OndaLabel #4

On the occasion of the first edition of the Thalassa – Italian Occult Psychedelia Festival, held in

Rome, at the DalVerme club, we interviewed Onga, founder of the independent label

Boring Machines.

How did the label come about? And why did you decide to set it up on your own? Couldn't you find anyone who shared your vision, or was it a personal choice?

The label was born in 2006, after I'd already been working in music for quite a while. I started in the mid-90s organising concerts, DJing, working in radio, writing for webzines. All of that let me get to know a lot of people in the industry. Eventually the situation flipped around: when I started producing my first records and the label's style became recognisable, artists started calling me to work with them, since they were struggling to find anyone willing to put their records out. I thought that was a crime, because they were all genuinely talented artists making exceptional music, so I said to myself: "I'll do it myself!". In the past I'd always worked with other people, either as a duo, a trio, or with associations, but this time I wanted it to be a project that was mine alone, where the decision-making process was stripped down to zero: if I like it, we do it; if it costs too much, we do it anyway; if we lose money, I'm the one who loses it and I don't have to negotiate that with anyone. At the start it was more of an artistic matter — I didn't want to have to say "let's call this band because people like them", but rather "I'm making this record because it has value", or "I'm making this record because this artist deserves to be promoted even if they're not blazingly talented"; it wasn't really the sonic quality I was after, but the person. So I started out alone, and I kept going alone, since I get along great with myself: I agree with pretty much everything I say! Plus, over time, I've built up a direct relationship with the various artists that goes beyond the music itself.

How do you pick the artists?

Sometimes I'd get emails from bands writing: "Hi, we really like your label and we'd love to work together", and then I'd discover they played reggae, and obviously I'd say no, because it didn't fit my line. A lot of people play me their music, and I like it too, but it doesn't trigger that spark that goes beyond just enjoying the listen. Usually it works like this: I'm in the car, I listen to a record, I like it; the next day I listen to it again, but for it to move forward into production there has to be some kind of "it" factor I can't really explain. It's as if a little voice inside me says: "I want this one, this is mine, this feels like mine, this is Boring Machines". Usually the common denominator, even though musically the styles are very different from one another — I go from singer-songwriter stuff to ambient to psychedelia — is that there's some kind of unease in it. I'm drawn to troubled souls, people who struggle with life in various ways, especially those who carry that kind of repressed rage that could potentially turn them into mass murderers, and who instead channel it through music. For example, the first record I produced, My Dear Killer, is by a musician who writes incredibly sad songs, and it's not because he wants to play the classic sad singer-songwriter as a stylistic exercise — he genuinely has a shitty life, and you can hear it in his songs, they transmit real anguish.

So is the music you promote anguished?

Not necessarily. In form it isn't, but it conveys something along those lines to me. The two underlying themes are unease and, as a consequence, escape, which can take various forms: escape into space, as with Be Maledetto Now, where across his two albums you can sense distant worlds, spaceships, futurism, a sci-fi aesthetic straight out of the way the 60s imagined it; the psychedelic escape, filtered through rock and tied to drug use and socialising rituals; and the escape, as in the case of Father Murphy, from our traditions, from being Italian Catholics, an escape from our own identity, from what we are whether we like it or not. Basically I'm drawn to anyone trying to escape in some way, or to people like Fabio Orsi, who actually did escape from Italy.

And why haven't you left? Wouldn't it have been easier, especially considering the music scene and the weight given to certain kinds of music in other countries?

What I could say to look good would be: because it's too easy to go be an artist in Berlin — although there's some truth to that! A lot of people ask me: "Why don't you go here, why don't you go there". Back in the day it was London, now it's Berlin. The point is that today an artist can pack up their little guitar and a couple of pedals, move to Berlin, live with other people and hunt for places to play, trying to live a life that makes them feel part of something more interesting than what they left behind. Honestly, to produce records I need money, a lot of money, and to have that I need a proper job, or else I'd have to put out crap music — which isn't the case here. So I chose to keep my day job, which gives me a certain security and lets me have the freedom to put out an album that I already know in advance probably won't sell much and that I'll have to work incredibly hard to get people to hear. I have a kind of presumption in believing I have something to say to people, and I always want to keep widening the circle of people who might be interested in this kind of music.

On top of that, I've chosen to produce only unknown Italian artists. It wouldn't have cost me much effort to put out an album by some already-known musician, but I'm not interested in getting the leftovers of some famous name — I want the best that an unknown artist can give me. Sometimes it works out badly and sometimes it works out well, as happened with Father Murphy, who ten years ago were just a small local band and who now have four American tours behind them and have just come back from a European tour. They had the persistence to keep working on their own thing without letting themselves be swayed by trends, and to keep believing in it, all the way through. Personally I have enormous respect for people like them, and I want to keep finding new names who operate the same way.

