This
is a piece about Italian bands, Italian bands I like, some of them I
recently learned about. A couple of months ago while
researching I found my self listening to more than half a dozen bands
that I could rout back to Italy. I dig a bit more and some more
awesome bands came into the light, at least into my light. I don't
usually pay that much attention to that kind of details such as the
origin of the band but this time it seemed to be the perfect excuse
to do something else.
Crimen by Irene de Marco
Crimen
is a band from Rome, a trio with the traditional formation of rock;
drums, guitar, and bass but they're sound should not enter only on
this category, this for those of you who like keeping every band on
every predetermined space and stuff like that. For me, it's rock and
something else. They released their debut album Silent Animals last
year through Fuzz Club and rest of the story you can read about just
below. My favorite song was for more than a couple of months Batida
but Silent Animals has much more than one song to offer, so read,
listen and share because anyone here lives only from thin air, but
everyone here breathes music.
STN
- I read that at the beginning Crimen was a duo, and after 3 or 4
years you became a trio, and that was probably the big change in
everything, because I was digging up stuff about you, and let me say
it was not that easy, and a few songs on SoundCloud sounded a bit
different than what we find in Silent Animals… I would like to know
it from you, how it all happened.
We
had quite a non linear path. We have always been a trio, but we've
had two other drummers before Peppe. Our first works (a demo and an
EP titled Lies and produced by Kramer) were more focused on a
post-rock/shoegaze sound. When Peppe joined us, we started working on
different rhythms and a more accessible and positive mood, though our
music can't be considered easy or sunny.
STN
- To Google for Crimen is not that easy. In several languages means
Crime and stuff related to. I was more successful once I memorized
that álbum is called Silent Animals. Why this name for the álbum?
Yes,
from a marketing point of view it's a suicide, we are often tagged on
facebook on crime articles from Mexico or South America and it's
pretty funny, it's the kind of shit we love. The album title was
proposed by Patrizio (guitar) and we liked it. "Silent
Animals" could be both because we feel a bit that way, being
some kind of outsiders, and because we like that image. After all, we
wanted a title that sounded clean and easy, especially to memorize:
it's very "open" to every interpretation, so we are glad
when someone give us his or her own view.
Crimen - Six Weeks
STN
- I really love the cover of the álbum, especially for the colors,
The palm trees are the vegetation were your Silent Animals are
hidden?
Exactly!
We just had a clear idea about which colors we would use, then came
the idea of the palms, because we love tropical stuff like coconuts
and pineapples, and we added a touch of psychedelia with the colors.
The cover represents an attempt to explain our will to make loud
music with a new mindset and an easy writing: from our point of view,
a palm tree can remind both a Wham album cover...or a Gun Club
one! We like to have the control over every step of the
production (the album was recorded and mixed by Simone - bass and
vocals - at his studio), so also the cover has been made by
ourselves. Though, for the next work we'll change a bit this
approach.
STN
- The first of your songs I listened to was Batida. I’m always
seeking things and Batida came up in one of those moments I’m
almost like just browsing. It Was immediate. Listened to it 4 or 5
times, it’s a bit addictive, isn’t it? But tell, what does it
talk actually about?
Batida
has a funny story. In the beginning the title was Meloni (melons) but
Patrizio didn't like it and convinced us to change it (but Simone and
Peppe still call it Meloni). It's about people loving other people
which unfortunately love other people, and when it's all said and
done nobody is satisfied. Every time we play it live, we introduce it
as "a desperate love song", and it's true and funny at the
same time, cause people expects a ballad instead it's a punch on the
face.
STN
- I’m also curious about Above the trees, it was on SoundCloud much
before the rest of the songs of Silent Animals.
Crimen by Irene De Marco
Hey!
You definitely did your homeworks! It's the first time someone
notices this. Above the trees was ready much before we even thought
to Silent Animals. It can be considered the link between our present
and our past, the track of the change. There's a beautiful videoclip
of the song on Youtube, directed by Lorenzo Castelli. A little fun
fact, is that the version on the videoclip is not the same on the
album, it has a different mix and mastering, and a different intro
timing.
STN
- Silent Animals is very diverse in rhythm and ambients, almost like
if you were telling a story, without letting us know the title or the
theme. Could you please explain a bit how it was to create Silent
Animals ?
Silent
Animals can actually tell a story, which is our story in the last
years. It gathers a lot of different moments of our evolution, and it
contains songs written in a long range of time. It's a bit like a
diary, that's why some songs can sound very different from the
others. Creating this album has been difficult and reckless but,
eventually, pretty surprising, because we really wanted to do
something different, without forcing ourselves: the ending verse of
Hit Mania Death is not only a reference to 90s dance music, but a
wish and a statement of what we did: "This time, everything I
want is the rhythm of the night": ease and clear about our new
intents.
Crimen - Above the threes
STN
- Where did you all learned to play? Did you had lessons or
something like that?
We
are all self-taught, except Peppe who took a few drums lessons many
years ago. Simone started playing bass with Crimen in 2007 (he HAD a
bass, but he had never played it before), Patrizio has played guitar
since he was 12 or 13.
STN
- How did you buy your first gear?
We
were quite young, so we bought it by collecting money as every
teenager from the working class. When we grew up and started working,
we could afford some more expensive gear and a little recording
studio, which is not Abbey Road, but let us be completely independent
over production.
STN
- Can you tell us how was your first rehearsal?
