This
Italian psycho rock bands is young, effective and promising. Blending
space rock, psychedelic and some kraut rock they reached their first
big milestone – “Sky Over Giza” EP. This vivid, dreamy and
cosmic material transfers listener to vast sonic dimensions where you
easily could lose the way back to reality. However we have a guide
for La Morte Viene Dallo Spazio realm, her name is Melissa.
Hi
Melissa! How are you? What’s going on in La Morte Viene Dallo
Spazio realm?
Hey there Alexey! Everything is fine with me, thanks, I hope the same with you.
In our dimension many things are happening and we are both glad and somehow surprised of the results we have achieved so far. This summer brought us to important venues and festivals in Italy and abroad, we got very positive feedback and our feeling as a newborn band is that everything is going really fast and we have to take advantage of all the occasions we are going through. The time is now.
The band was founded just about two years ago and till that time you had only single record ‘Fever’ and ‘Jam In Erba’, so how did you spend this period as the band?
The
idea behind the birth of La Morte Viene Dallo Spazio arose in the
mind of our guitarist Bazu three years ago. He composed “Fever”
before the other members joined the project which actually wasn't
supposed to be a band at the beginning, but an open ensemble
involving every time different musicians on stage. No rehearsal was
contemplated and the gigs were kind of jam sessions, nothing was
previously decided, all was extemporaneous.
The
very first concert took place in 2015 in Milan, along with the
Chilean band Föllakzoid,
and the only members of the current line-up involved in it were Bazu
and the flutist Angelo. Our first release “Sky Over Giza” was
recorded in studio last summer as an experiment, in a two-days jam
session, without any preparation at all. La Morte Viene Dallo Spazio
reached a stable line-up and became a proper band only at the
beginning of the current year, embracing three more musicians already
belonging to the Italian heavy-psych scene with other well-known
bands. Among them, two ladies: me as singer and moog/theremin player,
the bass player Claudia and the drummer Federico.
Theremin
is quite a specific instrument, how did you learn to play it? And
what was your first encounter with it?
Actually
it's not a long time since I started to play theremin. The first time
I saw this instrument I was a child. 'How can hands produce sounds
through that white box without touching it? It has to be some kind of
magic.' This is what I suddenly thought as I recall so far.
At that time, as a 7 years old child, I was starting playing piano. Learning how works theremin wasn't in my mind at all - it looked like a far too mysterious and complicate instrument and I didn't know anyone in person able to teach me play it. Much later, as soon as I got in touch with psychedelia and space rock, I decided it was time for me to face this charming instrument. All what I know about it I have learnt by myself and everyday I continue increasing my knowledge. If you have some kind of sensibility towards music, the instrument itself speaks to you and somehow reveals what to do. This is what happened between me and my theremin. Music is a proper magic – children often know far more than what adults do.
So
your first bigger record ‘Sky Over Giza’ was released just few
months ago, what were your intentions when you started the work over
these tracks? What kind of sound did you want to gain?
The
purpose behind “Sky Over Giza” was to challenge ourselves and see
what we could be able to do. As already told, during the recording
session we have played freely, without arranging anything previously.
There wasn't any intention at all concerning the kind of sound to
gain, actually before entering the studio we didn't have have any
idea of what the songs would have looked like in the end, so
everything that comes out from these tracks is merely the result of
what was moving inside us in that period, both light and shadows, but
shadows mostly, I must say. We are somehow proud that things went
this way, otherwise our work wouldn't have turned out to be so
unconventional.
Italian
scene is known with few marks like prog rock, some horror
movies-influenced doom bands and… and I don’t know… power
metal? However you play in psychedelic rock vein mixing few more
components to this sound. How do you see a role of local influences
in your music?
“La
Morte Viene Dallo Spazio”, that means Death Comes From Space, is
actually the title of a 50s Italian sci-fi film by Paolo Heusch,
later released in English language with the different title “The
Day The Sky Exploded”. This kind of choice, for such an important
matter like the name of the band, already explains itself what our
music is influenced by: the Italian older motion pictures and
soundtracks mainly. We have always been fascinated by that world and
the mystery it is wrapped in.
The
project actually born with the aim to create a sort of b-movie's
soundtrack. Also our way of composing, very instinctive like a flow
of sounds, recalls what used to happen in Italy in the 70s composing
b-movies soundtracks – the musicians who were committed to create
those soundtracks often didn't play in the same band, but did meet
each other for the first time in that occasion with the common
purpose to give birth to something special.
La
Morte Viene Dallo Spazio
How
did you spend a ‘Sky Over Giza’ record session? Is it first
serious studio work for the band’s members?
“Sky
Over Giza” is the first serious studio work of La Morte Viene Dallo
Spazio, but definitely not the first one for its members, playing in
other bands already known in Europe with several albums released
through the years, although we prefer to keep the identity of these
other bands unknown - we would like people to focus on our music
instead on who we are and where we come from.
As
I have just explained, the recording session was very fast, the
drummer was the one leading the game, he gave the input for moving
towards a certain direction and all the rest you can listen to pop up
as the natural consequence of that.
As
I understand the lyrics is on second place for you, but the tracks’
titles are pretty interesting or, well, meaningful. What are stories
behind ‘Sky Over Giza’, ‘Zombies Of The Stratosphere’ and
‘Sigu Tolo’?
“Sky
Over Giza” with its Egyptian melody
gives a mental image of pyramids, ancient mysticism and strange
happenings in the sky.
“Sigu
Tolo”,
another name for the star Sirius, hints at a people named Dogon who
live in west Africa and were supposedly visited by extraterrestrials
5,000 years ago and given astonishing astronomical information at
that time.