Most of the bands you promote, or who are part of this musical scene anyway, are from the Veneto region. Why did this whole underground music scene spring up in Veneto? Why all this ferment specifically in that area?

I came up with an explanation for myself recently, thinking about exactly why certain bands emerged. In the 80s, in the United States, during the Reagan presidency, we saw one of the most musically fertile periods ever. The same thing happened in England under Thatcher: when there's political and social darkness, artists react in their own way, creating new situations that at first start out as protest, as an expression of their own discontent, and that aren't necessarily politicised but simply want to respond to the mud, the social swamp they find themselves in — as if to say: I have to do my best because the current situation is awful. I think that in Veneto, after twenty years of the Lega's absolute dominance, those who didn't fall in line felt the need to distance themselves, to react, in their own way, to escape. A lot of great venues have sprung up, but our scene developed around Codalunga, Nico Vascellari's venue in Vittorio Veneto. Nico, who had the good fortune of ending up with this place, didn't decide to open a Louis Vuitton bag shop there, even though he easily could have and would certainly have made a lot more money doing so, but instead chose to create a place for sharing and exchange. Thanks to his artistic calling, he created a place where people gather to hear the strangest, most unhinged musicians around, because you can't settle for whatever gets handed to you. In my opinion, Veneto has very little room for its own potential, and that's due to a mix of insane local council regulations and the fact that, regardless, if you want to open a venue for live music, you get politically branded even when there's no political intent behind it at all, and you get obstructed. Despite that, some places keep resisting — long live them, basically.

It's a common problem unfortunately. The Italian music scene has for years been putting out music that's completely different, and people need a lot of courage to open a venue knowing there's a risk of taking a leap into the void. A lot of people don't even know a certain kind of Italian music exists, there's no supply, and people just go out more or less at random.

There's always this big dilemma about spaces — are there enough of them, and they're just not being used, or are there simply not enough? I'm convinced there just aren't enough, period, because even if there were 10 venues like Dal Verme or Codalunga, at first some would always be packed and others always empty, but it would just be a matter of time — what matters is that each one specialises in its own genre. If you run a venue properly and seriously, it's impossible for people not to follow you, because right now the general lack of interest people complain about is also due to the fact that there's no supply. Once you start filling a neighbourhood with venues that have an experimental booking policy, the others inevitably get left behind, because people won't find anywhere else to play and will be forced to go to that one specific place once a year. There should be a lot more venues offering this kind of opportunity. Money matters, of course, everyone has to eat and pay rent, but I think bands would rather take much less money and play more often, over a longer stretch of time, than take 1000 euros for a single date. I've noticed that between Treviso and Rome I can't string together five dates in a row: in Bologna there isn't much choice, and from Florence to Rome it's basically a black hole, and I refuse to believe nobody there listens to this kind of music, because a lot of the people who buy my records are from central Italy — so I ask myself: where do these people go to see gigs? Or do they just not go because there's nothing in their own city? And why doesn't anyone try, say, in their own garage?

I believe that if you offer something valid, people respond. In my experience as a label owner, I've found that if you work well and offer a quality product, you start building up that hardcore audience that never lets go of you. There's a group of people who write to order my new record before it's even out; that happens partly because you can stream tracks online in advance, and partly because by now Boring Machines is a guarantee of quality, and even when I switch styles, going from My Dear Killer doing singer-songwriter material to Simon Balestrazzi doing industrial electronics, people still know that I try to put out something of value, and they trust what I do. It's the same with venues: when the costs are sustainable and the people running the place know what they're doing, you build a loyal, quality audience, you're on safe ground. Be Invisible Now, after playing at Dal Verme, came back thrilled, telling me you can tell it's people who know what they're doing, because both Toni and Andrea have been playing music their whole lives and know exactly what an artist needs when they arrive; they have a relaxed but not overly relaxed attitude, poor in means but with excellent intentions when it comes to solving problems, and the drinks are good. These are small things that people outside the scene don't know about. Everyone I know who's played there would go back in a heartbeat. There's also this urban legend that the way Father Murphy play at Dal Verme doesn't happen anywhere else, and honestly, having known them inside out and seen hundreds of their shows, I have to admit that last night I was struck by the energy in that room, as if they wanted to give 101%. I have to say I'm also really satisfied that most of the bands playing at Thalassa are on my label, even if afterwards I go home, check my bank account, and think to myself: "Something's not right here".