A
complete disaster! Simone came with the abovementioned bass he owned
(an old malfunctioning Vester) with no case, just keeping it with a
hand like a chicken. We didn't know each other very well, so it was a
bit weird. The first thing he did, was plugging the bass into the
guitar amplifier. Patrizio standed in the room staring at him with an
interrogatory expression on his face. Then he told "ehm, I guess
that's the guitar amplifier".
STN
- How was it your first tour in italy?
Over
the years we played mostly in Rome, our city, and a bit around Italy,
but we never did a continuative tour. We tried to organize one in the
last year, after Silent Animals was out, but in Italy, if you don't
play pop shit, it's not easy to find a booking. Also in the
underground circuit, often it's not easy to find dates if you don't
know the promoter personally. It's a big pain in the ass, and it gets
you down sometimes, but we hold on as we've always done.
STN
- How the local music scene for you? Are there venues that were
anyway crucial for you?
We
have a couple venues of the heart, in Rome. One is Alvarado Street,
which is a great brew pub with a stage in the basement where they
host mostly local bands. The other one is Trenta Formiche, which is
the best place in Rome for everything about rock'n roll, garage and
psych stuff. Once there was a place called Sinister Noise, which we
loved and where we played many times, but it closed a few years ago
and we miss it a lot. There, we once supported Cave (from Chicago)
and we had some kind of epiphany. We started searching for a more
"krautish" sound, and that was probably the day we switched
from the "old" Crimen to the new ones. The music scene in
Rome is quite self-referential, it's always the same people recycling
themselves. Rome is a huge city, but actually in the underground it's
always the same people. We don't feel part of a scene, and we
probably aren't, we feel like aliens, or Silent Animals. We rather
feel part of an international psych community, which we feel
healthier and closer to our feelings and our way of thinking.
STN
- How’s the interaction between bands?
We
actually don't have a big interaction with other bands. We obviously
have friends playing and organizing gigs, but we can't say there are
bands we feel somehow twinned with. One reason can be probably found
in the fact that we play a genre which is not very common in Italy,
but it's not the only reason. We don't like the fact that often music
seems to be the last thing that matters even when you talk about
music. We don't like poses, so we just think to our music and try to
do our best to make it arrive to the largest number of people. All
that public relation stuff is not for us, though Simone doas a lot in
that direction, but working every morning and having a "normal"
life, we can't be out every night making "contacts", and
this keeps us a bit outside the game sometimes.
Crimen - Batida
STN
- What Italian bands most influenced you?
There
are several italian bands we admire. Among them, we can mention for
sure our labelmates Juju and Sonic Jesus, besides Julie's Haicut, the
Lay Llamas, Mamuthones. We feel somehow part of this bunch of
exportable italian bands. We also like One Dimensional Man, which we
supported last year. They had somehow a key role in our path, though
their sound is quite different from ours.
STN - Could do us a short resume for dummies of italian music in your perspective ?
There's
a lot of good music in Italy (and a lot of shit as well), but talking
about underground music, it's not very easy to find it, cause for
alternative bands it's very difficult to find space. We spent months
contacting dozens of venues all over Italy who never replied, then we
did the same with something like twenty bookings, with no better
results: they were full, or not interested, or just didn't reply.
It's not an encouraging environment, and in the last years it got
worse and worse, with this ridiculous government which is making it's
best to obstruct subculture.
STN
- How are the radio and press in Italy? I mean regarding the
underground scene…
It's
quite the same that happens with gigs, but there are also some good
webzine and web-radios which do a good job with almost no money. They
usually survive only thanks to people passion, but this should never
be an alibi to make things sloppily: a few months ago an italian
webzine asked us an interview, but they changed all the words of our
answers and we asked why they did it and told we couldn't accept that
(otherwise, why interviewing someone?). They never released it, and
we have just lost time. When this happens one, two, five, ten times,
in the end you start thinking that there's something wrong. Talking
about FM radio, a speaker who really makes a great job is Gianluca
Polverari, who is one of the few authentic people in the game, and
that's why we like him. Magazines are in the middle of a big
crisis, and those who still survive give the impression they have to
please the larger audience possible, with more manistream oriented
content than in the past.
STN
- How did you got acquainted with Fuzz Club?
It
was a surprise. We sent them the album, they liked it, they published
it. That's it. Smooth as nothing else. It was a big thing for us, and
it let us spread our music all over the world, as we wanted to do,
and that's why you probably know us!
STN
- If you could time travel, were would you like to go see a show or
play?
Probably
each one of us would give you a different reply, but if we had to
choose the same ticket, we'd probably go to see Joy Division.
Crimen - Supermarket
Songs
to Nowhere – Silent Animals was out in 2018, pretty fresh yet, but
do you already have new songs?
Yes,
we have a new album we'll start recording this summer and we hope
will be out on the first half of 2020. It will be more percussive and
wild than Silent Animals, a bit more complicated and quite spacey.
The songs came out in a shorter time, so it will sound also more
compact. We can't wait to start recording it.
STN
- When can we expect a show from Crimen in Portugal?
We
hope as soon as possible! We recently joined the roster of Inkfish
Booking, a recently born agency run by our friend Timotheus Schuller,
which organizes gigs in Benelux, so that will probably be our next
stop.
STN
– Last word is yours!
We'd
like to thank you for your passion Isabel, it was the most complete
interview we did so far, and your effort is very appreciated! People
often don't even imagine all the love and commitment that a project
like yours or ours needs to go on. We hope to see you in Portugal one
day!
More info
Bandcamp -
Fuzz Club - Crimen - Silent Animals
Facebook - Crimen
Soundcloud - Crimen
Irene De Marco
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