Rodolfo Montuoro - The night of prog

On the occasion of the release of the new album “Nacht”, we met with Rodolfo Montuoro, one of the most interesting Italian artists on the contemporary rock scene. What strikes you most about Rodolfo is his cross-genre approach, which ties together influences from different sources into a multifaceted yet always coherent and engaging amalgam. Between “high” literary influences (one example above all, the tribute to Dante), cinematic suggestions and nods to so-called serious music, the musical universe of Nacht's author offers listeners something rich and disorienting. But don't picture the stereotype of the “cultured” artist living in a classic ivory tower: on the contrary, in this interview Rodolfo shows he has very clear ideas about the current global state of the record industry…

The release of the album Nacht marks the culmination of a path that developed through 2 previous stages, the Orfeo and Lola EPs. I noticed you reworked the tracks from these two EPs, in some cases departing quite a bit from the original versions. Was this a precise artistic need, or simply the necessity of giving unity to the whole record, which — let me remind you — also includes 5 unreleased tracks?

Yes, it's true, there's undoubtedly a technical need to give uniformity to the full length. But this need was secondary. In fact, the project itself envisioned from its very origin — being a work in progress — a process of reworking and “permanent revolution” of the tracks already released on “Orfeo” and “Lola”. The songs were all re-sung, and each one has something new and unreleased in it. Otherwise there would have been no point releasing them in installments first and then including them, unchanged, on the album. The fact that “Nacht” was born and grew on the Internet allowed for a continuous mutation, also generated by my listeners, by the most loyal fans and by the numerous feedback from music critics close to my world who, over these two years, in their fine reviews, gave me truly precious inspiration. In some cases, when we went back into the tracks, it was a matter of small touch-ups, light filing down, or changes in the mix that brought out other filigrees of the arrangement; in other cases I worked more deeply on the structure of the song. In the end, while maintaining its continuity, the project was enriched with a new and unprecedented light. Exactly as I wanted.

Let's talk about the unreleased tracks: was it difficult to pick up the threads of a project as intricate and ambitious as “Nacht”?

The unreleased tracks were floating vaguely in my head the whole time, but I couldn't give them a shape. I was waiting for something. There was even a moment when I was about to drop everything. The tragic masks of Orfeo and Lola had taken over and invaded the entire stage of my imagination. Lola's resigned hope and Orfeo's unyielding despair had created a perfect, self-sufficient circle, and also a short circuit, resistant to any continuation. It's as if these two such powerful characters wanted revenge for having been summoned together. I started to feel afraid I was finished. And for a few weeks I no longer felt the urge to move forward. Then, finally, those floating fragments came back together, started playing in my head, surprising even me. I realized that “Silly moon”, “Convergenze parallele” and “Nacht” represented an exemplary reflection of all the motifs already scattered around: the same ingredients recombined into a new and unprecedented “distillation” of melodies, images and even narrative threads that had already been brewing from the start and then materialized. Truth be told, it was a gamble. At the start, when I threw myself into this adventure, I only had a handful of hunches. But I wanted at all costs for them to lead to my “construction” of the night with all its landscapes, characters, inner cities, shadows, illuminations, invasions and floodings… Maybe in itself all this is a small thing, but for me it's like having finally conquered a map of the tides. Now I feel lucky to have pulled it off. And safe.

On “Nacht” what really strikes you is the sound, more percussive and rock-oriented than before: I get the feeling that the center of gravity of your music is shifting well beyond the borders of dark and progressive…

Yes, for me rock comes first and foremost. But there's also something else that heads in other directions, not necessarily "beyond" it. Let's say my rock tree has branched out a great deal over time, without the usual polite pruning. After all, flirting with seemingly dissonant codes and traditions is – so they say – something of a hallmark of my music: a kind of photosynthesis that metabolizes often very different languages. I have to admit this is sometimes a problem for me too. The problem of classification… Because if they can't classify you, often they won't even accept you. There's always some awkwardness in placing my albums on the right shelf. Probably the right shelf doesn't even exist anymore (we're all realizing this, now that the same search engine holds, apparently in the same string, all human knowledge). "Hannibal", for instance, despite being an exquisitely rock album (at least in my intentions), was filed by store staff under jazz. "A vision" ended up under Celtic or folk. Now I'm curious to see where "Nacht" will land. "Orfeo" and "Lola", which belong to the same project, when they came out I saw them filed under progressive, new wave, and even so-called singer-songwriter music. All in all, this is also a sign – a very promising one for me – that certain barriers, certain overly broad definitions of contemporary music are becoming meaningless. This is surely a sign of renewed vitality and of a new, more courageous "conversation" between different genres and musicians of different schools.

