Uochi Toki - Rap Narrative

That Napo and Rico, aka Uochi Toki, have a lot to say is already clear from their torrential lyrics. Pages and pages of reflections laid out by Napo over Rico's thorny beats make them one of the most interesting and original hip hop combos in this peninsula. We met them, and the two didn't disappoint: in person too they have plenty to say, about everything, so much so that Rico warns me right away when we set up the interview: "We like to take our time, develop our ideas. Let's meet for lunch the day after the show (Pisa, March 6th: the tour opener), so we can talk without rushing." The result is an hour and a half of conversation, more than an actual interview. I had a few questions in mind, but then I let myself get swept up in the flow, because Uochi Toki talk about everything, and with real knowledge: they fire off opinions when it's time to fire off opinions, but they also explain everything you ask them.

I swore my first question would be about your groupie from last night.

Napo: My groupie?

Yeah, you had a groupie last night. Didn't you notice? At the start of the evening there was a girl who came over to see what you were playing. She was a groupie, right? Or at least an aspiring groupie...

N.: She didn't know the band, someone had sent her over.

No! Really? I'd thought she was a groupie. I told myself: "See, even Uochi Toki..."

Roadie: Now I can tell you (turning to Napo). I sent her over because she kept asking me: "What's your friend playing?"

I thought she wanted to hit on you!

N.: She was a drunk pain in the ass who wanted to know what I was playing and couldn't accept that someone might wait for the concert by playing a game. She says to me: "Ah, I'm waiting for the concert." "Why did you come here?" "Well, I got dragged along, but I think I might actually not like it" "Yeah, I think so too..."

But did you end up liking the concert?

N.: She vanished, and I don't even remember what she looked like: I was playing Tetris.

Well, on the other hand, I can tell you that a lot of my friends told me they were jealous because I was seeing you today!

N.: Oh really? They've got a pretty distorted idea, then.

Napo, had you never thought about that before?

N.: I try not to think about it too much, because it's not something that really affects me.

Maybe that's thanks to a possible autobiographical streak. Speaking of which, how much autobiography is there in your lyrics? How much of yourself do you tell?

N.: When it's not made up, all of it.

And when is it not made up?

N.: Well, I can't give you a list! Let's say the far-fetched things are true, and the things that sound more realistic are usually made up.

So, for example, “Il piromane”...

N.: “Il piromane” belongs to the part of the record that's entirely made up, though I do like lighting bonfires (mischievous smile, ed.). Not on the beach.

Let's try a little historical excursus on Uochi Toki, who first met way back in...

R.: 1998, I'd say. No, '97. And we started going around with spray cans, tagging walls. Writing stuff like "Viva Pisa" and things like that. I already had a fairly homemade rap group going, so I was already making beats.

N.: And you swapped it for an equally homegrown rap group!

R.: Homegrown, sure, but with a different person. Since we were spending so much time together anyway, why not spend even more of it making music?

So you cheated on your old rap group with Napo!

N.: Let's just say it's the old rap group that cheated on him.

Is this the classic story/trick of the band that breaks up and then re-forms without one member?

N.: No, let's say the other rap group just didn't want to play anymore.

R.: Anyway... my beat, his lyrics, we both liked it, neither of us held the other back on ideas, even the craziest ones, so we've always been totally independent and maybe, luckily, also in sync, and that's how we've kept going: each of us doing whatever the hell we wanted, but doing it at the same time.

And in fact, speaking of doing whatever you want... sometimes you get the impression the beats are completely independent from the lyrics, while other times they seem extremely tied together, like you, Rico, are underscoring certain passages, while other times it seems like you're just following your own path.

R.: Can you actually give me some examples?

Here and there, but I can't tell you "in this track it's like this, in this track it's like that." And besides, even Napo couldn't give me any examples earlier!

R.: Well, it's not exactly easy with a discography of a hundred and fifty tracks!

So I'm off the hook too, then!

R.: Although yesterday we did eleven of them! No, it's fine. We never rehearse. We just meet up on stage. Sometimes Napo hears the beat he's supposed to rap over for the first time, so he adapts the lyrics to the beat, and then, in turn, hearing the lyrics, I readapt the beat to the lyrics.

So there's an interaction, then.

R.: Absolutely.

N.: Yes. It's got a random algorithm (or logarithm), but it exists.

R.: Yeah, exactly. I don't underline the same words at every show, that's true, sometimes I miss a line or two, also because you don't always have optimal listening conditions, plus there's the concentration issue, since doing two things at once is complicated. I find it hard just doing one!

R.: In some spots there's real synchrony, in others less so, in others it's there but you don't notice it, and in others it seems to be there but it's actually random.

N.: And in others, someone's gone off to grab a beer instead.

So, going back to the biography/influences topic, let's talk about influences but not the illnesses. You're both writers, I imagine you've always listened to rap.

N.: Up to a point, then we got sick of it. Because, well, the place we lived in at the time was around Voghera, which is a commuter town that funnels people towards Milan.

R.: It produces widespread sadness.

N.: There was a thriving punk-rock scene there, so at some point people started passing us hardcore-punk records, and we started listening to that too, then someone started passing us metal records, and we started listening to that too.

R.: More than anything, there just weren't many losers who stepped outside the disco, pub or football crowd. Those legendary metal-versus-rap turf wars you'd get in the big cities couldn't really happen where we were, because otherwise you'd be left one against one, so people banded together and picked up a bit from each other. Since we started out from rap, which is about the least fascinating starting point there is, we ended up more influenced by the people who followed, say, punk, than the other way round. Rap has always been mocked and looked down on. And rightly so.

