RanestRane were on air at the radio last week in Milan, this interview was given during the last gig of the European Mini Tour.
You can challenge your Italian skills here
Our dear friend Stefania Fiaschi made a translation for us.
RTD : Does Louis Malle’ s movie “Ascenseur pour l’ èchafaud” (1958) remind you of anything? Miles Davis composed the music and later the movie was filmed on it. Is your composing approach similar to this?
RANE: It is completely the opposite. We handle with movies provided with their audio and soundtrack already and try to give them a completely new life from the musical point of view. Infact we generally get far from the original soundtrack on purpose, even to the opposite side sometimes. We try, for instance, to open the chords where initially closed and vice versa, dealing with parts of the original dialogues taken from the movie into our music, in order to put the listeners inside the story and give them a new experience both on cd than on live either… And making it work with the lyrics and the dialogues too. So it is all quite difficult to be put together in a proper way, as you can understand, considering besides that we are handling with very popular and important soundtracks as Space Odyssey, just for instance. So we try to give our artistic contribution, that must be fresh and new as much as possible, at least in our intentions.
RTD: What about your specific choices on the movies?
RANE: Our first choice fell on Nosferatu, due to the great respect we have for Werner Herzog and also to its own storytelling slowness, which helped us a lot and allowed us to handle with our musical project in a better way.
RTD: Did you have the temptation to compose your music on Nosferatu’s mute version of 1922 or you decided to operate on Herzog’s version directly?
RANE: We wanted to do what hasn’t been ever done before. So we decided for Herzog’ s version immediately. In fact, as maybe you will realize tonight during our live, our project is based on a multitask experience based on the interaction between parts of dialogues and images from the movie and our music and lyrics as well (for instance, in Shining, Jack Nicholson’ s voice was inserted into our musical texture). In other words the essence of what we try to do is not sonorizing the movies but interacting with them, creating some new kind of hybrid between the movie in itself and our parts as something deeply connected and never made or thought before, neither by the director of course. We like to call them Rock Operas or Cineconcert. So the albums are physically concepts, living their own independent life… but in our live concerts they become a multi medial experience made of all the elements previously mentioned. Our first idea when we started was doing something similar to The Wall, composing the music and then filming a movie based on it. Of course we soon realized it wouldn’t have been possible due to our modest budget, therefore we decided to create a new soundtrack on existing movies.
RTD: Could you please tell us about the Trilogy and the new album you are presenting tonight along with some extracts from your previous works?
RANE: Tonight we’re going to present the second part of the Trilogy, HAL (the first one was Monolith), along with something from our previous albums, Nosferatu and Shining. This concert in Milan is the last one of our European tour’ s first leg, which has started from Rome about 15 days ago and brought us to play in several countries.
RTD: I know you also worked with Marillion’s guitar player Steve Rothery .
RANE: Yes, we started this collaboration with him some years ago and it has grown stronger with time. Besides we recently took part to some dates with him, consisting in a two part show. In the first one we presented HAL and in the second we featured him and Martin Jakubski on vocals (he is the singer of Steve Rothery Band, Steve’ s aside project), on the execution of Misplaced Childhood’ s celebration, one of the most famous Marillion albums, which was out exactly 30 years ago. Our collaboration with him started specifically during the sessions for Monolith, in which he played two great guitar solos. By the way, we must say we are his great fans, particularly fond of lyricism and poetry in his own way of playing the instrument. He played two solos in HAL as well. Moreover in Monolith we have also two interventions by Steve Hogarth, singer of Marillion, at the beginning and in another moment of the album. His task was to do the story teller “from above”, giving someway the essence of the album in itself, and we are happy he gladly accepted our proposal and our vision of his role in the process.
RTD: Could you please tell me about your choice to sing in Italian, considering mostly the fact that you have collaborations with international musicians and that many Italian bands do actually the opposite?
RANE: We are proud of our language, mostly, we have a long tradition in lyricism if you just think to the Opera or also to the Latin’s Poems or even the Vulgar ones (with Dante and Virgilio, for instance). People abroad consider perfectly natural for us to sing in Italian and no one ever asked us the reason for this choice. Besides we pay great respect to the English language as well. So, being not English or American native, we fear our pronunciation could be not so good for foreign listeners to be heard.
