The dark side of Naples

In recent years we've seen the emergence of a new post-punk/darkwave wave able to hold together an interest in tradition, in one's own place of origin, with an international outlook - open, yet always keenly aware of the present, of the immediate future and its global crises. The Neapolitan city, long a cradle of a cosmopolitan European culture open to outside influences, has given birth to numerous acts that are now known and appreciated abroad as well. Geometric Vision, Hapax and Ash Code are three notable examples of an underground music scene focused on quality and substance. While newspapers and mainstream media keep serving up the same indigestible fare, swinging between the colorful global pop “hype” and the sinister (and ever-present in Italy) nationalist-populist provincialism, something is stirring in the shadows, weaving its own web. To explore the dark side of Naples, we had a chat with Geometric Vision, a band made up of Ago Giordano, Gennaro Campanile and Roberto Amato. We've also included a selection of tracks and videos from the promising new Neapolitan darkwave scene to better frame the phenomenon.

When people think of Naples, they almost always recall its sunnier, more carefree side. Yet the city also has a darker side, perhaps less well known. I'm thinking of the Fontanelle Cemetery and its crypt, the cult of skulls and souls in purgatory, even the unsettling anatomical machines in the Chapel of San Severo. I imagine these are all sources of iconographic inspiration for Naples' darkwave bands…

Ago: When people think of Naples they almost always recall its more carefree side, and that's a mistake. I believe Naples is one of the most mysterious and magical cities in the world. There isn't a single corner of the city that doesn't give you that pleasant sense of “tension” - there's always a story, a legend, a ghost, around the corner.

In recent years, a genuine post-punk/darkwave scene seems to have emerged in Naples. Besides Geometric Vision, I'm also thinking of Hapax and Ash Code. I imagine you saw it all take shape from the very beginning. How did it start? Did you play the same venues? Did you start out together?

The birth of a modern post-punk/darkwave movement (if we can even call it a movement) happened quickly and almost by chance. Many of us used to hang out at the clubs of the city's subculture scene, in particular three venues that, sadly, no longer exist but that played a fundamental role in all our musical growth: Cellar Theory, La Scala Privata and Dark Club Arcadia. We'd run into each other at gigs, fall in love with obscure bands, rediscover the sounds of the Eighties, and argue passionately about music and everything else. Before long, some of us decided to start our own musical projects. Many of us were already playing music and came from very different backgrounds (some played indie, some metal, some post-rock, some electronic music...) but we all shared the desire to do something different, so we'd meet up in rehearsal spaces and experiment. We, Geometric Vision, started in 2012 - in the early days there was a lot of enthusiasm but no clear direction... then suddenly, within a few months, we found ourselves writing songs, recording an album and playing shows all over Italy. Shortly after, Ash Code and Hapax followed, even though the members of all these bands had already been involved in other projects for several years. Besides the ones you mentioned, I'd also like to mention Dark Door and Froe Char (the latter a Neapolitan artist now based in Paris), two other interesting Neapolitan projects straddling darkwave and minimal synth, both highly regarded abroad.

In the end, we've all known each other for years, many of us have shared musical and life experiences, and it's cool that nowadays we sometimes end up playing together abroad with our respective bands. You could say, with a bit of modesty and a bit of pride, that in recent years Naples has given a small boost to the Italian (and international) darkwave/goth scene, but the beautiful thing is that even today none of us has fully realized what actually happened.

Specifically, tell us a bit about the story of Geometric Vision. Why this name?

Ago: I've always written music in my bedroom. The one in the house I haven't lived in for a long time now. That house had a rectangular window, with a small curtain I'd pull aside to look at the tiny sliver of sky I was allowed, and, in darker moments, the power plant. Everything in that room turned into geometric shapes. It's quite unsettling to imagine the limits of the sky, yet to me it came naturally. If you take a look at the artwork of our first album, "Dream", I think (I believe) you can get a sense of it.

Your latest album "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!", released in 2018 on Swiss Dark Nights, has catastrophe as its central theme. For instance, you explicitly reference the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD and the ensuing disaster at Pompeii. Are we living in a potentially catastrophic moment for humanity in general, or do catastrophes simply have a recurring, cyclical and inevitable nature?