N.: Since you brought up the subject, punk-rock was always full of groupies. We, on the other hand...

Really? And yet you'd imagine Eminem.

N.: It's a distorted image, this idea that rap is so girl-friendly. In fact rap is nerdy, it's nothing else. And now there's actually been this rise of nerdcore, which is the real way of understanding rap.

But punk and metal aren't exactly considered particularly girl-friendly genres either, are they?

N.: Well, no, but right now metalheads and punks are always surrounded by women.

So, if you could, would you go back?

N.: No, no, it's fine the way we did it. That way we got to make a really good selection of these girls and keep only the sharpest ones, the ones who like Tetris!

But out of all the games, why Tetris?

N.: Because it's still a game where you have to put pieces in order, and I like putting in order things that then disappear.

R.: There are four of us on the road, with drum parts, merchandising, electronic gear, in a Punto running on methane. She was getting ready to load up the car, she wasn't playing!

N.: And besides, puzzle games have something abstract about them that almost calls to mind the very concept of existence. It's more of a mathematical equation than a game. It's interesting.

So you could solve mathematical equations, then!

N.: With those I wouldn't even know where to start! But say, figuring out the equation behind Tetris, that one's more intuitive, so it's also more fun to solve.

More or less we get an idea of what you used to listen to, anyway.

R.: As far as I'm concerned, I'm heavily influenced by my friends. I'm surrounded by people who listen to a ton of music, all kinds of stuff, so my musical research doesn't happen online and it's not in magazines. It's really the records that people pass on to me. So I helped myself to plenty of samples from bands that were passed on to me and that became important to me, like Secret Chiefs 3, Meshuggah, Queens Of The Stone Age. Obviously I didn't sample anything from rap because it's been ages since I've listened to rap, and instead I wanted to pay little tributes to all the new stuff I've been listening to lately, and they're all records that, one way or another, friends of mine passed on to me, so the influence is "personal".

When did you stop listening to rap, and why? And then, so, why do you implicitly ask to be listened to, you who are a rap group?

N.: We stopped listening to rap because, I don't know, basically, it had all become the same as itself.

What years are we talking about?

N.: Late '90s, early 2000s. That's when the second era of Italian rap really came to an end, and very few records came out in that period. Then there was a revival, thanks to the usual Eminem. We stopped listening to it because it wasn't giving anything anymore, it was really repetitive.

R.: Even back then we felt there were huge limitations in rap: in the subject matter, in how it was handled, and in the terrible use of verb tenses that rappers made.

N.: Not to mention the metaphors! Anyway, it's not that the rappers around today are bad, it's that they have moments where they're really at their worst, and there was a period when almost all rappers, Italian and otherwise, were at their worst. That's exactly the moment when we stopped listening to it. And then they might get pissed off because: "Ah, you don't support us!" Well, we don't support it because we can't stand the fact that records keep coming out all the same, that you always have to repeat the same things. Because, well, more or less, not much has changed since. If we ask people to really listen to our records, it's because we maybe have the ambition, or the presumption, that they might say something more.

R.: An arrogance we probably had from the very start, right from our first demo back when we were still Laze Biose. Even then we were taking the piss out of certain rap-album stereotypes: the love song, which always had to be there and was always the corniest track on the record, or the featuring verse in English.

So you'll never make one of those syrupy r'n'b tracks? Come on, at least once... Maybe when you're old.

R.: Can't be ruled out, and maybe even while we're still young! At the end of the day it's a form of expression, so you just have to find a way to use that form of expression in a way that's compatible with what we think. In theory even an r'n'b track could be made - in fact it has been made - with a chorus, but that goes back to the Laze Biose days, with a chorus that went: "R'n'b chorus", which incidentally was the first thing I said this morning! (he laughs, ed.) You can use the forms. The rap form is the one closest to our way of expressing ourselves, even if the beats are extremely dirty electronic ones, which is the kind of electronic music I like, and to express certain concepts a pop-structured song with a chorus repeated four times would say a hundredth of what gets said in one of our tracks. So, since we feel the need to express certain concepts, some forms would be limiting. It could actually be fun to start a punk-hardcore band.

N.: It was fun, doing a punk-hardcore band.

R.: But then you only get to say ten sentences. Fifteen seconds of one of our tracks would be an entire punk-hardcore song, so the alternative was making a hundred records or making five rap ones.

N.: And so for now five rap records suited us fine. It condenses things.

R.: Exactly. It's a summary of what happens to us and what we think. If we had little to sum up, a shorter, more limited form would suit us just fine.

So is there anyone among today's rappers you'd save, or always with reservations?

N.: It's not really about saving anyone. It's more like: among today's crop, who saves themselves? I mean, take what could be called Italian old school - go to one of their shows, and if you saw one back in 1998, you realize you're watching one that's ten years old, because it's exactly the same as the '98 show. And I wasn't around in '91 to see these old-schoolers play, but I'd bet there are plenty of continuities with the shows they were doing back in '91 too. And the crowd under the stage is the same. And the people who write and talk about rap are always the same and always talk about everything the same way: it's always a tribute, it's always "this was part of the old school so it deserves all the respect in the world".

R.: Yeah. Citing your sources, and credibility that only comes if someone did it a certain way before you, so you're justified in doing it too. There's maybe not much courage to do something new.

N.: No, it's not even about courage, it's that they don't even think about it, they're thinking about completely different things. They have completely different goals in mind than the ones we might have.

Groupies?