You also use unusual instruments on this record, like the theremin and the duduk: an uncommon approach to music in these times of overly tame, often interchangeable productions…

The same idea of conversation between genres also applies to musical instruments, which – in my intentions – should be in constant dialogue with each other. To me, instruments are voices. And voices need to be many and different, evoking far-off worlds, stirring vertigo, memories, nostalgia, feelings and moments of illumination… That's the effect of the duduk and the theremin, of the strings, the guitars and the electronic inserts, which never hesitate to step into, say, a dialogue between a violin and a sax, or, as often happens, to sing in unison with me, while the percussion builds landscapes and atmospheres around it all. What satisfies me most is that this multitude of voices creates a very cohesive sonic plot, with a strong character and a sonic weave that is coherent and compelling precisely because of its diversity.

You write both the lyrics and the music: what's your compositional method?

For me, music comes first. But usually the interweaving of melodies already contains the plot within itself. So looking for the lyrics is like digging in a mine. I already know that, a few layers down, the right word is already there: it's just a matter of reaching the exact point in the tunnel, at the right depth. The rest is fine chiseling work that, more often than not, can take months. And precisely for that reason, I try to work on several melodic and narrative fronts at once. In the end, I start imagining the arsenal of instruments and the atmospheres best suited to it.

Are you planning to go on tour soon?

These days, playing live is experienced as a necessity, with a certain degree of desperation, as if it were the last chance for music's survival. For me, though, the production work on the album matters more. It's enough for me to bring a compositional project to light, to make sure it's played and realized in the best way possible. That comes first. I don't care that much about the rest. I don't like the idea of playing live at all costs. Most of the time it just becomes a budget reproduction of the work done in the studio. I don't like the liturgy of performance. For a live show to make sense, the stagecraft needs to be looked after with the same care as the music made in the sanctuary of the studio. If those conditions are met – that is, if the concert adds something new and creative in terms of imagery, atmosphere, acting, and staging, beyond my physical presence and that of the musicians – then "Nacht" will get its tour. But that would be a project in its own right, not a promotional afterthought.

The crisis of the record industry is, sadly, an undeniable reality: the other day, talking about it with a distinguished colleague of yours, Mario Lavezzi, we found ourselves agreeing that most of the blame lies precisely with the record industry itself. What's your take on it?

Mario's opinion carries a lot of weight, having spent so many years working within every corner of the record industry from the inside. He's right. For decades, record labels kept cloning one another, abandoning any real search for something new. On top of their own obtuse approach came that of distributors, who only stocked stores with products from this giant universal copy-of-a-copy, shutting out everything else. In the end, everyone had to identify with the great Clone, everyone had to resemble one another. Anyone who didn't resemble one of the prevailing models was pushed aside. And the same rule took hold on radio and TV programming too. Over the years, all this caused a dizzying decline in what was on offer, a coarsening of taste, an illiteracy among music audiences. Not only that, but the cost of listening became sky-high, buying music turned into a luxury, and young people were progressively pushed out of the market as well. The situation was unsustainable. In more recent years, the "democratization" process unleashed by the internet has reshaped both production and consumption. And it was a bloodbath for an industry as spoiled and spineless as that of the majors and the big distribution chains. A catastrophe of the old order was necessary for something new to emerge. And that's what happened, thanks to the explosion of online music, which freed up energy and creativity, swept away pointless middlemen in the record supply chain, made the parasitism of record executives and sales departments economically pointless, and multiplied the opportunities for "making music" and for listening to it. Even the consumption of music is going back to being an occasion for cultural experience, as it was in the pioneering years of free radio. Long live the crisis, then!

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