Roberto: As one of our illustrious fellow citizens (Giambattista Vico) used to say, history moves in courses and recurrences, so without a doubt catastrophes too have an inherent quality of cyclicality, inalienability and inevitability. Although I do think some peoples on this earth are, so to speak, more "accustomed" to catastrophe, and that's the case with Neapolitans. Living a few kilometers from a very dangerous active volcano makes you develop a fatalism and a serene resignation toward existence that are necessary to live an almost normal life despite the risk of a disaster that's always looming. Our record is certainly about this, but it also carries two other layers of meaning, apparently very distant from each other but in our case interconnected: a psychological one and a mythological one. Through myth and its ancestral legends (for example, that of the Chimera, or the South American ritual of the Crow in "The Head") and through historical events from a past lost in the mists of time, we tried to translate the unease felt by us thirty-somethings today, in these early decades of the 2000s. At our age - when you're not too old but no longer too young either - the sense of an imminent catastrophe, of something in your life that could go wrong at any moment and ruin everything, is definitely present, and even if it might sound rhetorical, the era we live in only adds further unease to this already bleak picture. Our generation has a distrust in the future that I'd call epochal. What's more, in many aspects of life there's a sense that we're taking steps backward rather than forward, culturally and in terms of social policy, and this is perhaps the first time this has happened in the history of the West. But, beyond these considerations, sometimes we're optimistic too.

In the beautiful video for "Apocalypse Queen" you managed to recreate a bit of the apocalyptic, abandoned and desolate atmosphere of certain small towns in Southern Italy. In some ways, it's a setting full of sunlight, yet at the same time more distressing and desperate than a Swedish forest in the depths of winter. Where was the video shot?

The video was shot in three different locations, all near where we live. We went to Solfatara, in the heart of the Campi Flegrei caldera (the other active volcanic area in Campania besides Vesuvius), to Vesuvius itself, and finally to Apice Vecchia, a small village in the province of Benevento that was completely abandoned in the 1960s following seismic events that struck the area. As you rightly pointed out, many areas of Southern Italy give us a vivid picture of all the suffering and pain these lands have endured. And very often we forget about it.

At the end of "Virtual AnalogTears", your second album released in 2015, there's a track, "Nenia", sung in Italian. In the finale you can hear the laments of the "chiangimuerti", the women of Southern Italy who wailed at the deathbed of the departed. Is the female voice that seems to translate the laments of the women in black into Italian taken from a film, or was it recorded specifically for the occasion?

The narrating voice is taken from the 1960 documentary "Stendalì - Suonano ancora" about the mourning women of Salento, and belongs to Cecilia Mangini, who directed the documentary together with Pier Paolo Pasolini.

At the start of one of your shows you used a recording of the voice of the great Antonio De Curtis, known as Totò. If I'm not mistaken, he was reciting "A' livella", one of his most famous poems. Can you tell us something about that choice?

Roberto: We wanted to open the show with a moment of great pathos, and we came up with the idea of sampling Totò's voice reciting "A' Livella" in Neapolitan, because of the strong bond we have with our city's culture and because of the theme dealt with in the poem. It's actually quite curious that one of the most intense Italian poems on the theme of death was written by a comic actor. Totò's warning is blunt: arrogance, the strong trampling over the weak, the scrambling to gain privileges are all ridiculous manifestations typical of earthly man. With the end of life, everything is leveled out, and "...these buffooneries are only done by the living, we are serious, we belong to death", as the poem says.

By now it's become the fixed intro to every one of our shows. We know that probably almost no one besides Neapolitans will understand the words, but the tone of the voice, which seems to come from beyond the grave, conveys well the tension and the message evoked by the poem.

Geometric Vision, Hapax and Ash Code play abroad very often. How do you find playing outside Italy, and what differences, if any, have you noticed in the audiences and in how things are organized?

When you're lucky enough to tour extensively outside your own country, you realize that the preconceptions and stereotypes about abroad versus Italy remain just that, and that the mechanisms underlying live music are almost always the same everywhere, from Sicily to Scandinavia. Maybe it's because the kind of music we play is followed almost exclusively by a passionate and attentive audience, but we've always been welcomed warmly, both in Italy and abroad. It has to be said that in Italy there are people who really put their hearts into organizing even niche events, sometimes in very difficult circumstances and knowing full well that things won't always go well, so hats off to them. Perhaps the one small criticism you could level at our country is that some of the passion and curiosity toward the alternative music scene has been lost, both among music critics and audiences. I think this is partly down to the state of independent music in Italy, which is going through a somewhat particular moment, one where a certain amount of confusion also reigns. But that's a fairly complex topic.

