Sparkle In Grey - Italian-style instrumental puffs

Following the release of their second album “Mexico”, Sparkle In Grey sat down for a wide-ranging interview to explain what it means to hold so many souls together within one band, to navigate the Italian music market, and the role of improvisation in instrumental music.

Hi guys, thanks for choosing OndaRock as the venue for this interview. First of all, congratulations on “Mexico“—your career seems to have fewer and fewer clear reference points, which I think is a good thing. Given your peculiar fusion of electronics and classic post-rock structure, the first thing I want to ask is: how did the album come about? How do you manage to make these two souls and two production processes coexist?

Alberto Carozzi: Thanks for the kind words… we're happy with what we're doing, and finding that kind of synergy in a musical experience is by no means a given. We've been lucky enough to have that, and we're aware of it, we take care of it, and we also like to test it, trying combinations that are new for us each time: in the end it all adds up, ideas multiply, and we struggle to keep up with them.

Matteo Uggeri: For a while now we haven't really worried about how to make electronics and “real” instruments coexist. Our compositional method, if you can call it that, consists of going to the rehearsal room every Thursday evening and improvising together over electronic backing tracks that I've usually prepared in part beforehand. But lately we've also been working without electronics, adding them in afterwards. We tend to avoid the “classic post-rock structure”, meaning the typical rhythmic, melancholic crescendos of bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor! (whom we actually like, but who have too many imitators), and having synthetic rhythms to keep us grounded sometimes helps. Anyway, you couldn't have paid us a better compliment by saying it doesn't seem like we have reference points… actually we have plenty, but they blend together so much that maybe they're no longer identifiable!

My impression is that the tracks often have an overabundance of elements: in some cases I love the way they develop, but I sense that extra something that throws me off. Since I love electronic music a lot, my approach is minimalist, though I understand a band can't cater to the spirit of just one member. How do you handle that? Are there arguments, or is everything clear and straightforward?

AC: From our earliest work to today we've been compared to a huge number of artists, even quite distant from each other… the moral of the story is probably that which style comes across as dominant depends entirely on the listener's own background.

MU: Definitely, in my opinion, one of our great strengths is that all of us like a lot of very different kinds of music… so if we say everyone likes a track and decide to record it and put it on the album, that means all four of us like it, which is a miracle given that some of us love Nine Inch Nails and others love Erik Satie… or maybe both.

We argue quite a bit, but so far we haven't killed each other. Having dinner together before rehearsals helps a lot. Seriously.

Backing up what you're saying, I'm reminded of “These Nightmares Are Ending”, one of my favourite tracks, released on the split “Whale Heart, Whale Heart“. Those nine minutes are the perfect synthesis of your music. Following on from that, I'd like to ask how you approach an underrated instrument like the violin. It's often present in your songs and adds real value to the whole. Tell me your thoughts.

Franz Krostopovic: The violin, as I see it, rather than underrated, is an extremely risky instrument in music that isn't part of the so-called “classical” tradition: the risk is tending towards virtuosity or mannerism. Either you go country or you bend notes like a madman. What I try, with some effort, to do—also thanks to the invaluable advice of my bandmates—is aim for a tone and solutions that lean towards essentiality and distinctiveness rather than the speed and showmanship that seem tattooed into this instrument's wood.

AC: I've never thought of the violin as underrated either; if anything it seems to me an instrument that has carved out leading roles for itself for centuries. It's the instrument closest to the human voice, so on one hand extremely eclectic and versatile, and on the other capable of forging a privileged bond with the listener… and in that sense I agree we need to be careful about the risk of overexposing its tone. But one beautiful and interesting thing we're developing is building tracks around a violin idea: that's how “Phennel Song” came about, along with some brand new material that's “forcing” us to change our approach to a track.

MU: “More laid-back, fewer notes!”: that's how I used to bust Franz's chops until a while back. For some time now, though, I've loved absolutely everything he does. He even introduced me to his parents. If I weren't already married…

I absolutely didn't mean to call the violin an underrated instrument in general, only in certain instrumental contexts over the last 10-15 years. As you say, it's a tricky step for a band that makes instrumental music, the risk of coming across as too showy is real. That brings to mind Kreidler, a band I adore and have always tried to champion over the years. Have you ever listened to them? I think the formal and emotional perfection of their tracks is comparable to your style. On that note, tell me whether, during the writing process, there are artists or albums you refer back to or that are a source of inspiration for you.

