:Ritual: #11, 04/2003

Stalingrad

The so long-waited Stalingrad project (appeared already years ago on sampler) made its debut last year on SPKR with the album 'Court-Martial' (released together with the live performance in Leipzig 2002) shortly reveiled as a true success in 'Brown Area' zone. This re-incarnation or side-project (if you want) of Kirlian Camera, has immediatly confirmed to have a own personality, more drammatic, but from the other side a little more playful comparing to KC. The drammaticism is marked by a deep apocalyptic sense, surrounded by dynamic noises, opaque colours and neoclassic slashes. The game is in the usage of soundtrack, rarefied atmospheres and sometimes technological and rawly industrial sounds in the strict sense of the word. If Kirlian Camera sees indistinctly the light, all what regards Stalingrad seems to be done totally in the dark.

The subtitle of the album seems to result by a self-analitic condition and finally far away from the coarse self-indulgence that surrounds the area. Humorous sentence that, linked to the title, make a dramatic and hard climate, then recognizable by the tracks. If there is an apocalyptic record around today, it seems just this one... Do you like to comment title and music, also in relationship with Kirlian Camera?
Stalingrad is a sort of "peplum" incarnation of Kirlian Camera, a band that is conscious of its almost careless need to go to visit its own origins and develop them in a "not thought" direction, I mean to continue to give extention in a bloody way. It seems a tragic picture showing arenas, gladiators, biblic apocalypses and funerary fascinations, everything without shame, in oppositite, giving emphasis at maximum a sort of very "felt" kitsch, wanted and maybe also cared, we hope. Kirlian Camera is always more a research group, where we spit blood in the continuous attempt to put new elements in its own style, conjugating great emotional partecipation and study. Stalingrad is more immediate, more instictive, it speaks about dark days, but it's also able to be conscious of its own impulsiveness. The project was going to be dismissed but then Elena arrived, that pratically gave new life to it, with her enthusiasm against this kind of choices.

Once you said that Stalingrad is like "decadent music for romantic lorry driver... Who hell is a romantic lorry driver?
He (or she) is one that cries like a beloved crocodile while watchs a part of Visconti's 'Ludwig' in a pause at the autogrill, then goes away to eat a sandwich listening to Alizèe or T.A.TU. at the radio, thinking that must absolutely remember to buy "that" infamous record with all "those" classic music pieces, because it's better than last Shakira's album. Suddenly, he understands that want to call to his ex girlfriend and invite her to see "Gladiator" and, while he walks towards his truck, he sees the CD of Stalingrad in a near shop... he steals it, thinking that the photos in the cover meet his taste, put the CD on the CD player of the truck and, once he listens to the first tracks and reads better the titles, he starts again to cry like an abandoned gorilla and asks to himself "Why am I so much tender and kind? Why must I be in this way? Why does everything happen against me, sigh...". Maybe he is a bit exhausted, I don't know...

Elena, during your beginning with Angelo you were closer to the jazz electronic atmospheres of atmosphere than not at the present almost wagner-like, if we think about Stalingrad and 'Still Air' of KC and also to the light but dramatic disc of Siderartica. It has been a very quick change and, it seems also very heart-felt.
I sung with pleasure 'Moon Is Getting Closer' and 'Made Of Shadow', but that one was a musical tendency of Angelo that I satisfied. Maybe I feel on my own in tighter atmospheres, dramatic or nocturne, so working in the actual phase is very nice for me, because he is orienting mostly in that direction too. I feel completely part of what happens, for the first time. But if Angelo want to do a funerary cover of a Louis Armstrong piece, I will sing always with no problems, because I know that there will be a true sense.

A little bit indiscreet theme... The news reported by the German magazine Gothic, that told about your past activity in the police anti-riot squadrons, is it to be considered pure "art of gossip"? Why there is always so much force against the band?
I don't know. But I repeat that they are questions that nobody could answer quietly on a magazine, if he would have been involved in such kind of activity. However, I manage music, not repression, urban war or similar things...