N.: Nooo, groupies are more of a metal or punk goal. Rappers maybe have goals too, but they're really poorly structured. It takes very little to make them happy: just go around a bit and get a certain kind of feedback. After a while you hear them saying "Yeah, but people aren't responding here, everything's crap". Well, you've got to keep at it a bit. When it comes to persistence, they're not persistent at all. They don't pursue anything, because people who put out records six years apart from each other - what could they possibly have had to mature through to make a record that doesn't stray all that far from the previous one? Only with excuses like "If you put out too much stuff, it's low quality". These are the real stereotypes of rap, not the clothes and so on. The fact that the clothes are a stereotype is itself a stereotype. The real stereotype of rap, instead, has to be dug up from Italian rap magazines of the '90s. And they're still the same ones!

R.: In the studio we've got tons of old rap magazine issues and they're a genuinely great source of fun for young and old alike! Reading all the arguments like "Is rap in the centri sociali right or wrong?" and then every rapper called into question had to voice their opinion on something you could just as easily have no opinion on, or simply judge case by case. Rappers, then - a category already slapped with a label - needed even more labels to define who stood on which side.

This last point, though, seems to me like a flaw that's common to pretty much every genre, every scene.

N.: It's never too much that everyone can have their say, but the fact that everyone can have their say sometimes leads to points where someone says "democracy = superstition". Can't we get rid of anything? Do we really have to keep absolutely everything? How do you find your way through all this? With rap, being a genre that's very much about talking, it's basically a given that everyone says their piece, but having freedom of speech and saying what you think often doesn't allow you to dig into the opinions of the person speaking. So each of these rappers says what they think, but maybe it's not really acceptable to dig deeper, to actually understand how they really think. You just take what's said at face value, and so you get this jumble (in the 90s, but even now). You can no longer tell who said what and who's speaking through whose mouth. It's a genuinely chaotic situation, and for that you'd almost need a kind of Tetris.

On the other hand, as far as the music goes, what are rappers like nowadays?

R.: Big cheesy keyboards and huge sample banks. At least in the mainstream productions that reach my ears, I've never come across an interesting use of a sample. There's this huge standardization of the trashiest American stuff brought over to Italy. Maybe now, thanks to technology, the gap between American rap and Italian rap has narrowed, because the quality of recording studios and sound modules has undergone a kind of globalization, so having access to the same sounds Dr. Dre uses to make beats for, say, Eminem has become achievable. People know what gear they use, what sound banks, so reproducing something similar isn't hard. But there's no real research going on, apart from finding out what was used to make something else and trying to replicate it.

N.: Nobody tries to come up with something of their own. To say: "Damn! I just had a hell of an idea."

R.: True. To say: "Look how I managed to make something that actually sounds good."

N.: The most they do is revisit vintage methods, let's say, sampling the classic vinyl to keep that vinyl texture, which evokes old-school funk, and that's the peak of the research they manage to do. Everything else just collapses into these keyboard sounds, like Rico says.

And in your opinion, is this down to a certain Italian provincialism that always, or very often, imports from abroad, or is it a rap-specific issue?

N.: Laziness.

R.: It also depends on what level you're talking about. I mean, at the mainstream level, the already-heard always works, otherwise we'd have higher-quality pop groups, because a lot of the music I listen to could be pop in terms of melodies or ideas. But at a certain level, only certain things get through because of that familiarity factor. It could also be heavily influenced by the major labels. Maybe, actually surely, not because they force artists to go in that direction, but because there are so many people making music that a major label just has to pick whoever's already doing what they want. And then, through promotion, they can turn whatever they've got under contract into the product to place alongside something already well-known. I mean, Fabri Fibra is the Italian Eminem, Mondo Marcio is the 50 Cent. The sound is the same; I couldn't tell you about the lyrical content, but it's not like they took some artists and said "We want to turn you into...". They took artists who already had characteristics close enough and lined them up next to them, maybe not in an obvious way, but just one listen to the groups I mentioned is enough to find big similarities, the same way some people manage to find big similarities between our group and some other one.

Would you find any?

N.: No. Personally, finding similarities from the point of view of the person actually making the music is hard, because I really see all the differences down to the smallest detail. And above all, I don't have to write a review just so that some people get closer to the thing through that whole "myspace-link" phenomenon a friend of ours mentions. He says people work on the basis of what's already familiar. But I don't find similarities with other groups. If you ask me about influences, I can tell you this and that, I listened to this and that, this influenced me. But similarity, no. I'm very much in favor of drawing clear distinctions; even among groups that are generally lumped together with us, I like to find the differences that exist and focus on those, because those are actually the relevant part. The similarity is precisely the least relevant and least interesting part of listening. So when people tell us "Oh, you sound like...", I tend to distance myself quite a bit. Not out of spite or anything, but for that exact reason: because drawing similarities just isn't very interesting.

So how do you feel when people say you might be a bit like the Italian Dälek?

R.: There can be some similarities in certain respects, but, precisely because we're the ones doing it firsthand, it's probably easier for us to find similarities in the attitude behind how things are made rather than in the music itself. I don't listen to a Dälek record to get inspiration for beats. Actually, I just don't listen to Dälek records at all!

N.: Maybe a concert. A Dälek concert. I saw one and it was a great show. That was the peak of my Dälek listening experience. After that I never listened to another Dälek record again, because after seeing a Dälek concert, you can't really listen to anything else. I think it's one of the loudest concerts I've ever heard in my life. I've never heard Merzbow or Einstürzende Neubauten.

