Wisdom comes with age. And cosmic wisdom might come with experience and many cosmic travels. Italy’s L’Ira Del Baccano have made many of those travels, they recently returned from another one in their favorite touring country Germany, and their experience shows on this new album.
Having been the same band under various names since the mid 90s, L’Ira Del Baccano have earned their stripes playing progressive instrumental stoner rock, with nods to more psychedelic and weird wanderings. On Cosmic Evoked Potentials they have distilled all their road burning and jamming years into five adventurous stoner jams that burst at the seams with cosmic energy and fresh ideas. It is a versatile space rocket ride with many attractions, and its forty minutes are over before you know it.
It is an album that presents itself majestically, in all its revered experience and musical skill. The production is also drawn up huge and spacious, with plenty of room for weirdo synth freakery, but always with a slowly head banging longhair in mind when it comes to heavy and memorable riffery.
It is clear to this particular psychedelic “head” that with Cosmic Evoked Potentials L’Ira Del Baccano are sharing themselves among the greats of instrumental stoner music. I guess this year, with releases by Rotor, Buddha Sentenza, Clouds Taste Satanic, and this one, we are truly being spoiled!
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Freshly off his tour through Germany, I found main axe man Alessandro Santori more than willing to shoot the shit with Weirdo Shrine about the band, its moniker, his personal musical roots, and a lot more. My personal goal is to drink a beer with this dude and hear him out about all his adventures while touring Europe, but for now, our little internet chat will do just fine too…
How are you? How have you been lately, and how has the pandemic period been for L’Ira Del Baccano?
Ciao to you Jasper and your readers!! I’m tired but very good.. we just came back 6 days ago from the first series of concerts to promote the new album Cosmic Evoked Potentials, that came out on March 3rd on Subsound Records while we were on the road already. We played 9 gigs,mostly in Germany and it was amazing and almost surreal to be on stages again. The pandemic period has been, as for almost all I presume, very strange and unfortunately for many also hard and painful. To keep it on the musical side the impossibility to go on the road and play shows; in some cases, like here in Italy with the hard lock down the impossibility also to meet for rehearsal, for many weeks, changed the life and path of many bands and musicians. I must say that for L’IRA DEL BACCANO it was a bit different maybe; because before the start of the pandemic we already faced a huge change with drummer of 16 years having a heart attack and deciding to not tour anymore and just work as drum teacher. That was a monumental change for us because as an instrumental band the bond between instruments it is possibly more “important” and deep than music based on vocals, and also the specific type of songs we play..very long and complex..made it all more scary. In this sense our new drummer Gianluca, a good friend of our ex-drummer and suggested in primis by him, had time thanks to the pandemic stop, to really enter and become part of the band. First learning songs that we played for so many years at that point and then putting his style to the new compositions
Can you introduce yourself, how did you meet, etc, what does the band name mean and does it still 100% apply to you?
I’m the founder, together with the other guitarist Malerba of the band and L’IRA DEL BACCANO is a continued progression and evolution of a journey we started back in ’94 when the band was called Dark Awake and succesfully Loosin’o’Fequencies from 96 to 2002 and the line up had vocals at that point. As “Loosin'” we recorded and put out a mcd in 98 recorded and produced by the Italian guru of Doom Paul Chain. Later around 2004 after a long time searching for a new singer we decided to become officially instrumental. To mark the change even more we decided to choose another name and L’IRA DEL BACCANO was an idea by Roberto. Baccano in Italian refers to something loud, noisy but Baccano is the most energetic and vital form of uproarious chaos. It is not simply a loud and continuous noise from bedlam It’s the sound of the overwhelming, participatory party, it’s a human sound. The word comes from Bacco/Bacchus God of wine. Ira is Italian for “wrath” . It’s actually very hard to translate it litteraly..so we could say it means ” The wrath of Baccano “. Our connection with Bacco comes from the fact that the zone out of Rome where we live is a territory of vineyards and wine and close here during the ancient days was huge the worship of Pagan Gods like Bacco or Diana, the Goddess primarily considered a patroness of the countryside, hunters, and the Moon. We dedicated the cover and all artwork of our 2014 album Terra 42 to Diana.
