Edited by Philippe Blache (France) - May 12 2007
Maurizio Bianchi
Prodigious avant gardist electronic creator, Maurizio Bianchi can today be considered among the true leaders of environnemental, molecular and cosmic music. Hi first materials published between 1979 and 1984 provide new musical forms of contestation and deteritorialization throw pulverised sounds. The main purpose was to compose massive, nuclear and apocalyptical musical manifestations that can infiltrates and disturb the empire of appearances, repression and dogmatic conventions. Great artefacts and electronic collages in “Symphony for a genocide” and “Menses” offer a “decodification” and a primitive meditation about territorialized events, aggression and chaos. Some of his later works (M. I. Nheem Alysm...) will carry on virtual soundscapes and abstract projections but in order to renew with continuous sound forms, non abrasive transformations and subtle micro-perceptions. The material is turned to consistent, harmonised and cosmic inventions, producing visceral, introspective inflexions / reflexions. M.B’s idiosyncratic musical universe delivers on the listener some contemplative, intellectual reactions and participations about flux, travel, disintegration. His music rises from the deep chaotic sides of the ground to open a way in order to capture forces of the cosmos. The conjugation between abstract sound machines, synthesised sounds and concrete noises enable to create molecular possibilities and forces (in a sense ever developed in the “rhizomatic” theories of Deleuze/ guattari). With M.B’s art and thanks to new spectral communications, we have the chance to discern and questionnate “opened-sound”, “colour-sound”, “travel sound”, each of them animated, deterritorialized in molecular lines.
Interview with Maurizio Bianchi (18/04/07)
P.B: Let’s start at the beginning and your inflexion for opened musical forms dominated by collages from urban, industrial sounds and other disturbing, unusual sources of sounds (from Mectpyo/Blut in 1980 to the now cult “symphony for a genocide” in 1981 and the greatly shocking “Menses” one year after). This early period was said to be in the direct mood of the “industrial scene”. However I’m not an expert in the genre. I only know whitehouse which is too much for my ears. I would like to say that the first impression that comes to my mind is that you tried to re-appropriate the language and possibilities of tape manipulations. Do your first essays largely used this technique and do you feel closed to successive experimentations from “concrete” music and electro acoustic researches?
M.B: My early days were influenced by the concrete universe, trying to sew together some compositions made by other artists, with my personal view of experimentation that was very abstract and beyond of the usual researches in the electronic field, using not electronics at all!
P.B: Where did your first musical ideas and inspirations come from in terms of composition? What’s your musical background?
M.B: Came from the early “cosmic couriers” and the apocalyptic experiments like Kluster, Neu!, Schnitzler, Seesselberg, etc, even if my musical background were the decadent rock and the beat scene until the 1969.
P.B: For me it is evident that your first demonstrations in electronic experimentation suggested something totally innovative in popular music, a way to create a musical world which is a jump into the unknown. The natural / creative disorder and the heterogeneity of collages seem to be common motifs in your first essays. They reveal new perceptions and a new musical personality, rejecting all mainstream type of music. Would you agree with this statement and do you feel you are in a constant relationship with new techniques and also new human, existential, symbolical thematics?
M.B: I can’t say yes or not, because the most important thing is to communicate something edifying and lasting in the minds and in the hearts of my listeners.
P.B: With all these revolutionary, transgressive experimentations and subversive architectures of sounds, do you consider yourself to be a post-modern or post-industrial artist?
M.B: I thought so long about these definitions and the only answer I found is that I’m a pre-modern non artist with some pre-industrial attitudes, placed gar away from my colleagues defeated.
P.B: Speaking about the emotional feeling provided by all these long collage pieces, they seem to reveal very deadly, gloomy, dark impressions, “vomiting” the negative and disgusting side of the world, corruption, disintegration of bodies and humanity, the triumph of chaos (mainly because of massive dissonances and the noises selected)...How do you personally interpret these compositions in a sensitive way?