The Einstürzende Neubauten are dead calm these days. Now they dress well and use compressed air.

The tour for the second-to-last album, the one for “Perpetuum Mobile“, was all centered on sound and the use of compressed air. They used compressors and ran them over various objects, or through pipes. Or they'd use pipes to produce waves by striking them. In short, they're refined now. They're not the Einstürzende Neubauten of the old days anymore.

R.: And then, deep down the difference between noise and ambient is mainly a matter of volume! If you play ambient at a very high volume, you're making noise. They've probably just changed the volume!

N.: It should also be said that when you're making noise with an object, whether you do it quietly or loudly, the person standing next to you might tell you to stop making noise, or might not hear that you're making such a low noise at all, depending on their perception. So it's also down to how the listener perceives it.

That's very true. It's much harder to make noise now, isn't it? Listeners are a lot more savvy.

N.: Yes, but people are much more bothered.

R.: It depends. Nowadays a lot of bands have managed to work noise in in a pleasant, established and accepted way, for example Muse.

Do you seriously like Muse?

R.: I do listen to Muse too, especially the album “Black Holes Revelation“. And in Justice as well, on the record “Cross“, there are moments where there's noise. Noise that you might have heard at noise-only shows, there they're just fragments.

N.: Fenced in. But that's not something to condemn, eh!

Maybe listeners nowadays are more savvy and noise is becoming more acceptable.

R.: It depends on the listeners. Maybe there are also a lot of listeners who go for the event, the big name, or the cool location, or the high ticket price.

There are people who go to concerts because the ticket is expensive?

R.: It works more that way in theatre. If something has free admission, it might draw very few people.

I thought that only worked that way for clubs.

R.: No, not only that. I mean, it's clear: a cheap concert, for someone who's interested in the show, is a good thing. But it can be used as a measure of value, within reasonable limits. Then there are concerts that cost a fortune, like Ennio Morricone's, but behind that there's a 64-piece orchestra, a concert hall…

N.: Well, let's say it's not all hype and promotion, eh!

R.: Come on, he's paid his dues, Ennio! (Napo bursts out laughing, ed.)

N.: I'm getting this tattooed: "He's paid his dues, Ennio."

R.: But there are a lot of reasons why someone goes to a show, and a lot of the time it's not about the band you're there to see, so you can end up disappointed. Anyway, it takes a lot to actually enjoy an Uochi Toki show.

N.: Only die-hard fans do that, blinded by something I still haven't figured out.

R.: By something they see in us that maybe is there, maybe isn't.

N.: Yeah. They'd be better off working on themselves rather than investing other people with hopes.

R.: So walking out of a show means they didn't even know what to expect, or didn't have a relaxed attitude toward the event. If you go see a band and you know them, you're probably curious about whatever they do, because you're interested in the band. But if you go for the event, you might not like the event. On its own, a setup with some chairs, a sound system and someone playing doesn't automatically make for an enjoyable event: it could be the worst experience of your life, or the coolest.

N.: Let's say recontextualization reigns supreme. People go to a show not to listen to the show but to carry out a whole other series of side functions that have by now become the standard: having a beer, socializing... As a result, it's pointless for us too to expect people to come there to listen to a concert and to music. So we too, especially recently, have studied what others do and said: "Fine, we'll recontextualize the place too. Ours is no longer a concert: it's an explanation of things concerning, I don't know, behaviors." In some cases it can even be a kind of sound installation. But anyway, since the mood of the people who show up at our shows or anyone else's is to recontextualize (unconsciously, of course) the concert into a night out, not into an act of listening, then we recontextualize the act of playing too.

But maybe both approaches exist at once?

N.: That's a fair point, yes, because everyone probably does a bit of both. But I also watch the people who come to actually listen. People who are used to listening, to shows, still reach a point where they get tired of it and move on to something else, maybe go grab a beer. It's a mix between a restaurant and a concert, or a bar and a concert. At one time we might even have said that was wrong, but after a while of calling it wrong you realize that's maybe a bit of intransigence, and so you start studying directly how the person is actually listening to the show and, as a result, the ultimate attitude we hold toward our own shows, or even when we go see other people's shows, is about reusing the space in a different way.

So do you two, by now, go to shows for the beer and the chit-chat as well?

N.: No. We recontextualize it in yet another way. I mean, maybe we go to a show because, I don't know, maybe we hang around outside and don't even go in. No, usually we go to a show to listen to it. If we're spending money, it's to listen. Even if listening is very often made difficult by the fact that the venue isn't built for listening. It's a given by now: it's hard to make a show sound good, because there are all sorts of things getting in the way.

R.: Yes, there are a lot of venues not suited to live music, but maybe suited to being nightlife spots. So there are tons of venues... I'm thinking of big places in Milan that are basically hangars full of averagely drunk people who just want to have fun, where it's absolutely impossible to actually listen. They're the shopping malls of music, where listening quality is rock bottom. And nobody seems to care because everyone's there for other reasons anyway. There are also some cool venues in Italy, unfortunately not that many, where it's a great experience to play because they're spaces designed for live music. Lucky them, some of them even work well. I don't know, Circolo degli Artisti in Rome, Bronson in Ravenna, or Spazio 211 in Turin are venues designed for live music. Then, sure, people can obviously go there to get wasted too. But if someone, unlucky as it sounds, actually wants to listen to the show, they can hear it well. Then again, attention to the sound side of things is up to the band. If a band just goes there to play and get a big crowd, and doesn't care much about quality, it ends up sounding bad even in venues where you could hear well, because there's someone who couldn't care less, or someone not competent enough, handling the sound.

