I am starting with this old interview :
FOCUS ON: MARIZIO BIANCHI
An exclusive soundohm interview with Maurizio Bianchi (MB) I made at the end of August 2003
1. The history of industrial/noise music is rooted in the end of 70s. During this time passed by, generations were changed, and life was changed too. But there are still many people who are into noise music very much, and who try to make it on their own. Now, we can't avoid the proper influence from the outside, because there are so much noise bands around. When you started back in early 80s, you felt completely different. No cliches, no proved ways, no scene. Can you tell us about your very first impulses which turned you to this dark musical terrain? Were your first musical attempts documented?
I came from the Punk experience, it was circa 1976/78 and I was involved in the reaction against an inhuman and conformist society. The same spirit trained my music path, drift towards the disintegration of pre-manufactured sounds and the achievement of my musical independence, far away by mass-media clichè and music businness. My first musical attempts were never being documented, in fact at that time (76/78) I started my first experiments with an acoustic guitar but I never recorded anything, so they are concealed in my archaic memory.
2. Did you communicate with other musicians in those early days? Can you remember other projects you liked then?
I was in contact with Nigel Ayers from Nocturnal Emission, William Bennett from Come Org., Masami Akita (later Merzbow), Philippe Fichot, Michael Nguyen and few others wich I don't remember now. At the time, I was mainly interested in composing soundtracks (MOERDER UNTER UNS and ARMAGHEDDON) but at the end those plans have vanished into oblivion.
3. Almost all your albums were produced and released on your own. Why? You were not interested to get in touch with labels or not satisfied with the way the scene worked? Disco music ruled the world from 1975 through 1982, as well in Italy (along with pop and new wave) therefore the experimentation in music was amorphous and sterile. Record labels used to produce conventional pre-manufactured bands and there was no space for something diverse and truly different. That's why I decided to self-produce my music - it also gave me the opportunity to achieve the best freedom; acting outside from music industry circuits I had chance to create my own music, something I really would like to do without any pressures.
4. How did you managed to spread/distribute your music? In early 90s, many MB albums were re-released on tapes (by Murder Release and Banned Production labels) and even on vinyl ("Aktivitat" on Zabriskie Point). They seem to be bootlegs or not?
Trough alternative distribution circuits and contacts with other musicias and supporters in the whole world, above all I received a good help by Sterile Records, Aeon Records and Broken Flag Records. Those re-prints are unauthorized bootlegs, so don't buy unauthorized "bootlegs" and discourage others from doing these , unscrupulous business practices
5. Can you speak about technical equipment you used, and more detailed about your methods of composition?
At the time of Sacher Pelz I just used a turntable and some vinyl LPs to make loops, reverberations, then, using a tape recorder I mixed all with other concrete sounds. As MB I bought a Korg synthesizer and I also found one of these sinthy machines on the second-hand market, those used by Cosmic Couriers (!) thena Roland KS20 rhythm-box, an Echo-box and a two-track tape machine. I have composed my music creating a first track and then overlapping another recorded track thus producing the desidered result.
6. Please tell me something about Sacher Pelz and Nun. Were they your side-projects? If yes, where was the difference? If not, please explain your relation with them.
I never heard of Nun, so I've no relation with him, while Sacher Pelz represent my first attempts with concrete experimental music, under that name I made four works recently re-issued in a four CD box titled 'mutation for a continuity' on Ees't label
7. Your first works were devoted to the power of industrial technology and its dehumanization of society. From your current point of view, why this subject, being initially conceived as the
instrument for creation, became the symbol of destruction in those days?
Because men are not able to take the technology under control, so they can't control the developments in the long term. The consequences could turn out catastrophic, as it happened for example with pollution: in the beginning the industrial civilization seemed to offer well-being and happiness to its technological adepts, but to the detriment to the atmosphere. When it has been realized that the industrial civilization requires disrupting the living conditions of the same habitat in which its sons would supposed to live in ideal conditions, it was too late, unfortunately
8. Where is the barrier between the ideology and music? There were (and are) many musicians which put into their works completely different ideas, when the resulting music can be quite similar. On the other hand, industrialization can also inspire people in the positive way: technocracy, total computer control, it brings up the music which calls the people to walk in
line and work like the machine - techno, ebm, various rhythmic styles
...A barrier does not exist, there are just similarities. Nowadays the prevailing ideology is consumism, and the music that springs is music for consumers, it lasts throughout a season and that's all. On the other hand, there is a music wich is the opposite way to consumism, able to survive the time, and even after years it results actual. Why? For the simple reason that the author/manipulator of similar kind of music constantly tends towards a creative act, in his microcosm the artist is able to re-create a music that is out of time, dilated in it to come, untill the future will come; this is why his project resists in the long run.
