Schön Dunkel Org web-zine, 01/2003

The release of the new Kirlian Camera single is scheduled for April. The official title of the single is K-PAX, track that will be included in the forthcoming album for the label TRISOL. The single contains other 3 tracks that will be not included in the full-length work. This album, titled INVISIBLE FRONT, 2004, will be released in late Spring. This new chapter of KC will be characterized by two different atmospheres. In the first disc slow and dark rhythms will prevail, as never in past works. All the tracks will be of new conception, in them KC will unite acoustic moments of chamber orchestra to electronic and will show their more "dramatic" side. The second disc will include new materail too, but more oriented to the rhythm and powerful sounds. In the line-up, apart Angelo Bergamini, Elena Fossi and Emilia Lo Jacono, there will be Jarboe (THE SWANS), Ivano Bizzi (STALINGRAD), Francesco Germi & his strings quartet, apart the Musica Venetiana ensemble. Mauro Montacchini, co-founder of KC in 1980, returned back in the last days, present in past works as "Eclipse – Das Schwarze Denkmal", "UNO" e "Todesengel – The Fall Of Life".

After the Cella (RE) gig on February the 8th, KC will be on tour in England and Scandinavia and probably in USA too.

KC will be helped in the live events by Siderartica, band that includes Elena Fossi, Andrea Savelli and Andrea Fossi. The side-project realized the debut-album NIGHT PARADE and it's working on the next release scheduled for Autumn 2003. Soon it will be available a 12" vinyl featuring a track of Elena Fossi and a remix done by Y-LU-KO and american combo MORPH. The single "Atmosphere", Joy Division cover performed by Siderartica in the concerts, didn't see the light.

Angelo Bergamini, Elena Fossi and Roberta Astolfo (Leutha) collaborate to the Stalingrad project, whose live debut was in Leipzig. The first Stalingrad work is "COURT-MARTIAL (POMPOUS, SHAMELESSLY UNCOOL, HEARTFELT B-MUSIC)", written and realized by Angelo and Elena with the help of Ivano Bizzi e orchestra director Francesco Germini. A limited edition of the album exists and includes tracks remixed by Nueva Germania and DDR. In Autumn is scheduled the release of a split-single with Kirlian Camera, in a special limited edition. Stalingrad will play on next February the 22th at Mestre (VE) together with Winterkälte.

First of all, so I stop to think and torture psychologically myself, I'd like to ask, what's about the concert at Binario Zero in Milan?
ANGELO: I could say that it went well, thank to the fact that the acoustics was decent and our sound engineer, Yvan Battaglia, did a good work. The TV projector was missing and the visual effects were pratically absent, but the tecnical and passionate surrender has been of good impact, I'd say. For a moment I made play a couple of tracks to the other two, that were reached on stage by a third element: in fact that is the Siderartica line-up, band born in 1996, that I'm keeping often around as guest. As Elena Fossi is a stable presence in Kirlian Camera and Andrea Savelli a close collaborator simplify the things. Maybe, in Milan, something as usual didn't like to anyone and it couldn't be otherwise... Let me say that someone lamented that we were not the same band of 1995, that we were "less fascists".. What a fuck, the people are crazy! Someone straight recognizes in the (temporary) absence on stage of Emilia a new "leftist tendency"!!! Pure delirium... in every case to look for political messages of any nature also in the personal human relationship. Apart that Emilia is the only one to be official declared "left-wing" and really I don't believe that she likes a similar attitude, totally against her convictions! Then, another thing: it's really time to stop, with these idiocy: we play music, really, onlythis, without tendentious interest and, maybe, someone is beginning to understand, we hope. We never "apologized" with anybody. We always paid personally and in a unpublished severe way our tendency toward a total language freedom. We have been always at our place: we never lamented, but surely we counterattacked. The conscious of this band is clean.

Are you working on something new?
EMILIA: we are working on new album >INVISIBLE FRONT, 2003. The line-up includes as always Angelo and Elena as principal core, plus me and Jarboe (Swans), only in studio; the last one as guest. We are also talking about a double compilation composed prevalently by "singles", whose title, not yet confirmed, could be "Monolux" and it should include various unreleased versions, such as "The Desert Inside" and "Helden Platz" that we are used to play live and three or four re-mix done for other bands like Criminal Asylum, Wumpscut, Siderartica, etc. Moreover Angelo and Elena are going to release under the name STALINGRAD their first album "Court-Martial", that will be featured live with the help of Roberta Astolfo (Leutha), indipendently from Kirlian Camera. Elena is going to release "Night Parade", album of SIDERARTICA, her already existing project since some years, that released a couple of demos; I think it will be in the stores since 5 April. Angelo also collaborated to the new album of Jarboe "A Woman's Dreams", that is going to be released. Meanwhile, the reissues are going on, because after "Uno" it should be out "It doesn't matter, now" too - first album of the band, 1983 - in Digipak edition including three extra tracks too, but I don't know the release date. Concerning me alone, Angelo and others will help me to record an album that should be called "Along a rainy coast", but for this I have not hurry, considering the frenetic life of recent times that unfortunatly doesn't allow me much time. However I'm working at a photographic book that will be relased by Mondo Bizzaro Press.