By the way, in your lyrics you can sometimes sense this very attention to that aspect.

N.: His! (pointing at Rico, ed.) And his too (pointing at the sound engineer, ed.).

R.: You should be able to tell just by listening to the records!

But there's also a lyrical aspect, right?

R.: Yes. I have a recording studio located in the province of Alessandria, and from our conversations Napo picked up, kind of by osmosis, some technical terms and sound-engineer gripes. At first he'd namedrop microphones... For instance, our sound engineer and I would be talking, and at the start he'd mock us by citing the wrong mics or using inappropriate terms to describe things, then little by little he got sharper, and now Napo would be able to say, like... What would you put on the kick drum?:

N.: The D 112. Absolutely the only one that captures the lows properly.

R.: On the snare?

N.: On the snare... an SM 57.

R.: Have you ever done a drum sound-check?

N.: Never! And I'd never want to do one, either as a drummer or as a sound engineer. Because I couldn't play the drums, and therefore have fun, and as for the sound engineer, I can't tell if he's having fun or not (laughs).

R.: Since these are things we deal with in our free time... I don't know, even yesterday, on the drive from Cattolica to Pisa, a good hour and a half was spent talking about operating systems.

N.: And I'd only asked one question about which computer I should buy!

Speaking of nerd-core, huh?

R.: Yeah. So these are things that end up surfacing in the lyrics because they're things we talk about. If, after a show, someone felt like crap, that's what we talk about. It's not left out as an aspect, because these are all details - we can call them details, but maybe they're not, or maybe they are, but they're details of real importance when it comes to a show. If a live show doesn't sound good, a good part of it is lost.

Side two of the tape: we're already at 45 minutes - if you're sick of this, let me know.

N.: If you'd had a six-hour tape, we'd have filled it. What other questions do you have?

We've talked about the audience when it approaches music the "wrong" way, when it doesn't like it and considers it noise. The cover of “Laze Biose”. It's the symbol that means “irritant”, right?

N.: It's also the symbol that means “irritant”.

Why 'also'?

N.: The story behind that cover is: we went to see a friend of ours...

Roadie: It's also the road sign that warns you to be careful.

Really?

Roadie: Yeah, the X in the triangle.

N.: The X means “warning, there's a crossroads ahead”. Then there are various types of crossroads: one with a main road, one with a side road. The story behind that cover might actually tie into what you're probably about to ask us. Here it is: we went to see a friend of ours who's a graphic designer and told him, “You make the cover”. We wanted something graphic and, how can I put it... high-impact, something you could make out even from a distance. He came up with this, but it's not like he meant to link it to the meaning “irritant”, it was just a black X on an orange background. Let's say the fact that it's read as “irritant” might be something we get saddled with. People probably think we do these things to come across as irritating, or something like that.

R.: Actually it might be that we are irritating, but it's not like we do it on purpose to be that way.

N.: It's like saying: “Sulfuric acid! You corrode people!”, “But I don't do it on purpose! It's just that I happen to have this particular atomic number, I came out this way by chance. But I'm useful for a whole lot of other things, and if you dilute me and take a bit of care...”. There's no point getting angry at sulfuric acid.

R.: “If you handle me with gloves, you might find out I can actually be useful for plenty of things”.

N.: “Yes! And thanks to me you discover that the materials gloves are made of let you bathe in sulfuric acid as much as you like”. Just to give an example with acids that irritate the skin.

I see. But actually the question was a bit different, and you still managed to dodge it anyway. What I wanted to ask you is whether you're still irritating now. By this point you're fairly established, people know who you are.

R.: Wait, wait. Can I turn the question back on you? I want a more specific question. Have you noticed less irritation on the latest record compared to the earlier ones? A softer stance?

No. It's more this: since you're well known by now, since people know who you are, you have your own audience, and on that audience you no longer have an irritating effect — quite the opposite, in fact.

N.: I couldn't tell you who exactly that is, because sure, after a show you talk to people, but it's not like we focus on the audience. If anything, we'd rather focus on the people who don't like us and don't get it. In fact almost everything is aimed at that category. I think this “our audience” that people talk about so much came about because we kept addressing people who didn't like us and didn't understand us, and who gradually, just like someone dealing with sulfuric acid, put on gloves and started handling the sulfuric acid.

R.: And then they started telling their friends, "Oh, check it out, using sulfuric acid is awesome because it's useful!"

N.: They started busting their balls and being annoying right back: "Come to the Uochi Toki show... Come on, come, you'll like it!" "No, that sounds like a pain in the ass." "Come on, come." "But it's rap, and I hate rap," and so on. There's a comfort zone you have to step out of in order to appreciate certain things and to do certain things. Probably (I can't really say, because I haven't met them one by one) our audience has, in part, gone through that process of stepping outside their comfort zone. But at this point, what can we tell them? We're interested in the people who don't hold on to staying inside the comfort zone, and therefore in being uncomfortable.

So it doesn't bother you at all that among the people who come to see you there might be plenty of people you actually criticize in your lyrics, or who are far removed from your worldview?

N.: There aren't really people criticized in the lyrics. Usually it's behaviors that get criticized. So it doesn't really bother us, because a behavior can be bothersome when it plays out in a relationship that involves me, us, or others. So whoever wants to can come, even if there are people who keep on acting a certain way despite considering themselves Uochi Toki fans — that's on them. People move toward understanding, not away from it.

