Visconti - Il ragazzo di ferro

Two and a half years have passed since the release of “DPCM”, the album that marked Visconti's recording debut, born out of the harrowing period of the pandemic and inspired by the tragic events of those months. On the occasion of the release of his second chapter, “Boy di Ferro”, we met with the Lombard musician, just a couple of days before the first date of his promotional tour, scheduled in Rome as part of the ALTRNTV series, held within the MarteLive bill.

Hi Valerio, nice to meet you. Just to start off, tell us what's happened between “DPCM” and now…

Hi, well, I'd say a lot has changed. I've officially settled in Milan to finish my studies and start working; it feels strange, because in a way I feel like I've gone back to living a life I no longer thought could pass by this quickly after the pandemic shutdown.

I've played a lot and gotten deeply into the "practical side" of “DPCM”, including plenty of great live experiences that I wish were much more of a regular occurrence. Some people tell me it was different before the pandemic, that there were more venues and tours were longer. I like to believe that's true.

In 2022, after the disaster of Covid, the live music sector managed to get back on its feet, albeit amid countless difficulties, but we increasingly read about artists, even fairly prominent ones, forced to cancel tours because of unsustainable costs. What's the current situation like for young up-and-comers on the independent circuit?

When I started touring to promote “DPCM”, I had to deal with a system whose survival rules were passed down by word of mouth, and I realized that after a show only the most determined manage to come out ahead, partly thanks to good quality merchandise, which you might manage to sell at the table. I quickly understood that it's all one big compromise and, after a few missteps, I'm now starting to figure it out, trying to follow the advice of those who've been musicians longer than me. I think I understood last summer, together with my band, that managing money well during a tour is almost as important as playing well, and at a time when having your feet firmly planted in reality is the real engine driving the music scene, all I could do was watch and learn as much as possible. It's hard, that's what I'll say, but hunger is the only real remedy, along with an education in how to enjoy culture, which for now still isn't the musicians' responsibility.

Do you think music festivals and events, which are becoming ever more widespread and well-attended, can really be an opportunity for emerging musicians of your generation? Then again, I imagine it's anything but easy to get noticed, given the huge number of artists chasing gigs and the few venues available to play…

I think it depends on the type of project. In my case, I've always decided to focus heavily on live shows as the true catalyzing experience of Visconti, and I know that playing a lot around the country is the best way to establish yourself and keep the project's flame alive. In other cases, the nature of things might lean more toward streaming right from the start. Everywhere we go we meet new people, and I don't think there's a more beautiful way to experience music, even though it's a fact that for a band from Northern Italy it's really hard to go play in the South: that seems to be our real limitation for now. The greatest opportunity for me is to be able to actively live my music by playing it, and the few venues left, along with a seasonality that brings cold winters with no more clubs, is what scares me most about the future.

These days you're on the bill for ALTRNTV, the music series held as part of MarteLive, in Rome, the first stop of your new tour. How are you preparing?

We're really fired up, it's the first real date after the secret party we held in Milan for the release of “Boy di Ferro”. It's October 30th, so we're aiming to celebrate Halloween in costume on stage. Other than that, we have a new setlist that includes some tracks from the album we've never played live, and an unstoppable urge to get charged up by the Monk's high volume. I don't think the rest of the tour will change much in terms of the festive mood and drive for redemption. We have a new addition to the band, Fight Pausa, who I collaborated with on the album. It's an honor for me.

When I listened to your debut I was struck by the huge number of references within the songs. I was struck by those guitars so Strokes-like in “La morte a Venezia”, I caught a whiff of Federico Fiumani in the folds of “Narcisi sbagliati”, and I was enthralled by the retro atmospheres that characterized “Le idi di marzo” (which made me think of Baustelle, even though they have little to do with your style). Are some of these echoes tributes, or did they come out unconsciously (maybe you've never even listened to some of these artists)?

For me, musical references are almost always exclusively international ones, although in that case I did indeed have something “Baustelle-like” spinning around in my head, and I didn't rule out exploring and drawing inspiration, in a rather drifting way, from the relics of classic Italian indie and post-punk. I think that in that case the Italian "tributes" were unconscious leakages of things far away, heard a long time before, whereas for the Strokes and all the projects that echo that kind of lo-fi symphonic quality, I have a real soft spot and an ongoing, endless fascination.