In recent times we will see always often around the streets people that could be definied "Dark", what do you think it indicates: a discovery of dark music or they are only little boys/girls that dress clothes because alternative, but in concrete they have very little?
ANGELO: it was out of fashion the "blacker"... now it returned back to be vaguely of tendency, just it. Then many will be bored again and will say that all is shit... often it is true... In every case, all in all these little "dark" boys are nice, apart negative exceptions. I hope new interesting bands will grow, because the old ones are too much often drepressing, static, presumptuosness and useless: old children playing to be young dressing clothes and never had boasting merits: they stressed before and stress now... Oh heaven!

What do you think instead of the current EBM scene and bands like Hocico, :Wumpscut:, Funker Vogt, Covenant etc.?
ANGELO: to be honest, too much often they are pitiful clones of pre-existing bands. No fantasy, only image and triumph of ignorance. No fun. Why people don't listen to Front Front 242, Underworld or Frontline Assembly, by example, if they love some kind of sonority? They are much, much better than many bands also in the actual scene. However something of "new" "techno-EBM" scene is saveable or even appreciable. Wumpscut in my opinion it is, even if he is not so young, and the friendship between us don't make me wrong. Some bands seem to improve... other to finish in a real bleak made of farts and sounds taken from the loutest techno, that, by the way, I prefer even better!

Could you reveil which equipment you use to compose your music?
ANGELO - Since a while I use principally this equipment: Roland Juno-60 midi, EMS Synthi A/AKS, Ensoniq EPS16+, E-mu Orbit, Roland MC-505, Crumar Perfor mer string keyboard, Yamaha RS-7000 workstation, Korg DVP-1 vocoder, etc., but sometimes everything is processed inside Waldorf 4 Pole, Korg Kaosspad and, in fact, EMS Synthi A/AKS filters. Elena plays very much the Roland MC-505, Roland EG-101, Minimoog, a vertical piano filtered that I don't remember the factory and a processor (not for ambient effects, however...). Her first album as Siderartica is entirly made with MC-505, except one track. As domestic mixer we use a Mackie 1604 VLZ-PRO adn record on two ADAT XT with tape or directly on DAT Tascam, absolutely not using, neither pc nor mac. Sometimes, we use Sound Forge on pc, in studio. As reverberation we use since lot of time Alesis Microverb, a little box that you can find at 25 Euro and it's difficult that we use other ambients in studio. In time, we had also other instruments, as Roland Jupiter 4, Roland Promars, Roland Roland S-50 e S-550, Roland MC-303, Waldorf Pulse, Waldorf XT II Shadow, PPG 2.2, Mellotron, Jen Superstringer, GRS VCO 3 synth, Yamaha PSS-790, Novation Bass Station, Roland TR-808 / TR-909 / TR-3 03, Roland Bassline, Fairlight III, ARP Odyssey, Binson Echorec 2, piano Bechste in midi halftile etc... some of them weren't ours, considering the prices of bad things like Fairlight!

Why some of your tracks are in German, it depends by musicality of what else?
ANGELO: it's an evocative question... some Middle European atmospheres of past fit good with that language, simply quoting Fassbinder cinema, poets like Lotz, Stramm, Trakl and others, in a context quietly uncultured, also because we don't from middle-class origins and we love "to use" the things, apart reasoning on them with vague detachment and possible objectivity. The culture is viewed as useful not negligible luggage, here, but surely "to live" in first person, even to attack, to move, modify, remodel following its own instinct, without shame and useless bows. Surely with the education that, of course, have not to miss.

Which were your favorire cd and song of your youthness? And the current ones, they are always the same or have changed?
ANGELO: everything started listening to "Echoes" from "Meddle" of Pink Floyd, in 1971. I really got crazy, for the song and that band. Now I'm not so involved in the releases, generally... I listen to them, yes, I'm a bit informed, but altogether I find few things, really essential. "Kanon Pokajanen" of Arvo Pärt is what I like listen to more and I find always stimulating the things that Douglas plays with Death In June.

This is my first interview, how do you think it was? Do you have some suggestion to give?
ANGELO: no particular suggestion, except to say to be away from "underground flattery", made of little bad and envious little stupids that bore the life of everyone with their artistic frustrations fed by envy. Tell fuck off to the band that are not educated and, if possible, a bit humblenessly. This undergrowth of "artists" is depressing: let's start to clean it with clear choices, I mean avoiding who has nothing to say if not speaking of its own ego. I liked the interview, because you chose for musical questions, instead of delaying in political bullshit as many do.

Vittorio Bilotta

English translation: Adalberto Orrigo