R.: Besides, a person doesn't have to behave like us in order to appreciate what we do. In fact, if they appreciate what we do while behaving in a completely different way, it means they've found their own path and their own balance, and they recognize a similar journey in us. They recognize it and in some way give us credit for it by coming to one of our shows, even if their life is built along very different lines from ours. So as far as I'm concerned, it's great if Uochi Toki shows are full of people who don't agree with what we say, but who still recognize a certain genuine quality in our expression. People who manage to accept differences. We don't want to offer any model, or any advice on how to do things. We can only show how we do certain things ourselves, and my hope is that there are people who see that, who notice it, and who appreciate the fact that we use our own method. Attitude matters more than shared taste or shared music.

Has it ever happened that you got into an argument with someone in the audience?

R.: It used to happen more often when we played at hip hop jams, at those hip hop gatherings.

N.: Because we'd show up with drums and guitar.

R.: We were playing punk-hardcore at a hip hop jam. People couldn't stand our different attitude. They couldn't see anything genuine in it because we were doing something different from what they wanted, from what they expected. And so there was friction. Now things are easier, because a lot of the people who come to Uochi Toki shows already know they're going to be faced with this kind of attitude — so an Uochi Toki show in a club before a Coccoluto set is a different story. In a context where nobody knows us, like a house club night, people don't know our attitude and so maybe they're not even ready to go along with it. At shows where it's just Uochi Toki, there's a kind of natural selection at work in the audience.

So the risk is always there when there are bands opening for other acts. It's a bit like the infamous, unlucky acts that open for Vasco at the Heineken Jammin' Festival.

R.: Oh yes! But when we opened for Caparezza, the audience — who knew Caparezza but not Uochi Toki — was definitely more open-minded than the crowd at a hip hop jam.

N.: It was also at the Radio Onda d'Urto Festival, and it was also a pretty drug-heavy crowd. So the people down there could well have been very high, very out of it.

R.: Anyway, no bottles came flying at the stage.

N.: No. Just comments about how we were dressed too fashionably.

You two!?

N.: Yeah. Like, "Eh, no, but he acts all different, look, he's got the trousers that are in fashion right now, shoes like this." But you go into a shop to buy something that doesn't even exist, come on! If I dressed vintage, well, that hardly mattered either.

Roadie: A whole sack of jute.

R.: Eh no, with a sack of jute you were playing the alternative type, you wanted to show off no matter what. If someone wants to criticize you, they can criticize you for anything.

Anyway, so, bottles thrown, people who don't appreciate it, but never any serious fights.

R.: More than serious fights, boos from the crowd.

N.: There was this guy who once, at a rap jam, got up on stage, took the mic off me and started talking and rapping on his own. Down in front of the stage, people asking us questions, issues that could be solved with a "Who gives a damn," stuff like that basically. Protests from people who want to make us say things we never said. Oh, and then people asking us about our political positions! An unbelievable pain in the ass.

Right, because, speaking of articles about rap in the centri sociali, you must have played in centri sociali before?

N.: A centro sociale is a place. How it came to be is something that only concerns the people who run it. If we had to avoid playing venues because they're run in a way we don't agree with, where the hell would we even play? We'd just stay home.

N.: For us, playing at a centro sociale, whether it's right-wing or left-wing, makes no difference.

But when they do ask you about your political views, what do you say?

N.: I spoil my ballot.

But that way you always play it safe!

N.: No, no. I say exactly what I do. And when people tell me you have to vote for the lesser evil, I say, "You're an idiot, because that's not expressing a preference."

R.: Choosing the lesser evil is like having a gun pointed at your head.

N.: Here too what prevails is the idea of "it's always been done this way, so that's how it should be done." Voting is a right, and so on and so forth, but everything that's been placed above voting doesn't even get taken into consideration. So for me, voting isn't exercising a right or expressing a preference. When I have to choose among what's on offer, I usually try to find other ways of doing things.

R.: Well yeah, it's like an evening when you decide to go out and you're happy to go out, and the others say "Let's go here, let's go there", and you say "sure, whatever you all want is fine by me, I just want to be in company". Vote for whatever you like: as far as I'm concerned, just being in good company is enough. I've got my friends, let the others do the choosing, since there'd be nothing to choose anyway. At the last elections I always had more interesting things to do.

N.: Going to vote, maybe, yes, still. I'd never want my rights taken away, but I can't find anyone I want to express a preference for, and I can't even find anything outside the usual options either, like, I don't know, the anarchists, or the far-right parties that don't even appear on the ballot... Nothing, absolutely nothing. It's a wasteland. Nothing useful, nothing interesting. So what am I supposed to do?

But you risk arguing when people ask you these things, don't you?

N.: Yes, we do, because people have this awful habit of thinking "if you're not with us, you're against us", and this tendency to split everything in two has really ruined the way we experience citizenship, the fact of all living in the same place. To people on the far left, since we try to make them see reason, we might come across as far-right. To people on the far right, since we try to make them see reason, we might come across as far-left. It makes sense.

R.: It's an attitude towards politics that comes from the same attitude people have towards football, or like the rivalry between Pisans and Livornese!

But did you really see it, the "Pisa" writing, or was it made up?

N.: No, no, I saw it. It said "Pisa".

R.: But the relationship between imagination and reality, that's really present on the latest record. It's definitely a fascinating aspect, the fact that you imagined it, the fact that you believed in something to the point that it's as if it had actually happened, so the word "Pisa", even if it wasn't there...

N.: I want to believe.

R.: Exactly. Like the poster in Mulder's office in "X-Files". I like to believe that Sylvester Stallone's career started out as a porn actor under the name Tony Tarello. Unfortunately Google proved me wrong.