We troubled souls all live a bit like that anyway! Especially because in Italy it's hard to fit into the social and economic structures if you work in culture and music, and it's as if you're doomed to stay broke because it looks like you're doing some strange job, like you're an alien and nobody understands what you do, unlike what happens in other countries.

Yeah, every now and then I ask myself how long I'll keep having the kind of spirit that lets me give up life's comforts, especially since I'm now old enough to start asking myself where I'm heading. I'm not twenty anymore, or even thirty. How much longer can I keep going without a place of my own, without being fully independent? Then, before I give myself the answer, which would be "Stop right now, please", I start thinking about something else, or I put on a record straight away and say: "Okay, let's keep going".

Or maybe one day things will change here in Italy. What do you think?

Well, I've never relied on Italy alone: I only produce Italian artists, but I also promote them a lot abroad, pushing hard in Europe and the United States, and I'm trying to make contacts in Asia too. Wherever I see a similar movement happening, I try to make myself known, because there is an international calling here. The problem is the numbers: today an artist is considered successful if they press 500 records and manage to sell them all, but if you think that there are 7 billion people in the world, 500 is 0.0001% of that, and that just doesn't add up. When I make a record, I always think it could appeal to 10,000 people, of whom 1,000 might become attached to that particular artist, and 100 will definitely buy the record, and that's how I produce it. Then if I sell more, as happened with Heroin in Tahiti, La piramide di sangue or Father Murphy, after the first pressing I do further reprints.

Future plans?

Two new records: the new one from Bemydelay and the debut from Duchamp. Duchamp is a research chemist who lives and works in Berlin and who, since childhood, has been in love with the sound of a hairdryer, and has tried, through her music, to recreate that feeling of warmth and wellbeing she felt as a child when her mother dried her hair. Among other things, together with Alice Cannava and Laura Nozza, she's one of the minds behind Occulto Fest, which they organize in Berlin and which is linked to Occulto Magazine. It's a glossy publication like a fashion magazine, with colorful, shiny paper, but it talks about science and para-science, with a team of scientists or people passionate about the field contributing, writing mostly in an accessible, popularizing style, with the aim of bringing science out of its elite bubble. I feel very close to their crazy activities. I liked Duchamp right away, though I made sure to point out to her that making records is tough, even though she's really talented. I'm trying to significantly increase the female presence on the label, but only because Marcella Riccardi of Bemydelay and Duchamp represent the prototype of the independent artist who knows how to create, not the usual women who just pick up a bass. Marcella, for instance, went through her own years-long journey: she was first the guitarist of Massimo Volume, then found her own path as a solo artist, keeping that feminine element that works well. Also because we're still dear male and female artists!

How did you come to choose Boring Machines as the label's name? Boring because you're bored?

Ah, great story! Boring machines are those enormous excavators used to dig highway tunnels. They're like giant worms of absurd size, thirty meters in diameter, that push themselves through rock, digging it out and dumping the debris behind them. I discovered this one day, when an Arab engineer wrote to me asking for the price list of boring machines because he needed to dig a subway tunnel. At first I thought it was spam, then I saw he had written to me directly, so I sent him the link to my site's shop and wrote: "Look, I sell records, if you want I can sell you some of these." From then on I became attached to the image of drilling deep into rock, which also ties into the idea of boredom. Not boredom in the strict sense, because I'm someone who has a lot of fun: what bores me are silly antics, cheap clichéd laughs; what I like, instead, is when someone knows how to bring lightness to heavy things, and I can't stand situations where, until the four-on-the-floor kick kicks in, something feels off. The English translation isn't quite accurate, because "macchine della noia" should really be "boredom machines," but I liked how boring machines sounded, it makes you think of "tedious machines." There's always some kind of unease in it, in short. Then later I found out there's also a Mogwai track, "Boring Machine Disturbs Sleep," which refers more to the drills that keep you from sleeping, while for me it makes me think more of the idea of something repetitive that's always the same, obsessive, like some of the records I've released, which have very simple descriptions. For example, sometimes people ask me: "What's that Luciano Maggiore record like?". "Well, there's a track that lasts 29 minutes, it starts going peeeee, ends going peeee, and in the middle it goes peeee!". Obviously an attentive listener notices there are a thousand sonic nuances within it, but a distracted listener just perceives noise. The first time I heard it, I lost my mind, I listened to it non-stop for a month at full volume, so much so that my teeth hurt from the vibrations. I think it's remarkable that a musician would sit down and study the variations of sound around a single frequency for 29 minutes at insane volumes.

There's a whole metaphor for life in that: it seems like someone is always doing the same things, while it's the detail that changes the result, the whole thing.

Yeah exactly, the devil is in the detail.

Ride the wave of great music

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