- Compared with 'Blood 'N' Roll' some things change, such as the adventures of the mad scientist Aldebran (here in the middle of the Second World War), but above all your way of writing, today even more mature than in the past...
Aldebran: With their albums Bloody Mary are as if on a time machine, exploring particular historical periods. Our albums are a sort of concept, but not in the common sense of the term: I developed the technique of the didactic concept, where the topos of the story is not stated by the lyrics but, anagogically, by components functional to the album itself, such as a particular choice of sounds, instruments or details inside the artwork. Blood N' Roll was set in 1890, at the end of the Bohemian period; Party Music for Graveyards develops a story with several levels of reading, set just before the Second World War. Elements such as the theremin, the Hammond and other electro-mechanical sounds evolve the sound — to answer your question — and this evolution is functional to, and descriptive of, the album itself. The arrival of electricity and its use by the scientist in his experiments is represented precisely by that fascinating instrument, the theremin.
- In this sense, it should be stressed how you once again escape the trap of easy labels. I listen to your work and The 69 Eyes, H.I.M., Type O Negative, The Cult, Fields Of The Nephilim come to mind, but none of these bands leaves an indelible mark on your style. How do you reshape your musical background in a personal key?
Aldebran: Like the bands you mention, we move within a certain sound that comes from a scene well before those bands themselves. We did not look for a style at the drawing board; we simply tried to open our ribcage to free the notes, the sounds and the images that came straight from our heart, our innermost essence, our pure creative wave, which breaks free from inside us like a tsunami.
- I find 'Party Music for Graveyards' a damned fitting title. It is absolutely right for the kind of music you play...
Aldebran: Behind the title there is the funny anecdote of a Kerrang journalist's exclamation after listening to our music: in his view it is music for a party in a cemetery, and since the album itself is set partly near a cemetery, where this scientist recovers essential parts for his experiment, it seemed just right.
- What room will the various components that are an integral part of your music (gothic, rock, metal) have in future? Could there be totally unexpected openings?
Aldebran: We already have the next two albums in the works, and like the two before they too will be set in particular historical periods, periods that will shape both their sound and their arrangements. We have no limits on experimentation, no chains on creativity, so there might even be a children's choir or ethnic instruments in them.
- Musically and visually, you evoke an imagery deeply indebted to the work of Tim Burton. Which film best reflects you as a band, in atmospheres, messages, symbolic aspects?
Aldebran: I appreciate Burton a great deal, both as a person and as a director, but honestly, and unexpectedly, I feel more tied to a film like Big Fish than to gothic classics such as Edward Scissorhands or Corpse Bride, to which I prefer Young Frankenstein or The Addams Family (the movie) for their brilliant grotesque-comic side.
- You have played in London, and shared the stage with big names of the international independent scene. What are, still today, the biggest problems afflicting our music scene? What do the foreign artists you play alongside complain about most?
Aldebran: What we noticed in the UK and Germany, compared with the Italian scene, is the absolute professionalism with which concerts are organised. Whether you are U2 or a band just formed, you get the same treatment and the same attention; in Italy we are afflicted by a provincialism that makes us subservient and reverent only towards those who come over the Alps. A difference we noticed before and after making an album with an English label.
- And still on the music scene: which one do you feel an integral part of? Who is your music meant for?
Aldebran: We play rock, and by rock I mean both music built on 4/4 and the distorted electric guitar and a lyrical escape from the themes of the Sanremo Festival. Our music is meant for anyone who, in a historical period devoid of magic, can dream, imagine with their own neurons and fire their own synapses to add what we have not put in. Like those books with no pictures and small print, where the reader had to use his imagination to paint the scene. Today everything comes wrapped in cling film and neatly ordered on the shelves of Carrefour.
- With the coming disappearance of the physical format, how do you think musical culture will be handed down in the years to come? What does it mean to you to hold in your hands the tangible fruit of months and months of work in the studio and the rehearsal room?
Aldebran: Physical formats such as CDs and DVDs, and before them 33s, 45s and 78s, belong to this last century alone. Music was born together with Homo sapiens: first with song, then by striking the body to give song a rhythm, and later with bones and wood to build a rhythmic, percussive frame. The inevitable disappearance of the physical format will not silence our soul and our ancestral need to express ourselves. What we must fear is the disappearance of the freedom to write not because you want to become a rock star but because you cannot do without it — whether or not there is an audience in front of you, you must create because you cannot do without it, just as you cannot do without your heart beating.
First published in Italian; in English here.