MU: I discovered Kreidler this year because Bureau B sent me their “Tank” to review for Sands-Zine (the small webzine that both Al and I write for now and then). It struck me a lot and I loved some of the tracks to death, on top of having always been a fan of ToRococoRot and Tarwater. You're right: their minimalism and their very sparing use of guitar are exemplary, and the album we're working on right now leans in that direction somewhat. But the artists we could say we refer to during the creative process (writing is a big word… we always improvise to create) are countless. Every Thursday evening at dinner, before rehearsals, one of us shows up with new suggestions ranging from Ali Farka Toure to Cindy Talk, by way of the Seeds (the Saxon ones) or Marracash, not to mention Caparezza or the Penguin Café Orchestra and Cop Shoot Cop. If even a crumb – conscious or not – of each of them ends up in our music, we're happy. But who knows? What's certain is that we listen to a ton of different stuff.

AC: It regularly happens to me that I have someone's way of playing in my head, a certain sound, a certain style, and I try, more or less consciously, to bring it into what I do—this one today, that one tomorrow; for instance I'm blown away by the compositional style of The Necks, the way Tiken Jah Fakoly's songs kick off, the punk spirit of Pascal Comelade, the whiff of kebab of Zebda…

FK: I typically fall in love with certain bands, composers, or just ways of playing, depending on what I'm listening to at that particular moment. Whenever I see a live show, for instance, I tell myself how great it would be to play like that and create those atmospheres. It's a naive, romantic attitude, but, barring obvious exceptions, I fall in love with pretty much everything I hear.

Still on the subject of the split, how did the collaboration with Matt Shaw (Tex La Homa) come about? I ask because your music is essentially very different from his, so the announcement of the split really surprised me at the time.

AC: The collaboration with Tex La Homa came about through an invitation, which we happily accepted. We approached it lightly, in the good sense of the word, even though a lot of people do ask us to account for it... who knows if they ask him the same thing. In practice it ended up being a very long-distance collaboration, splitting the two sides of a vinyl equally between us — a split, precisely. So artistically there was no real blending: maybe it would have been worth it.

MU: I'd heard a few of his tracks on compilations and then we swapped records. He's a lovely person, and the strange thing was that his son was born right around the time we were making the record... which he interpreted in terms of paternal love. Which suited us just fine.

Another curiosity: why do your tracks often feature samples of children's voices? Is there a particular reason, or do you simply like that kind of sound?

FK: Ah, childlike voices and the sound of running water are Matteo Uggeri's trademarks. I've been teasing him about it for a decade, so this is a golden opportunity to keep it up.

AC: On the next record there'll be samples of drowned children.

MU: We actually lost the chance to be released by Boring Machines because of this: apparently those little voices made Onga's blood boil. In my defense, I can only say that the recorded kids are all children of dear friends (Sofia, who sings on "Teacher Song," is the daughter of my boss at work, and Ileana and Lukas — "L'innocence du Sommeil" — are the children of a Greek/German friend of mine), so there's an emotional bond with them either way, they're not just random voices. "Teacher Song" actually came out of a now-legendary gig we played in 2007 at a kindergarten, where my boss's kids happened to be...

I think sampling in instrumental music is a double-edged sword — overdo it and you end up with an indistinct mush. How do you approach these practices? What potential do you see in a recorded sound? How do you get these outside elements to talk to the rest of the music?

MU: Well... I come from a musical background where sampling is an integral part of the music. Back in the '90s I was struck by an interview with Outoff Body Experience (if anyone remembers them, email me and I'll send you one of our records!) where they said, "some people play guitar, some play drums, some play keyboards or the sampler... we play other people's records." The music I make is steeped in samples — I could probably get sued more times than M/A/R/R/S — but the best part is that nobody ever recognizes them. Both in "A Quiet Place" and "Mexico" there are also quotes from films or other artists that nobody has spotted so far...

But there are also cases where they don't work at all, take "Nefelodhis"... and recently Alberto pointed out to me that on the acoustic record we're working on, the ones I'd chosen were too on-the-nose. He was right.

Anyway, I don't really know how we make them talk to the rest, it varies a lot. Sometimes I put them in first and they act as inspiration (or disruption) for the others, other times I add them afterward to see if they fit. What's certain is that I spend a long time thinking about what to put where, and the others often curse me for the strange voices that throw them off time while they're playing.