But the track that really blew me away was “DPCM” itself, because it opened up a huge door onto some of my favorite bands from the Eighties and Nineties. When you scream “Un concetto di socialità”, or raise your tone in the closing lines, you sound like a strange hybrid of Giovanni Lindo Ferretti and Manuel Agnelli. A song that, in my opinion, could easily have fit on the Afterhours' “Germi”. That said, what were your formative listens?

Aside from a catechism-class childhood built on Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, I seriously took up my free will thanks to YouTube around age 12, and I spent my middle-school summers watching Queens of the Stone Age live footage.

From high school onward, I never detached myself from post-punk and hardcore, including all their more experimental and electronic offshoots. Among my Italian influences, I had many historic bands like Afterhours, CCCP and Teatro degli Orrori.

And what do you mostly listen to today?

Lately I've been listening to a lot of electronic music for the first time, especially IDM and jungle. At the same time, I'm keeping a close eye on this new resurgence of shoegaze and electronic punk that's happening in the US.

On the new album “Boy di ferro”, I notice a change of direction: no longer a very heterogeneous range of influences, but greater uniformity, sharper focus. Was the intention to narrow your field of action in order to define yourself more clearly?

Definitely, it's a record where I've reached different levels of awareness, one of which is the desire to determine my own path.

I hope this doesn't come across as an insult, but I find “Boy di ferro” to be a very powerful post-punk record — the kind of post-punk that Achille Lauro might have conceived (from my point of view this is meant as a compliment, I want to make that clear). I really hear it, for example, in a chorus with such obvious pop openings like the one in “Wandervogel”…

Ahaha, no, I don't take it as an insult! I'm just as fascinated by pop music as I am by the more difficult, experimental stuff, and putting these things together was really the great incipit of this album. I'm glad that's how it came out!

There's a lot more going on too, though, like certain bossa nova influences at the start of “Ascendente”, or the danceable breakbeats of “CTIPP”…

Yes, they gave me the chance to experiment with lyrics and meters that are very different from one another too.

Speaking of post-punk: do you feel influenced by the most recent scene, the one led by bands like Idles and early Fontaines Dc, or are your points of reference still the groups that shaped the genre between the Seventies and Eighties?

I think I have a strong root in the rawer sounds of the genre, whether old or contemporary, but always off to the side, underground. I looked at Idles and Fontaines Dc with great interest from their very beginnings, but then I got a bit tired of them. The torch of inspiration lights my way toward rougher, more caustic sonic territories — after all, the Italian language softens everything in the end anyway.

In your lyrics I pick up references to the Maja Vestida/Maja Desnuda, to Picasso — are you a fan of Spanish art?

No, actually not, when it comes to figurative art I'm exactly a poser, ahah. I like symbols and how they dress up the key moments of my life.

Maya reminds me of my girlfriend, while in that other case I'd learned in a university course that Picasso had driven many of his partners to the brink of madness, and the image stuck vividly in my head, explaining things I was feeling at the time.

I know you don't mind talking about politics. Care to give us a couple of flashes on the current situation in Italy?

I wouldn't know what to say. It's a dark moment, one of deep social crisis and repression of ideas. I work with music and, even though it isn't politicized, it's also the weapon I have at my disposal to push back against the way things are right now — though the time will soon come when it won't be enough anymore.

Would you like to name some of your fellow Italian musicians you admire most, and maybe tell us why?

I have huge admiration for Post Nebbia, with whom there's a strong elective affinity and a shared urge to sow terror, not to mention the whole "underground" banner we both fly. The same goes for Jesse The Faccio, who was almost like a father figure to me when I first started becoming Visconti. Outside of Dischi Sotterranei, I'm very close to Generic Animal and his latest album, which for me is one of the best records of this year: we've built a great friendship and share a lot of the same views on music, and on top of that I'll be joining him as guitarist on tour in 2025. And Montag, together with Giallorenzo, who took me under their wing as soon as I arrived in Milan.

And a couple of international artists you'd like to collaborate with...

Great question! I'll just give you a list, no explanations: The Garden, Porches, Sword II and Powerplant.

One last, obligatory question: what's next for Visconti. There's a tour coming up to promote the new album. What happens after that? Any plans in the works?

Well, I couldn't say. I feel empty and overflowing at the same time, now that "Boy di ferro" has come out. Although before too long something new will come out from a project I've been working on for a while with Giulio Patarnello (Post Nebbia, Pants are yellow), but I can't reveal anything more. Beyond that, I already have quite a few new tracks I'll start working on, but not for a few months yet.

(November 2024)

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