M.B: I don’t have a personal interpretation, but I feel to have created a dangerous vortex of neurotic sounds that graze the madness of the chaos. And when you’ll reach that climax, probably you’ll have time to think in your independent freedom.
P.B: I’ve heard that during this period you made several soundtracks for movies (“Morder unter us”, Armaghedon”). I didn’t have the chance to listen to it and I’ve no informations about the movies. Can you tell me more about the concept related to your work in this adventure?
M.B: Those movies never saw the light, but remained as abstract projects for a regretting generation.
P.B In 1983, you released “The Plain truth” which marks a turning point in your musical career and a growing attraction for synthesised sounds, continuous sound forms. Have you ever heard analog synth essays and psycheletronic attacks from other countries? I think notably about Heldon, Philippe Besombes (from France) and Cluster, Nekropolis (From Germany).
M.B: That project was based on my research of the spiritual light, and the fact there were synthetic sounds on it, it was a pure coincidence, without any relation with other psychedelectronic pioneers.
P.B: The spectral sounds released in “The Plain Truth” seem to include more harmonies and a higher degree of perception concerning duration. The “psycho acoustic” effects on the listeners are deeply introspective and turned to contemplation. What kind of musical language did you want to create in this album? Did you use new techniques and materials to function as emotions and feelings you want to pass to the listeners?
M.B To pursue the best successful I used for my first time a biolins-keboard in order to create a dazzling effect which makes the emotive strength more genuine and spatial.
P.B: With time and after a wealth of electronic pieces, your musical signature seem to be progressively touched by a quest for subliminal, almost “ghostly”, sometimes “somnembulic” sounds designed to reach the listener in another way of consciousness (I am thinking about the mental abstractions of “M.I. Nheem Alysm” , the claustrophobic “The Testamentory Corridor” and the “interrupted” soundsculptures of “Cycles”) . Time and spatialization of minimal electronic textures seem to offer a new opportunity to explore the movement and fragility of existence. If I’m not wrong how can you explain this evolution (compared to serial and dissonant excesses of the past)?
M.B: There is not any comparison with the past, but only the full awareness of a painful evolution of neurotic diseases.
P.B: Chronologically do you feel you have passed through different phases of creation (oppressive, surreal “magnetic” music, to free form improvisations and dark musical symbolism...?)
M.B: There is not a chronological genesis, but a radiotherapeutic apocalypse. Anyhow I feel that my research is still going on, looking for new territories.
P.B: Some of your long minimalist pieces for piano and electronic noises, radically play with the disintegration, decomposition and deterioration of the signal (“M.I. Nheem Alysm”…). Do they contain a metaphysical aspect? A meditation about the past, amnesia, forgotten memories?
M.B: They contain a collective dissertation of psycho-phonic inconvertibility, where the mutability of human foolishness meets the enzymatic stability of the divine wisdom.
P.B: You’ve recently worked with many artists (notably the Italians of Nimh and the German duo Telepherique). How did you decide to get involved in these different projects and what are you searching for in those collaborative releases?
M.B: It was the exciting fruit of a very strong and faithful friendship. I was searching the fusion of our inner spirituality.
P.B: Your musical catalogue is impressively huge, I was wondering how do you find enough time and inspiration to publish all these albums? Which of them do you consider to be the most representative?
M.B: Yes, it is. Maybe I’m regaining the time lost…well, the inspiration comes very easily because I keep myself gathered on my own aim which is to awaken public opinion to the real freedom.
P.B: Considering a part of your work as stratification, spazialisation of organic / physical sounds I was wondering if you occasionally work with others medias, I mean collaborations with avant gardist and conceptual artists for “happenings”, visual performances for a new creative approach?
M.B: No, I never been interested on such medias
P.B: Today, on which musical project are you working on?
M.B: Some collaborations with Cria Cuervos, Emanuela de Angelis, Maor Appelbaum and some solo works. I keep myself so active to avoid to fall in the mental torpor.
Edited by ProgLucky - May 13 2007 at 21:44
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Maurizio Bianchi - interview (18/04/07)
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