AC: With "Sunrising," after we recorded it we were left a bit puzzled, it felt incomplete, we couldn't crack it, then Matteo laid Salvatore Borsellino's voice over it, and it took this orbital leap that still turns my stomach, in a good way. I find any form of recycling fascinating, and I think that was one of the things that made me want to try playing with Matteo in the first place. Putting things back into circulation, maybe in a completely improbable dimension... it should be done with people too, just to shuffle the deck a little.

Both this and your other answers make me understand that your way of putting an album together is essentially based on improvisation. Getting together in a room once a week and playing freely, adding samples based on the inspiration of the moment, never letting yourselves be boxed in by fixed patterns. Given how you work and feel about it, where's the line between improvisation and composition? Or put another way, does actual songwriting exist in instrumental music? Or do you just let yourselves go with the fleeting sensations of the moment? If improvisation is everything for you, is it fair to say that an album could turn out completely different depending on your mood, on what you'd listened to the day before, or on other outside factors?

MU: I've been mulling over this question for a while... it's not easy to answer and describe how our tracks come about. What I can say for sure is no, improvisation isn't everything for us — it's usually just the initial creative moment, which is exactly what happens at the Silos, the place where we rehearse every Thursday evening. Maybe it's easier to describe it step by step: sometimes at home, in a rare burst of domestic creativity, I'll sit down at the laptop and fiddle around to build a new rhythmic base, often sampling other people's records and then radically reworking the samples and mixing them with others. Later, when we're at the Silos, if I'm feeling brave enough, and especially if we have time to devote to new tracks (we often have to prepare for live shows), I'll play it and see what the others do with it. Lately it's Cristiano who, on bass, finds a groove that suits it... then the others layer on top, Alberto on guitar, Franz on violin. These sessions usually last at least ten minutes or so, until we get tired and look at each other, asking how it felt. And that's where the hard part begins, a phase of fine-tuning the track that can take months or even years... not so much because we're huge perfectionists, but because we have little time to work on it and inspiration doesn't always show up. Maybe after dozens of attempts we realize my base is too messy and we scrap it, or we decide the keyboard works better than the violin, or that maybe we could add two basses or call up our drummer friend (Simone Riva, the owner of the Silos, used to play with Alex Baroni!).

Cristiano usually records our impros, or our attempts at shaping a piece, with a simple mp3 player, then his wife sends it to us online and everyone listens back to it at home, maybe gets some ideas going… So much for improvisation, you might say! When a track is decent we might try it out live, and that's where we find out whether it really works or not (often it doesn't), and then we tweak it again. Sometimes it's not fully finished even when we record it, so much so that we then add or even remove parts later, at the mixing stage.

Then there are other approaches, for instance “Nefelodhis” and “Whale Heart” came about in completely different ways… the acoustic record Alberto is working on is different again.

AC: I'll try to pick up mainly on the first and last parts of your question. For us, improvisation is first and foremost a warm-up practice, a way to start getting the sounds moving in the air. I'm not sure improvising just for the sake of improvising is something I'm interested in pursuing, even though it remains an experience that can sometimes be frightening for how much it reveals about the connection between you and whoever's sharing that moment. I'm actually doing a lot of work on improvisation in a completely different context, where the main goal is precisely the relationship, and aesthetics is an added value, sometimes sought after, sometimes not. Some of our tracks have an elastic space inside them where you can let go, a circumscribed, bounded space, not entirely unpredictable, but still subject to the spontaneity of the moment. And to wrap up, even though most of what we record is more or less fixed, I like to think, for us and for all the records I love, that they carry the smell of whatever was eaten that day.

Given the context you emerged from artistically and the fact that you're Italian, do you feel part of a scene? Is there a relationship with other artists similar to you, or part of a particular "circle"? Do you believe that some sort of union between various artists could help spread lesser-known music to a wider audience?

MU: Personally I owe a huge amount to three Italian musical contexts: Oltre il Suono, the now-defunct "ambient" forum founded by Giuseppe Verticchio in the late '90s, the brief experience of iXem and the Superfici Sonore festival in Florence (2003), and then Tagofest in Marina di Massa, which I took part in from 2007 until last year (and it makes me want to cry to think there won't be another one). As for whether you can call it a scene, I'm not sure, but friends and collaborators, definitely yes (I'm talking about Harshccore, OvO, St.Ride, Afe, My Dear Killer, Onga, Luminance Ratio, Bob Corn, Palustre, Malagnino, Comaneci…).