9. Why did you abandoned your music activity in the mid 80s? Except the religious issues, which are too personal thing to speak widely about, can you explain your retirement or disappointment, your feelings and memories in those difficult days?
For the simple reason that, by now I said everything I had to express, and before running the risk to sink in a sterile repetition or in a vain parody of myself, I retired to devote my time and energy to funding research in my inwardness, my feelings, my spirituality; at the time I haven't had found a real aim (and music is just part of it) wich is to consider my spiritual need and try to find my complete equilibrium.
10. For many people, it was really great surprise when you came back to music after 14 years of enigmatic absence. I know only one album which were released then, "Colori", it musically describes your path in very contrast way, symbolized by colours. Why was it neccessary for you to put this conclusion to the audience?
As the liner notes say, after a 14 years of meditative pause, I am back to music now describing my colored sphere in a world sadly painted in black and white. 'Colori' represents my genuine feeling turned to sonorous landscapes, near to be imperceptibles but discreetely real. 'Colori' is the first chapter of the trilogy that includes 'first day/last day' and 'dates', musical water-colours of gloomy dyes that perpetuate my thirst for spirituality (not to be confused with mysticism). With my last works (frammenti' and 'antarctic mosaic', both released by Ee'st) I'm partially back to fragmentary suggestions of my early experiments
11. As the continue of previous question, let me know your attitude with massive re-edition of your early works, released on CDs by Alga Marghen Records. Was it initiated only the this label? Why did you supported this idea?
I agreed with the official re-release. Emanuele Carcano (of Alga Marghen) found me after a long troubled search, and pointed me out a return, that's why my early experimental layout was gaining general consents. It gives me new vital energy, and the rest is just recent history...
12. The most "recent" MB album I've heard was "MB plays Clockwork Orange". Until it's one of my favourites films, I am interested to know your meaning about this film and the idea behind the album.
Emanuele Carcano had this release thanks to mail-artist Vittore Baroni, and when I've been noticed about the re-release I started being very curious to listen to it, as I completely forgot about this old tape realized in 1980. It returns my mind back to the existenzialist background of that movie. Probably, contorting the original soundtrack, I have rejected the ghosts of a technology which tries to inculcate lifestyles, preconceived ideas or useless modules in his interlocutors, so nobody would refuse to conform his existence to preestablished models.
13. Are you interested in making music nowadays? What the leading interests you have now?
Nowadays I'm still involved in composing and decomposing music. I've started a collaboration with the german duo Telepherique for a project focused on uselessness of time's calculation compared to the precision of time itself - 'zehn tage' will be published at the end of th year.
14. Rumours said that you became one of Jehova's Witness. On my very profane level, I just came to the conclusion that the faith is the only thing the single human can own. Besides the faith, we probably have nothing, simply NOTHING. Being grown up in atheistic country which Russia became to be in the communist era, I had nothing to do with religion, and now I am going to revise my system of values. I can't know anything about Jehova's Witness, but I would like to ask you about this movement - maybe nothing personal but the truth which can't be found easily in these days of total confusion.
Bearing in mind that this is not a religious propaganda oriented on a way of sullen proselytism. It is just the pure expression of my hidden, deep inner life. The non-conformism of the Jehovah's Witnesses, or, better, this form of adoration appealed me from the beginning. Considering also that it is based just on God spell, it's devoid of ideologies, philosophies, theologies and the harmful doctrines that almost every religion use to make its disciples swallow. As Christ said (the true leader of the Jehova's movement) in a famouse sentence:< And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free> [John 8.32]. Thanks to the bible, I have refused many false traditions, Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, birthdays, or any other holidays (save one, the Memorial of Christ's Death during Passover). They believe these celebrations grew out of ancient false religions. I relieved my past blames commited by ignorance, as I did'nt knew the truth, and now I feel like a dove flyng toward the freedom, the real freedom wich is the faculty of exercise my free will.
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