I also tried to draw on contemporary music, while staying outside national borders. I tend to listen to more foreign music when it comes to the contemporary scene, while for the past, Italian music is dearer to me — records like "Anima Latina" or "Dalla" were very strong references for this record.

Speaking of genres, does the label people have given your brand of pop songwriting feel too narrow, or do you prefer your music to be perceived as easily accessible?

It depends on what kind of pop. Today "pop" has infinite possible meanings; the tendency is to immediately think of mainstream pop, but I actually think pop truly embraces all of mass-market music. Even Ac/Dc, in my opinion, are pop - they're not hard rock, they just happen to have electric guitars. I like good pop, so I try to write good pop songs, the way Paul McCartney does; it's a more considered genre, one with real quality in the writing. I don't like the pop that gets played on the radio these days, but I also don't like what's often labelled Italian indie, where I hear things I simply don't like, with no real exploration in either the writing or the sound - at best, self-referential citationism for its own sake. Citationism is enjoyable when it connects things, when it experiments - when I can say "Ah, this reminds me of Venditti, this reminds me of Dalla" and so on - not when it just makes me say "This is Venditti" and nothing more, which is simply rehashing a sound from the past, only colder. Then there are the disposable products of talent shows, which I don't even listen to, because they have nothing to give me.

That said, with no intention of starting a sterile back-and-forth between artists, could you explain your line "Ma tutto intorno non c'è niente di magnifico/Tutto intorno non c'è un cazzo di magnifico"? Beyond leaving the average listener stunned, it really sounds like a response to Fedez. Is it?

(Laughs) So far you at OndaRock are the only ones who've picked up on it (referring to the review), and that really was the idea behind the line. Fedez sings "Anche se tutto intorno è magnifico"; I look around and say: there's really not a damn thing magnificent around here! Quite the opposite, actually - I see plenty of problems! That kind of pop, where everything is sugarcoated and glossy, is fundamentally do-gooder pop, whereas we don't live in a good society at all; it's a facade you have to put up when you're on television, but in reality most people are pieces of shit (laughs), honestly! We all have our negative sides, but the world portrayed by the entertainment media especially, where lightness has to reign supreme, doesn't show them, and that's not a good thing. I believe a bit of criticism is necessary to grow; it's not nihilism - quite the opposite, it's optimism, because if the artist - whose role, above all others, is to reflect society's unease - no longer fulfils that task, not even in a light-hearted way, there's no growth.

In fact, in an interview I did a few days ago, Andrea Appino of Zen Circus told me he senses a return of the word "revolution" in a lot of today's songs, but that it sounds ridiculous coming from someone who isn't actively involved in politics.

When I say "Ho una rivoluzione che non vuole uscire", that's exactly the condition I'm referring to. First of all, revolution has to be personal before it can become social. Change has to be yours, first person; you can't complain about a city full of garbage if you're the kind of person who throws litter in the street. People don't think of themselves as part of a society.

The psychedelic-toned guitar solo in "Cambiamento" struck me in particular. What sonic influences did you have in mind when you chose it?

On the guitar side, there was clearly a lot of Pink Floyd in it, because maybe Gilmour, back when I was a kid starting out on guitar, was one of my guitar idols. Then there's also an echo of Wilco, of their sonic surges that start out simple and then turn schizophrenic, especially on guitar, like "Impossible Germany" and its three-minute coda. There's also an echo of Tame Impala, since I used a lot of guitar effects, like reverb, delay and so on. I tried to bring these worlds together a bit.

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