What can you tell me about your musical backgrounds?
Speaking for myself, I started very young being attracted by music and guitar. Bought my first metal album, Iron Maiden‘s Piece of Mind, when I was 11 and recorded my first demo of original music when I was 14. I’ve always been a very curious person, as kid first, and then teen and man so I see myself still in a never ending evolution of new things to like and be passionate about. fortunately music is still one of these things! I can say that probably a very important passage for my musical background was discovering 3 Bands that changed me as listener and musician: Paradise Lost with the Gothic and Shades of God albums turned me into a fan of slow ,heavy music. Rush‘s live album Exit Stage Left for the progressive side and The Grateful Dead for the “open your mind and jam” side of music.
What does a regular day in your lives look like?
As thousands of other bands we do not live by our music, so in general therms we could say that playing music is still a wonderful hobby for us. Everyone has a regular job. Personally I’m a sound engineer so I stay in the music field anyway. I think I could say that my regular day turns around the fact to gain money thanx to other musicians..and then later I’ll spend that money as a musician myself for my hobby!!!
What is the best thing about Cosmic Evoked Potentials?
That is out and real!!! hahah..no really..for all we said before about the pandemic and also for some more personal reasons it feels incredible that the album is out, that it turned out so well and that it seems its not only me thinking this way! Lots of people are enjoying this new one a lot and almost every day new reviews are coming out and all incredibly good. I really think it’s our best one in terms of songs feeling and what the music seems to transmit. I’m very happy about how this time the mix between all our different influences are balanced with our own distinctive sound and songs structure. It is various and cohesive at the same time as I’ve always wanted our music to be. I want our music to take the listeners by the hands on a trip where they can be surprised sometime on what is coming next, and other times to be secure of something more familiar. Like reading a good book and arrive to the moment of turning the page not knowing if the the story on the other side will continue as expected or a huge plot twist will change the perception of everything. I think Cosmic Evoked Potential is a very good balance in this sense.
Who are some contemporary musical heroes of yours?
Every friend in bands goin on in the underground scene for the love of create music and possibly bring it on stages for other to enjoy. Those are my heroes today at this point of my life as man and musicians.
Can you tell me about how you went about composing and recording songs differently after the last album?
For Cosmic, after 2 albums recorded in what we could call a traditional recording studio, we went back to our roots and we recorded all live, no metronome , no pre production. I took, together with my work associate in Roaming Sounds Recording, our equipment to an old mansion of late ‘1700 outside Rome. We recorded all the live parts there in 3 days and lots of thing happened actually in those 3 days!!. for example since we had spare time and we started to improvise..months later 14 minutes of that improvisation became the second track of the album ” Genziana ( improvisation 42) ” and with that I decided to take out a song that was ready and arranged before starting the recordings. I learned to keep my mind open and free because when you work a lot and for long time, as musicians and in my case also producer, you can risk to get stuck in your ideas and become inflexible. Genziana was too good to not be on the album even if that meant to take out another one that was in original plan for 2 years at that point.
What are your immediate and long term future plans?
We hope to be able to promote Cosmic Evoked Potentials as much as we can live on stages around Italy and ourside. As I said we all have jobs etc so we cannot be around for too long time, but we will do our best if hopefully promoters and bookers will be interested to have L’IRA DEL BACCANO in their cities. Another thing that I really hope would be to finally be able to play some festivals around Europe..because as much as I love even the level that we are now, I know very well that to reach a wider audience would be vital to go on a Festival stage and until now we are not been very lucky.
What should the Weirdo Shrine reader do after reading this interview?
Well..I can only suggest to try our proposal…and see if they want to start their personal trip with us! But In general, what I really feel to say to your readers is..be curious, always..try new music, new books, new art and so you always will be prepared to be amazed by something in this life, even in a very dark day.
All the best from me and L’IRA DEL BACCANO
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Weirdo Shrine 