On your latest album you also featured Volkan Caner of She Past Away. What was it like working with him?

Ago: The collaboration with Volkan came about without overthinking it. I like the way he sings, I like the way he interprets lyrics. I sent him a message asking if he wanted to collaborate with us, and he said yes even before hearing the track. I sent him the song and he recorded the vocals in less than a week. What came out of it is work we're really proud of. Especially because, if memory serves, Volkan doesn't sing with any other band besides She Past Away.

As for names from the past who influenced your work, who comes to mind off the top of your head? Are there also Italian artists from the Eighties and Nineties?

Ago: If I had to talk about what influenced me, the first things that come to mind are my parents, my brother, the stupid things I did as a kid, the discomfort of growing up on the outskirts of town, the first time I suffered for love, the first time I got drunk, the first panic attack, and then yes, a few records by Sonic Youth, Joy Division, Pino Daniele and Fabrizio De André.

Roberto: Answering this question briefly is pretty much impossible, given how many influences went into shaping the GV sound. Personally, my adolescence and post-adolescence were a trip through the depths of British music from the Beatles onward, though it was less the artists themselves and more a typically British mood that shaped me. I could throw out a few names at random, like Bowie, Smiths, Talk Talk, Cure, Oasis, Stone Roses, Slowdive, the bands on Factory Records, on Sarah Records... but seventy thousand more come to mind. I also listen to and draw inspiration from a lot of music being made today, since I'm convinced that to make good music you have to immerse yourself in the spirit of your own time.

In Geometric Vision each of us has poured in our own musical world and a touch of inner unease, but if I had to name the artists we all have in common, I'd definitely say Velvet Underground, Tuxedomoon, Nick Cave, Bauhaus, The Chameleons, Cocteau Twins, Interpol, plenty of early post-punk, a handful of coldwave bands, and a good deal of synth-pop and industrial.

Italian music has definitely played a major role for us - there's a visceral love for Italian new wave and for artists like Diaframma, the old Litfiba, CCCP, Moda (strictly without the accent), Decibel, Garbo, Faust'o, Jeunesse d'Ivoire, Detonazione, Franti, Carmody, Neon, Polaroid; but also for the singer-songwriter rock of the early Nineties, the cantautori, the neapolitan power scene, italodisco...

Gennaro: I've always been fascinated by darker, more extreme sounds ever since I was an introverted teenager. While my peers were listening to grunge and post-rock, I ranged from metal to industrial, from noise to black metal, while still appreciating better-known artists like Pink Floyd and Depeche Mode. This taste for darker sounds later pushed me toward post-punk; starting from milestone records by Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees and Joy Division, I threw myself headlong into the genre, and my way of playing bass followed that same natural evolution. Among Italian artists I'd definitely name the early Litfiba and in particular Gianni Maroccolo, who certainly influenced a whole generation of Italian bassists drawn to that particular kind of sound.

Still on the subject of the past, do you think today's darkwave/post-punk scene is adequately followed and supported by the mainstream press and music criticism in Italy, or does it remain an underground, niche thing, tied only to a handful of brave specialist webzines?

Roberto: Today's darkwave and post-punk universe is something that transcends any single country - we more or less all know each other, we're in touch with musicians from every corner of the globe and sometimes collaborate with one another, so the local dimension isn't really felt that much anymore, though maybe that applies mostly to bands and promoters.

As for the press and music criticism in Italy, it's a somewhat different story, and it ties back to what I was saying before - that the musical situation in our country today is very peculiar and would need an in-depth analysis. What I sense is that in recent years music criticism has focused mainly on the flavor-of-the-moment breakthroughs, on phenomena that, born in the independent circuit, soon revealed their true calling to be more pop-commercial. By focusing on these, an entire slice of the independent music made in this country has been almost completely forgotten - music with no pretensions or ulterior motives, made for the sheer pleasure of self-expression, which would deserve proper attention.

Luckily there are still webzines that dig deeper on other fronts too, but beyond all that, I still think attention should never be demanded - rather, it should be sought out and drawn in by putting out quality work that can genuinely interest someone. If you have something to say, sooner or later someone will notice.

What are your plans for the immediate future?

This summer we'll have the honor and pleasure of taking part in an iconic event, the Wave Gotik Treffen. We're also starting to throw around ideas for the next album, but there's still a bit of time before we need to pour water on the fire, waiting for it to slowly die down...

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