Or also that Billy Corgan was the kid from "Super Vicky".

R.: There you go, exactly. These are things that, in the end, if you believe them, whether they're true or false doesn't change anything for you. Actually, some things are nice to believe even if they might be false, because they stimulate your imagination and curiosity in the face of certain very real banalities.

I don't want to ask you particularly specific questions, but I'd like you to tell us a bit about the genesis of "Audiobook".

R.: In layers. We can definitely tell you about the elements that influenced this record. The first one that comes to my mind is obviously one I introduced myself. It's the idea of asking Napo to tell fictional stories, no longer just situations he'd actually experienced firsthand.

N.: Experienced firsthand, but in the imagination.

R.: Anyway, even in fictional pieces, in invented stories like "Il piromane", "Il claustrofilo" or "Il ladro", I know him well enough to hear a lot of him even in the story of a made-up character. But I think it's also very difficult, if not impossible, for Napo to create something truly new that isn't even conceivable by you.

Roadie: Like talking about a junkie, an addict...

N.: But I've seen some.

R. (to Napo, ed.): You do have a lot of information to draw on to write about it, though.

N.: Yes, exactly. Unfortunately I've picked up information from wherever I happened to come across it, so I'm not sure what I couldn't talk about. Maybe Greenland, but I actually like Greenland, so I'd manage to talk about that too.

Then you could always talk about an imagined Greenland.

N.: Right, but then I would have imagined it. In the imagination things exist, they're just perceived at different moments than reality. But that's really a huge topic. This isn't the place to get into it. Anyway, this is an element that influenced the record. I spend a lot of time thinking about these imaginary things, so when I find myself talking with people who think more in concrete terms, a kind of clash happens. Not a real clash like a political one might be, but still a divergence of opinions. And to smooth over these divergences of opinion, we actually built a concept around how you can move from concrete points to abstract points, with all the various variables involved. This is to explain (because we have the pretension of explaining or teaching people something) how you can sustain a completely abstract discourse without necessarily having to fall back on "we're not being concrete enough, let's get back to the concrete level." That's not necessary. It's absolutely not necessary: you have to accept the abstract component of everything, and that's one of the things that led me to write certain things. Then, I don't know... There was also a need to play a bit more "unified", less "fragmented" compared to the other records. More homogeneous. The other records were maybe less thought-through.

R.: There was less systematic order behind them, maybe also because of the ideas underlying the record.

Was there less overall cohesion? Can we put it that way?

R.: In a way, yes, because this record was planned a lot before being written and made. We had a clear idea of the record before we had the tracks that were supposed to go into it, unlike what happened with other records. "La chiave del 20" was a halfway case, because there too we had a clear idea of the record, but we also had to work alongside another band. This, on the other hand, is the first time we've made what you could call a concept album. Knowing each other so well, already having the idea of the record made us work in that direction, so the result was necessarily more homogeneous. We all had a clear sense of where to take it. Then the final result was a consequence of that.

It seems more homogeneous in the samples too, in the sounds.

R.: Actually I sampled from extremely different things, the most disparate sources, and yet I still think the backing track of "Il cinico" is radically different from that of "L'osservatore", in terms of sound.

But there's still a kind of underlying design, you can see it.

R.: Yes, the path from real to imaginary is followed throughout by the electronics. The structure usually works like this. I make a loop or a sketch of the backing track and give it to Napo, who writes the lyrics over it. But since we already knew beforehand what themes and characters we wanted to develop, I gave Napo the backing tracks ad hoc. It wasn't: "Listen to this track, what would you like to do over it?" I made the track for "Il claustrofilo", I made the track for "Il cinico". That's because they followed, at least in terms of atmosphere, what I imagined for that theme. Then Napo put his interpretation on top, and on top of his interpretation I reinterpreted the tracks again, and so on. We kind of chased each other back and forth to bring it all closer together and make it come out more compact, because Uochi Toki isn't me and Uochi Toki isn't Napo. Although your friends are jealous that you spend time with Napo and not with me.

But he's the flashier one, it's always like that with every band!

R.: But it's only thirty centimeters of difference! I mean, he's thirty centimeters ahead of me on stage! He's the vocalist, he's the frontman. But that's fine with me, because a lot of times his position calls for patience or a pain in the ass.

N.: Groupies, for example. You'd think a person should feel lucky to have groupies. But no, because generally they're pretty stupid, unbearable people.

R.: A lot of the time there's some lack behind it that drives them to it.

N.: A girl from Sardinia comes up to me and says, "Don't play Tetris" and "What the hell are you playing that for?" Get out! Tetris...

I'll take out that "from Sardinia" bit, because otherwise people might say "Oh look, Napo's got it in for Sardinians."

N.: No, no, write that I said it and that I absolutely don't have anything against Sardinians, it was just to give a detail. But maybe you can cut it too, it's up to you.

R.: You know the internet as a medium better than we do.

True, but since you spend an hour and a half talking about operating systems, maybe you know a thing or two.

R.: Maybe we know more about operating systems than you, or at least about Linux, but as for how people react, how they comment on forums... I've never read a blog, for instance. I'm not well versed in how comment dynamics play out on blogs or how discussions unfold on forums. I've never spent time in that kind of environment, out of disinterest and also prejudice, I don't know how it works. So maybe you know that if you write "a girl from Sardinia," you'll get five thousand flame comments underneath.

We don't allow comments under our pieces!