“Zombies
Of The Stratosphere” tells the story of evil martians brought down
in flames in their rocket ship after a furious stratosphere raygun
battle. In
these tracks the standard
music structure doesn’t really apply, allowing in this way a
confluence of sound, atmosphere and melody through a free-form
journey with no defined destination or resolution in mind.
I
see you’re into weird stuff actually! Do you believe in the things
like Land of Mu, Atlantis and so on? I remember I read the story
about Dogon tribe too, hah, but you know when you have full-time job
and family you have no more time to gaze at the stars!
What
a hard question to answer to, well done Alex! :-) What I can say is
that we don't believe in any parallel reality but, as far as I know,
planets are many, galaxies probably also, and the world we live in is
only a little part of the universe – universe that will continue to
exist with us or without us (probably even better in this last case).
The
things we still don't know and the places human beings have not
reached yet are so many, that it wouldn't be so weird to find out
someday that there is something else beyond us. In the meantime what
we definitely believe in is music and its power to create and destroy
new worlds through fantastic journeys towards the borders of the
unknown.
With
what kind of bands do you usually play? Do you feel that La Morte
Viene Dallo Spazio live shows are in-demand?
Since
February, the turning point between the open
gathering of players that the project was and the proper band that it
currently is, we shared the stage
with several bands, very different one from the other: first the
danish psych-rock Mythic Sunship in Milan and the Italian acid-rock
Giöbia in
Germany, then Fu Manchu, Clutch, Corrosion of Conformity, Baroness,
among the others, at Duna Jam - an open-air festival that takes place
in astonishing beautiful spots into the wild nature - and finally the
American blacksters The Wolves In The Throne Room at SoloMacello
Fest.
It
has been weird passing in just a couple of days from the relaxing
Duna Jam's white sand dunes to the black metal scenery of SoloMacello
Fest, but this is also what we like most of our music: the ability to
be transversal to many genres and to easily move through completely
different sceneries.
In
Milan, at Cox18, we have also had the chance to be hosted by La
Società Psychedelica, an institution for what concerns the Italian
and international psychedelic scene.
Things are going fast and according with the positive feedback we have been getting we are now ready to leave for a tour across Europe which will bring us from Italy to Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Netherlands.
Can
you tell more about La Società Psychedelica? What’s this
institution?
La
Società Psychedelica is basically the summary of different
attitudes.
It was born in 2006 in Milan, at the very beginning only on MySpace, by the idea of two well-known DJs, as a sort of moniker which allowed to collect several bands from all over the world with an open idea of psychedelia, from the classic Californian acid folk to the English psychedelia, more bounded to pop, to kraut rock, stoner and doom, sometimes influenced by ambient music going even towards black metal, and so on.
Nowadays
the events organized by La Società Psychedelica are among the most
important in Italy and southern Europe for what concerns psychedelic
music and further.
What
are your ambitions towards the band? How do you see your prospects
from the point where you stand now?
We
feel to be very close to the people while performing and after the
shows, our public is widening continuously
and this makes grow the confidence in our project inside us.
In six months we have managed to play on very important stages of which many bands dream about all life long, we are thankful for the opportunities we got so far and we couldn't have taken more advantage of them than what we did. I guess soon we will be able to look back to the last shows as a springboard to something huger that will develop through the upcoming tour.
In six months we have managed to play on very important stages of which many bands dream about all life long, we are thankful for the opportunities we got so far and we couldn't have taken more advantage of them than what we did. I guess soon we will be able to look back to the last shows as a springboard to something huger that will develop through the upcoming tour.
How
did you manage to get on these big gigs? Do you work totally DIY way
or do you have a kind of manager?
We
don't have any manager at all. The closest person to a manager is me
actually, that means I keep contacts with the venues where we
perform, the reviewers and so on. Our “fortune”, as a project
born from the confluence of musicians belonging to other bands
well-known on the European scene, is that before starting La Morte
Viene Dallo Spazio we already had many contacts collected through
these years we have been playing around. This is the reason why it
didn't take so many efforts to get involved in some amazing
festivals. When the event planners already love what you do with your
band, they are often curious to find out what can flow out from your
brand new band.
The
following shows we have set up are the result of some positive vibes
we had spread during these first gigs - someone noticed us, asked us
to play at their venue and this is exactly how we began to plan the
upcoming tour.
Do
local medias support the band?
If
with medias you mean the radio or television, in Italy unfortunately
we don't have any about underground music like ours. There are
instead specialized magazines on this sector, some of these already
have reviewed 'Sky Over Giza', some others will do that soon - like
Rock Hard and Rumore, among the others - and we are very glad about
this.
Do
you already have plans for the next album?
Of
course we do! As soon as we stopped jamming and the project reached a
stable line-up, we entered the recording studio again. Now we already
have enough material to work on the tracks which will be forming
the next album - a more structured one this time - and we are ready
for the second recording session to happen soon.
We
are confident in the work we are doing, the previous
extemporaneousness of our sound seems to be heading towards new
horizons made of increasing efforts and complicity among us, so that
the upcoming long playing will likely be a more representative
product of what we are, not only a flow of dark energies but
something really deeper.
I
am not afraid to reveal that we have great news by our side, we are
already looking forward to the next album presentation tour across
Europe and, who knows, hopefully even further!
Good
to hear it! Then I hope that soon we’ll hear more news from La
Morte Viene Dallo Spazio! Good luck with that Melissa! So how would
you like to sum up the band’s message today?
Someone
once said that the universe is a pretty big place: if it's just us,
seems like an awful waste of space. Then, you folks out there, get
ready to be conquered from unconventional vibes... Death Comes From
The Space – La Morte Viene Dallo Spazio
Words by Aleks Evdokimov