You are singing teacher and you also wrote some books. How do you conjugate this musical activity with the work to dedicate to the bands? You are a passionful singer... this is very particular for a teacher.
I became singing teacher just by case and I continued this path for six years, in which of them I dedicated myself always more on the others' voice that on mine! Having the voices in your hands suggests how much the life is delicate, it makes you think to take care of what you have, and it grows you in every time and in every situations. The vocal chords are two fascinating "little Trojans" and the firstly responsability is to manage them in the best way, training and improving the usage without any damage. Working on this technical matter doesn't mean to forget who we are: the expressive path of everyone starts substantially from own personality and passion. I mean that, for me, a good singing teacher knows how less importance has the tecnique all in all and how much it is mandatory to listen to what our soul has to say, if it has to say something...

Angelo, you are on the scene since twenty years. What do you think about the "new industrial/brown area" and on which way as Stalingrad you relate towards this movement?
For me it's ok to be part of it, as well as to be ignored by that area in the subject. The Brown Area doesn't enthusiasm me and this is already known, then, if we extende this to the so-called "medieval", that is her cousin, then everything becomes tragically weird. Think that there are some bands of this scene so ignorant and haughty that are able to turns into obscene a music already bad, "bad" for what concerns the cure, the development, composed by mediocre people, repressed by the fact to be not aristocrat. Music horribly against any real research and against to the tradition too, in fact a good lover of the musical traditions will never think to record similar jokes and then go around dressed by lord of the manor. I always like Death In June, that are far away from these stories, and maybe something is moving among the youngest bands still unknown, like the Sardinian Chirleison, that nobody made record yet, prefering to them those wags with their hens dressed by unlucky matrons, apart exceptions. The Brown Area is more boring than Manu Chao...

Why did you cancel your partecipation to the Munich concert organized by VAWS
Because I had to buy the gifts for your alcoholic mother!

Thanks for the nice thought!
Duty.

Are you always under treatment for your aggressivity? Has it passed the "infernal period"?
I suspended the antipsichotic since almost a year. They made me sleep. The "infernal period" is increasing, but I'm not aggressive against who acts good. I hate the idiots, but I try to not touch them. I don't want any problem: I believe in the responsability sense, to keep quiet who I love and estimate.

Lately speaking about you sometimes there are vague reference to Joy Division and Doors, not for the music, just for the high level of alienation that transpares from your lyrics and from the high dramaticity that they emanate, almost a spiritual trance. Do you feel close to those bands in some way? There is an effective "death halo" that links you with them?
I liked them. Curtis decided to go away much time ago. I respect him very much and I respect his decision. Morrision wrote nice things, ma not so close to my imaginary, at the end. No, it's not my way. I decided to continue to suffer and... make suffer. I'm neither a sadist nor even a masochist, but living in this way is not easy and if I choose to continue is just because I cannot excuse this world in any way. The rest will come later, except if there were some change of mind, ah, ah, ah!

Elena, you speak often about war; it is a "final" match point, what do you indicate? Is is standardizable, leading again to an hypothetical army?
Who feels much, too much alive is aware to be a good warrior. The war I often speak about is not exactly a solo fight, but I don't believe, in only one life, to be able to find many other people that discover the evil I'm refering about, my army should be build by who, at the price of an extreme suffering, is able to captate every millimeters of evil, from the little daily troubles to the catastrophic episodes that colours the existence of some scholastic parassites. I speak about warriors that spend their life to show the horror, to run behind beautiful dreams, to not accept tired arrangements, I speak about life without truce, because only in this way the idiocy of who never ask for, the racism of who is not aware to have it, the bleak of who is not able to see the beauty, the wickedness of the bored ones, the superficiality of who has only a guaranteed education, each of these obscenities could be seen and destroyed.

How will the way of Stalingrad proceed? Is it a project that you will continue?
Yes, we will continue, also live. We will play soon at Mestre, Schloss Püchau and Rostock. We already recorded something new for a new work, but you will need a bit of patience.

How was born the collaboration with S.P.K.R.?
Due to our sexual relationship with the boss Karolina, of course...

Claudia Nosel

English translation: Adalberto Orrigo