Giorgio Valletta - Club To Club

Together with Sergio Ricciardone, he first formed the Xplosiva association, which has been driving Turin's nightlife for more than twenty years, and then, in 2002, Club To Club. DJ, radio host (Radio Flash, Radio Raheem), music journalist (Rumore), talent scout.

We had a chat with Giorgio Valletta, co-head of artistic programming at one of Europe's most important festivals, to talk about Aphex Twin and the future of avant-pop.

Let's start with the introductions: what does your role as Music Advisor consist of within an association like Xplosiva, and more specifically within Club To Club?

My contribution consists in putting at the festival's service my everyday activity as a listener to music and new artists, something I've been doing since I was a teenager. Obviously it's not the only contribution: there's also that of Sergio Ricciardone (the festival's president and art director), with whom I founded Xplosiva in 1995, and of Roberto Spallacci (director and cultural manager). On top of that, for a few years now Guido Savini has also been part of the team, supporting Sergio both with musical choices and with relations with artists' agencies.

This year's theme ("Light in the Dark") came out of last year's C2C edition, when Nicholas Jaar presented his version of Battiato's "L'ombra della luce", inserting a sample of the author saying "Io adesso posso dire che preferisco la luce al buio": was that the only thing guiding you in putting together the 2018 line-up, or were there other factors as well?

Actually, the choice is increasingly guided by our own taste, by the desire to pair up emerging names, often making their Italian live debut, trying to sketch out what might be the most interesting music in the near future. The label that has stuck to the festival lately is avant-pop, in the sense that we consider ourselves too experimental to be called an avant-garde festival, and too far from mainstream to be called pop. We're basically in a grey area, a middle ground that lets us mix influences and bring together an audience that usually follows "mass" artists with one that usually follows more niche stuff. I think that's a distinctive trait of the festival, and also part of its strength.

You've partly already answered my next question: today is C2C more a showcase for contemporary electronic music, or a moment of pop avant-garde?

To me it's both. With the tagline, light in the dark, we immediately recognized ourselves, because for many years now the festival has been trying to light up spaces that used to be empty, bringing the brightness of the most stimulating music to places where, more often than not, bland or mediocre choices tend to dominate. We believe it's a phrase the festival can see itself reflected in. I hope that doesn't sound too self-important.

Not at all, it's clear that what you're offering aims to broaden the audience's listening horizons.

Let me open a parenthesis here: we've kept the name Club To Club over the years, but today it might seem a bit misleading. At the start, the festival really was dedicated to clubbing and it moved from venue to venue, so the name made sense. Today, as you well know, live performances have taken over from DJ sets, and even in terms of musical genres the definition feels a bit narrow. This year we had Iceage and Beach House, in the past Swans and Battles, or Battiato.

Generally speaking, how is the timetable for a C2C evening put together? Do the artists make requests in that regard?

It's a combination of many factors, and sometimes there are specific requests. The final result allows us to arrive at a flow that makes sense in terms of the audience's habits (the more indie live sets at the start, the DJ sets in the last part, because in the small hours the crowd wants to dance), but sometimes we like to break these rules. Normally the headliners perform in the middle of the bill, but there have been exceptions, like Autechre (who in 2016 played at 4 in the morning, ed.).

This edition saw the festival take a further leap in terms of visibility and importance. Not that it really needed it, given the resonance the festival now has at a European level, but the name Aphex Twin was an obvious draw for a large portion of the audience. How did his involvement with C2C come about?

I won't hide the fact that his was one of those names we'd had on our wish list for a few years. When Club To Club started, we would never have hoped to have names like his, or Kraftwerk's or Thom Yorke's, on the bill, but of course these pursuits only manage to become reality once a festival like this starts to build a certain solidity in its reputation, and once it also has strong credibility with international artists. At that point, some of them, who don't easily come to play in Italy, or who don't trust what they hear about it, start to have a completely opposite perception.

I know you interviewed Richard a couple of times back in the Nineties, when his status wasn't yet that of a demigod…

That's right. The first time was on the phone, the second time in person, at a pub in central London.

Did you get a chance to have a chat with him this year?

I didn't, but Sergio managed to: both Richard and his manager were very happy with how the performance went. They expressed particular satisfaction, apparently it was one of the shows they've been most pleased with in recent times.

Did you know what his show would look like, or did it surprise you too? I'm thinking in particular of the faces of major figures, both Piedmontese and Italian, distorted by Weirdcore.

There were some choices that surprised us, and on others we had some input of our own, but in the end the final product was Weirdcore's work, just like all the creative work around those faces.

I missed Kode9's surprise set precisely because it started right after Aphex's, and at that point I needed to process the sensory overdose.

We had the same need (laughs, ed.).

Did Kode9, already a guest at several previous editions, really decide to play at the exact moment when everyone was looking for, if you'll allow the expression, the post-coital cigarette?