In the end, though, we're pretty much rejected wholesale by so-called "indie" circles, so we feel much more at ease in experimental ones, even though we'd actually like to hang out in other rooms too. They just won't let us in.

AC: I'm learning that sharing is the thing that gives meaning and value to every experience and every existence, you notice it when it's missing, and it's not easy to find, it requires openness, listening, and a lot of other things that maybe don't even have anything to do with the question you asked… To release Mexico we brought in four labels (Afe, Musica di un Certo Livello, Lizard, Old Bycicle) alongside our own Grey Sparkle, each of which contributed what it could or wanted to towards funding the record. So far it seems to be working really well, some more than others are helping us promote it, find the odd tiny slot to play live, I hope everyone breaks even, that would be a good reason to do it again.

I don't really know what being part of a scene means exactly, maybe because a scene is more something you see from the outside, looking at things from a certain distance, where you get a clearer perception of the whole. If I look at my own attitude, I can say that these days I don't chase after my "kindred spirits", if anything I tend to look outward, toward other contexts, other forms of expression, other kinds of stimuli. It did me good, for instance, a few days ago, to hear a radio report from Mexico, from one of those shelters that provide physical, logistical and moral support to people trying to cross into the US through Mexico. It ended with "migrating is a right".

FK: As our friend Luca Sigurtà says, "the scene sucks, and it's your fault". Paraphrasing Bluvertigo, though, we're all more selfish than we think, and rather than a scene there are shared paths, and the feeling of all being caught somewhere between the ridiculous and the epic. Which, I think, is ultimately what music is about.

I went to TagoMago for many years myself, and I too mourn some of the painful chapters in that venue's history. Unfortunately the ghettoization of certain artistic circles leads to a priori exclusion based on truly absurd criteria. How much good can such a contradictory attitude do for music? People search so hard for freedom of thought in the artistic sphere, and the result of certain behaviors is the exact opposite: it kills sharing, listening, openness. Why do you think these things happen? Delusions of self-importance? Fear of being excluded in turn?

MU: I know Tagofest was criticized from many quarters, but you won't find a detractor in me! Yes, it had its flaws, it too was maybe run for friends of friends, and in a few editions I didn't much like the musical choices, but it was still a blast, at least for me and plenty of others. At the end of the day, organizing something like that is an enormous effort, and to me it seems only natural that whoever organizes it gets to book whoever they want, however they want. But I'm not sure that's what you meant: if you're talking about the ostracism towards Tagomago from the Massa Carrara municipal council, the infamous raids, the SIAE inspections and so on… well, you can imagine what I think of all those bastards who kept putting a spanner in the works for the venue.

As for the release of "Mexico", what does it mean to bring in as many as four labels? I've always wondered why niche music in Italy (independent, alternative, call it what you like) has always fragmented so excessively… Is there, in your view, a miracle recipe to make things easier for artists?

MU: I don't know any miracle recipes, not even for getting it up, let alone for records! Bringing in a lot of labels is mostly down to a lack of money and time: nobody has any, so it's better to ask a little from many (for "Mexico" it was 100 to 200 euros per label). And the nicest thing, at least for us, is that they're all labels from different areas: electronic, progressive, experimental, dark… which really helps spread our music to different kinds of listeners. Plus it's nice to work together, I really like that.

FK: Quoting Matthew, though not Uggeri: "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." So, we probably prefer small doors that hide something of value, rather than taking a big door only to inevitably get it slammed in our face.

AC: Nowadays you can wear the mask of musician, producer, promoter, press office and videomaker all at once… Behind the labels that put out our records there are individual people who liked our record, not record companies. If this were 1991, it would already be a miracle just to get a record out, and that goes for Mexico as much as for 99% of what comes out today, so even though it's an overly simplistic way of putting it, I think this musical era, where if you have an idea you can actually make it happen, deserves to be appreciated.

As a final question, I'll indulge in a classic one. Future projects? New releases? Any tour on the horizon?

MU: Tour, never — we never manage to line up more than a couple of dates in a row. As for records, though, we've got three in the works: "Thursday Evening", which we already play live a lot and have semi-recorded at the Arci Blob with Mario Bossi; "Welcome, Brahim Izdag" (working title), where we delve partly into samba and Ukrainian folk songs; and an acoustic record, a sort of calendar in sound. Who knows when we'll finish them or when we'll actually release them. For now, we're not giving up.

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