Sigillum S - Evolution and Deconstruction

Headlining the Destination Morgue V event in Rome were the historic Sigillum S. It was impossible to pass up the chance for an interview with Eraldo Bernocchi and Paolo Bandera, to talk about the earliest Italian industrial scene and their trajectory, through evolution, cut-up and linguistic experimentation.

Let's start from the beginning, from the origins and roots...

Paolo Bandera: The early part of the story has two aspects. On one hand, a matter of learning, development, and so on; on the other, the specific context of the era. We formed at the end of 1985 thanks to a semi-chance meeting between me, Eraldo (Bernocchi) and Luca (Di Giorgio)... meeting in the most classic way possible, that is, through an ad left in a record shop. We met and discovered we had a lot of sonic and conceptual affinities... aesthetic, almost existential. We shared interests in occultism, counterculture, as well as literature and cinema. Both Eraldo and I had come into contact with, and had been affiliated with, albeit briefly, the Tempio della Gioventù Psichica of Rosemary's Baby (another Italian industrial-post-punk group, whose history, together with that of Ain Soph, Teatro Satanico and Sigillum S, is told in the recent book "Rumori Sacri" published by Kali Yuga edizioni). Then there are many other experiences to add, which in that historical context were generically defined as post-industrial, in the years immediately following the development of industrial culture. I also worked in radio at the time, and wrote for various publications, both music and non-music related... As I was saying, a set of nuances and affinities that led us to work well together. [..]

The most interesting thing was that we developed everything together.

This continued until the early '90s, when we branched off into different directions. Each of us also pursued our own solo ideas and carried on various collaborations, but at the same time we kept enriching the Sigillum S project. When we decided to revive it, as you can hear on the latest album "23/20", it brought our whole journey together into one.

One of the founding concepts of your work, right from the start, has been delving into the "levels of consciousness" of human beings, a concept that comes from Huxley but also from earlier sources - how did you approach this kind of investigation?

Paolo: The crucial point is the interaction between my sensibility, Eraldo's, Luca's, plus that of the others who collaborated with us over the years. I have a background and attitude that's more strictly scientific, and I tend to explore things systematically, based on all my activities and background, trying to connect every element. Eraldo tends to be more emotional and less scientific, with themes tied to a more esoteric sensibility.

Splitting things in two, I'm the technological-scientific soul, at times brutally so, while Eraldo is the more spiritual side.

Eraldo: I'm definitely more interested in the esoteric side, it's part of who I am, though I couldn't fully explain it. I wouldn't call myself an occultist, that would be laughable, but I've always had an interest in different planes of reality. When you combine that with mathematics, with a scientific approach, you get the idea behind Sigillum S. What we've done over all these years is deconstruct formulas, deprogram a whole series of stimuli we had. For Paolo it's easier to approach numerical stimuli, mathematical series, so he's a person much less tied to the emotional side than I am. My emotional side finds expression in a ritualistic form.

The word "deprogramming", together with your stylistic approach - much closer to certain strands of musique concrète than to the "death-ambient-industrial" labels people want to pin on you - brings to mind the idea of neurolinguistic programming and deconstruction. What do you think?

Paolo: I feel a strong affinity with these themes, with this kind of research, both from a philosophical and an operational point of view; I've analyzed and applied concepts of this kind in my solo records, and when we revived Sigillum S in 2007, I wanted to bring them into it. I wanted to take this work to a higher level. I've always played a great deal with the semantics of words, of phrases, different types of language, trying to find a correlation between the various cultural references of a word, of a piece of speech, and its sonic counterpart. On this basis I prepare structures, cores, which Eraldo then works on, bringing them to a complete structure, and then we channel them back together.

Turning to you, Eraldo, how much do you feel like Burroughs or Edgar Varèse on an artistic level?

Eraldo: Great question! I'd love to feel like both of them, but I can't even remotely imagine getting close to their level, they're points of reference… they're extremely important influences in terms of language, of deconstruction, of cut-up… just to name a few.

What role did cut-up play in your music?

Paolo: In the lyrics we still use the technique a great deal, it's just that by now it's become a common tool for us.  I trained myself in it deliberately, even before I met Eraldo, back when I was working in Milan for various radio stations and I'd bring in tape manipulations, concrete pieces, personal works of mine, which I then mixed with texts by Burroughs, Ballard, Philip K. Dick and other authors I was interested in. Then we'd broadcast them live, on the radio, sometimes together with other people's music. The result was unique and personal, but unfortunately most of the audio recordings either don't exist anymore or have been lost. I recently found the text matrices I used to use…"

In terms of the lyrics, what was the cut-up procedure you followed in the early days, in 1986? Was it in parallel with the techniques used by other industrial groups?