R.: Well then, attribute the most ruthless lines you can think of to us, just to see what happens, since I don't think people care how we made the record anyway...

Still, you guys go on for a while too, seeing as you made a ten-minute rap track!

R.: Yes, the last one of the show, so nobody would bug us about an encore anymore.

But it's ten minutes long on the record too!

R.: We're keeping it as the dulcis in fundo for a few dates.

N.: Yes, dulcis like chicory.

R.: Chicory in fundo! If it's necessary, or if a certain topic needs a certain amount of space to be said properly... Since we don't have to respect radio or TV timings (the video that has to run from three minutes ten to three minutes forty, the radio track where there have to be two and a half minutes between the first verse and the second chorus), we decided not to take those kinds of constraints into account. If something needs ten minutes to be said, then it gets ten minutes. Then it's up to us to actually get the content across, and to do it in an interesting form. If someone then says "Yeah, but this thing never ends," it means they're not even ready to listen to the four-minute tracks on "Audiobook". You still need a certain disposition: we ask a lot of the listener, because in our arrogance we believe this isn't a record to keep on in the background for setting the mood while you make out with your girlfriend. It's something to be listened to (I hope) at medium-to-high volume, with the subs on, paying attention to detail. The last time Eterea were in the studio with me, they listened to the record as a preview. When they got to the end they told me: "Rico, we need to listen to it again because there were too many things to follow." They're very attentive listeners, but they couldn't keep track of the lyrics, the electronics and the interweaving all at once.

Reading through the various reviews, here and there — not as criticism, in any case — you find the idea that "Audiobook" might be a record that's easier to listen to one track at a time, then do something else, then listen to another track and so on, rather than start to finish, because going straight through is a bit tiring.

N.: That's a way of listening I agree with. If I have a book with chapters, I can never manage to finish it by reading it straight through. I read one chapter, then another, and sometimes I even go back and forth. It's even among the reader's rights laid out by Pennac! With "Audiobook" you can pick at it, do whatever you like. Just as long as you listen to all of it. Actually, you don't even have to listen to all of it — just don't go around saying you've listened to all of it when you haven't.

As long as you buy it?

R.: No, absolutely not. It has to be listened to, however each person sees fit. If someone enjoys listening to "Audiobook" in bed, great. If someone only enjoys listening to it when they have a toothache, that's fine too.

Now that you've given your advice on how to listen (or not) to the new record, is there anything you'd like to add?

Roadie: I've got a question for Rico. Tell us about the drums being added into the last track.

R.: I can't talk about the one on the record. As for the live show, yesterday's set opened with noise sampled from Meccanico del Suono, a friend of ours who also took part in the record. He's got a huge table full of instruments he built himself just to make noise. He operates at an extremely high level and is completely outside of any scene, even the noise scene. He's really just his own thing — you can't place him in any specific context.

Gabber, maybe?

R.: No: he's an electrician, more than a musician. Definitely not a musician. He's an electrician, a computer guy, an electronics guy. He has no strictly musical traits. Anyway, once this drum part was done, I started using my own method. Since I have a recording studio, I'd obviously end up with amazing drum kits sitting around unattended whenever bands weren't in the room. I've been trying to play drums for ages, but I could never find a method that clicked for me. So I had to make one up myself. I got a Nintendo DS, set up a metronome on it, and listened to the metronome through headphones. It was the machine giving me my sense of rhythm, something drummers usually develop on their own. Then, as for bringing it into the live show, I really liked the idea that the relationship between real and imaginary explored in "Audiobook" could also be carried into a live sonic dimension. Starting from pure electronics and arriving at electronics mixed with the "real" performance of a drum kit. For me that's a huge challenge because I'm not a drummer: I'm missing a lot of skills, though I've noticed I immediately picked up a drummer's bad habits, like playing the kit while someone's still mic'ing the kick or the snare.

Roadie: And you keep getting dumber and dumber...

R.: Bringing the drums into the live show, as I see it, is meant to throw the audience off even further. We're decontextualizing our show as an electronic-music-plus-lyrics show. We turn it into acoustic drums plus lyrics plus electronics. A synthesis of what we do on record too.

And I'll tell you, it really is disorienting. When I saw the drum kit on stage I assumed it was just there by default, that the venue always left it sitting there.

R.: Exactly! In fact, the problem now might be that people will start expecting the track with the drums, if that ever becomes a thing. It might also turn out to be something that doesn't draw enough attention to become a defining element of the show. But once it becomes something people expect, it might stop being a surprising element.

At that point you'll have to bring the drum kit but then not play the song.

R.: Who knows? We've got twelve shows ahead of us. Watching the reactions, and especially how we ourselves feel about it on stage, we'll decide how to adjust course. That's the reason why our poster says we won't talk, we won't test the sound system, but we'll do whatever we feel like. We're not there to entertain the audience. I hope people come to feel our attitude, our stance. To see what we do, without expecting anything specific, just expecting to witness an Uochi Toki show whatever we decide to do. It could even turn into a gabber show, one night. If at the end of an evening of gabber electronics where not a single word is spoken, someone comes up to you afterwards and says they got it, and they liked it because they understood even though they were expecting something else, that's a great outcome. It means there's someone able to grasp our live attitude regardless of what we actually do. Someone able to follow the dynamics that bring us on stage. For us, going on stage doesn't mean replaying the album, but reinterpreting it. If it were about replaying the album, we'd just play it back on playback. You could listen to it at home and wouldn't even spend five euros to see the show. We actually suggested that once, because the sound system was so terrible it wouldn't let us play at our best!

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