Actually, we'd announced beforehand that there would be a surprise guest, marked with a question mark on the schedule, which in some way drew extra attention to that slot. Kode9 is a friend of the festival and we knew he'd be happy to play along, but either way I think it was a privilege for him too to perform right after Aphex. Obviously, after a set like that, anyone would have found themselves in a tough spot, so in a sense I'll take this interview as an opportunity to officially thank Steve (Goodman, Kode9's real name, ed.) for going along with it. And anyway, judging by audience feedback, his set seems to have been particularly engrossing. We're talking about a true master here, someone who maybe doesn't have the status of an incredible figure whose face and exploits are known to everyone, but his Hyperdub is a label that has nonetheless left its mark on the music of these past two decades.

A theme that's always simmering beneath the surface, represented this year by artists like Yves Tumor and Blood Orange (and it also brings to mind Elysia Crampton a couple of editions ago), is the claiming of a sexuality not necessarily tied to biological fact. Do you think club music remains the musical context that best allows artists to express this side of themselves?

Yes, it always has been, although Yves Tumor actually slips out of the club music category, just like Blood Orange. Just think of disco in the Seventies (and everything that followed), which established itself as the music of minorities in America, particularly the African-American and gay communities. The dancefloor has always been the space in which to assert one's identity and find liberation from that point of view, two things society has always tried to suppress by every possible means. I think today it's a topic that's very much on the agenda in a lot of the most innovative music. Other artists who've taken part in C2C in the past, like Arca, make us realize that it's not just a pose or a trend, but that there's something much deeper going on.

Club To Club has happily turned 18. Musically speaking, do you believe the festival has come of age precisely through its ability to assert a highly personal vision of cross-contaminated clubbing?

I couldn't say, it was a gradual, organic choice, one that, as I said, moved away from club sound for its own sake. Right now the festival, at least in Italy, is a reference point for anyone listening to the most current, most innovative music, and it will try to be even more so in coming editions. Coming of age makes us more responsible in that sense. This phase of growth can lead to an evolution that isn't necessarily tied strictly to the number of people attending. The next edition, which we're already starting to think through, will bring some changes.

Do you feel the weight of new challenges ahead?

Yes, we heard that, and we tried to live up to it. Speaking plainly about the venues, the fact that this year we used two entire pavilions of the Lingotto for the first time was a gamble we won, partly thanks to the involvement of major artists like Aphex. Likewise, the Sunday event, which in recent years had been held in the San Salvario neighbourhood, moved to a location that's currently hugely important for Turin's future development, namely Porta Palazzo. This also allowed us to draw an even bigger crowd. One of the things we enjoyed most on Sunday was the event in partnership with the "Diggin' In The Carts" festival, through which two Japanese video game soundtrack composers – Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima – performed together with Kode9, creating yet another of those things you rarely see in Italy, and which we're particularly proud of. Let's say Club To Club will increasingly try to offer unique experiences and moments that are hard to come by around here.

You already have all my gratitude regardless. You've been a key figure on the Turin music scene for many years, well before C2C even existed. Together with your other partners at Xplosiva, you've also put your experience to work scouting new electronic music talent. Is that how The Italian New Wave (the project that brings together artists like Bienoise, Vaghe Stelle, Lorenzo Senni) came about?

Yes, The Italian New Wave was created precisely to promote the Italian scene tied to unconventional electronic music, which here too is fairly far removed from clubbing, since few of these artists make music for the dancefloor. Many are hard to pin down, while others have become genuine trendsetters, like Lorenzo Senni.

Someone who's actually been namechecked by Aphex Twin himself…

Yes, they're very close friends, and now labelmates too, since Lorenzo signed to Warp. One thing that still amazes and makes me proud when it comes to Lorenzo is that international magazines, when writing about new artists, often reach for a point of comparison and say "Oh, this sounds a bit like Lorenzo Senni." That means he's created a whole school of thought. The Italian New Wave's mission is precisely to promote artists with an original, individual path, people who in most cases now have considerable international visibility. They're almost more famous abroad than in Italy, and that's a point worth seriously reflecting on.

To wrap up, a question you simply can't avoid asking a Music Advisor, especially at year's end: what are Giorgio Valletta's favourite records of 2018?

Ouch, that's the one question I really can't answer (laughs, ed.). As you know, I write for Rumore, and the January issue will include the writers' individual year-end charts, so I can't give it away early. What I can tell you, though, and I don't think they'll kill me for it, is my number one record: "Devotion" by Tirzah.

I loved her a lot at C2C this year…

So did I. I was worried the live show might fall short of my expectations, since I'd liked the album so much, but it was actually fantastic. Having someone like Mica Levi (producer, ed.) involved made all the difference, and it's really a project I'm curious to see how it evolves over time.

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