Eraldo: I was in charge of writing phrases, putting down in black and white the emotions I was analyzing, then I'd pass them on to Paolo, who would cut them up, stitch them back together, take them apart. In some of the things I wrote I've since found a mantric element, using the voice, the word, the phrase. An obsessive repetition aimed at becoming something else, at reaching an extreme transformation. A total decontextualization, and then whatever meaning each listener finds in it doesn't depend on me.

Now I want to ask you a question, Paolo, about the reissue of "Manual of Industrial Culture" (Shake ed.), which you edited. What role can this new analysis, this new remix, as you called it, play at this point in history?

Paolo: Exactly, "remix" is the most accurate term. The desire to revisit the subject came from two completely separate factors. One was quite simple: the large number of requests for a reprint of the book. When our friends at Shake asked me to take charge of the project, I found myself having to think about it in relation to the current context. And the current context can't be separated from everything that's happened over the last 15 years, during which a great deal has evolved, and also liquefied. Web culture, digital culture, social media culture have flattened the timeline, so that now we find ourselves able to access simultaneously themes that used to be available only sporadically.

That's a very similar, if not identical, argument to the one Simon Reynolds made in his recent "Retromania", isn't it?

Paolo: Absolutely. Reynolds's book is now an essential cultural reference point. What I tried to do in the book was bring back into this kind of discussion a vision of evolution, combining my experience as a performer, artist, and reader/listener, along with the culture I've built up over the years. So some timelines have simply been carried forward, some interpretive keys have been added, and I tried to render the whole thing with a matrix-like vision in the purest sense of the term: being simultaneously a development along a sequential line and, at the same time, a 360-degree view.

Do you think the concept of industrial can be closed off, given a precise outline?

Paolo: In my view, the concept of industrial has never reopened. Because it was tied to what was happening in the late '70s; everything that happened afterward consists of many different lines of post-industrial. These have now arrived at this semi-apocalyptic vision, in which all the lines of interpretation of past, present and future collapse, for a number of reasons: socio-economic, cultural, media-related, etc. And what lies ahead is open to the interpretation of whoever lived through it (late '70s, early '80s) or is living through it now.

Just to dwell on the subject one last moment. I've noticed that other volumes released around the same time as "Manual of Industrial Culture" highlight a strong role for industrial metal?

Paolo: I know the authors, I've done several joint projects/presentations with them, and I can understand why, but it's not part of my interpretive framework, I don't share that view.

Eraldo: I'm a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to industrial. For me, from Throbbing Gristle, Spk, Lustmord, Psychic Tv, that's all fine. Everything else isn't industrial, it's appropriating something that belongs to others. NIN aren't industrial. Reznor is an excellent producer, capable of blending various genres, good for him.

Paolo: Industrial artists start from something that has nothing to do with music, and end up entering the musical discourse almost incidentally. As they develop, they end up diverging enormously, both aesthetically and philosophically, etc. We, like others, chose to abandon intermediation completely and move toward self-production. It seems rather telling to me that others consider it possible to use "commercial" operating models that have nothing to do with the original roots.

Let's move towards wrapping up and talk about your side projects. For instance, the latest release under the name "Winter Garden", which concerns you, Eraldo — what direction, what goal are you pursuing there?

Eraldo: There's no planning involved. There's no direction. There was, without a doubt, great satisfaction in being able to work again with Harold Budd and, above all, with Robin (Guthrie), who's one of my idols. But there's no real path to it — just the desire to collaborate with certain artists and the timing that allows us to meet up.

What are you working on at the moment?

Eraldo: Right now I'm finishing up a remix album of "Winter Garden", the debut album by Metallic Taste of Blood, a new band I founded together with Colin Edwin (bassist of Porcupine Tree), and then there are the European dates with Obake (a doom metal project that also involves Massimo Pupillo and others). I also have a duo album with KK Null and another with Henrik Nordvargr.

And you, Paolo?

Paolo: Right now I'm finishing the new Sshe Retina Stimulants album. I also have a few collaborations underway: one already recorded, which represents a further evolution of the work with my friends from Chicago that I'd already released as "Sshe Retina Stimulants & The Fortieth Day" (the latter being the project of Mark Solotroff and Isidro Reyes), with Terence Hannum (Locrian). This one is built around megadrones recorded live at a radio station in Chicago. Another sees me working alongside K2 (the noise project of Kimihide Kusafuka), with whom we're exchanging material with each other to then work on.

I've been keeping you here for over half an hour now! Thank you so much for your time, and one last question... after "23/20", what plans do you have in mind?

Paolo: New material that we're already recording now, which will come out as a limited-edition 7", an EP as a free download on our Bandcamp site, and a collaboration with Mombu (a group made up of members of Zu and Neo). Alongside that, there's a series of reissues of unreleased material that's now hard to find, like cassettes and so on, which will be reissued on vinyl and CD. As for an actual new album of our own, that won't happen before 2013.

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