RTD: In fact, regarding people abroad, we just notice that they prefer to watch the movies, just for instance, in their original language with subtitles in order to entirely appreciate them and due to this respect we previously spoke about… And besides, regarding the Italian bands, we recall that most of them have had a certain success abroad singing in their own language…
RANE: That’s exactly our opinion…
RTD (Stefania): I have been following RanestRane in concert more than once, in Italy and abroad as well. I remember they had a very important experience on the stage of Marillion weekend this year, playing in front of 3000 people from all over the world. And the nice thing is that now most of them have become fan and friends and want to learn Italian. Moreover in Monolith and HAL as well, lyrics are translated in English too.
RANE: Maybe people from abroad find our language romantic and melodic in some way. Especially in Japan, where we count a good number of followers. We just have the little regret that this seems to be a problem or is seen as something not so positive, only here in Italy. For us is a joy, instead, seeing so many foreign people singing our songs in our language.
Stefania in conversation with the boys
RTD: How would you define yourself, if you do, a prog rock band influenced by Italian songwriters?
RANE: It is quite exact yes, our influences are definitely into traditional prog such as Genesis, Pink Floyd or Marillion and in some Italian songwriters either, particularly Ivano Fossati or Fabrizio De Andrè. Prog represents for us its purest definition, progression, absolute freedom, not only due to the length of the songs but a way of composing without boundaries at all.
RTD: And what about the search of your specific sound? What is your effort to not repeat yourself or not to be so equal to your musical influences?
RANESTRANE: Everyone of us should talk about his personal experience and search on his own instrument. A keyboard player, for instance, has many choices to create his sound trough not only the piano/keyboard/hammonds/synthesizers effects but also using many softwares available nowadays . Sometimes this variety of choice is very good, sometimes less. Therefore, when you are working on your specific parts, it can be bad because it takes you a lot of time. Our general goal is, in any case, trying not to repeat the same things; therefore it is a long process. Regarding instead the sound on drums or the other acoustic instruments , the most important issue to work on is how they sound, no matter how much you have paid for the instrument if you don’ t find the right way to make it work. Especially on its pitch; this may take a lot of time, even years of study and research. Sometimes you think about your guitar solo before sleeping or while skying, not necessarily into the studio. In any case the study on your instrument should bring you to develop your personal sound although you will be influenced by the music you love most. We are definitely trying to get our own sound, our specific identity. And we trust this might be the right direction to be taken.
RTD: This new album, HAL, is the second part of the trilogy dedicated to A Space Odyssey. It represents the central part, a sort of bridge between the first, Monolith, and the last one to come, Starchild. With respect to your previous works, I would like you to explain the reason why you chose to divide the Trilogy into three distinctive parts.
RANE: The first reason is the length of this movie in comparison with the previous ones, which made totally impossible to purchase a single or double cd. A triple one was not chosen due to the production costs, which would have been too high and it would have taken too long to be recorded. Therefore we decided to share this trilogy into three independent and distinctive cds to be purchased singularly. The own Odyssey movie structure in chapters allowed us to compose a sort of modular work; the movie is unique and integrates these three great parts. But every chapter composing the trilogy is a specific story, so we thought this could have been the best solution, considering also the fact that this be the best way to benefit the work for people approaching to our music for the first time.
RTD: Why did you choose another Kubrik film after Shining?
RANE: This film represented the perfect one to us. A sort of great challenge. It is just a case that, after Shining, we chose another film from this great director, although we all are his fans, particularly Daniele. We are fond of Astronomy and the great questions about mankind and life in the universe.
RTD: In any case your choice always fell on visionary movies.
RANE: Yes, because this kind of movies help us to express our way to compose music at its best. For instance in Nosferatu our music was very romantic and suitable for the movie, in Shining it was more “violent” according to the story.
RTD: What about your projects in the near future?
RANE: First we have to put together our ideas for the making of Starchild, the third and last part of Odyssey. Later on we have many projects in mind, no lack of ideas. We love cinema, many masterpieces have been created. So we have much material to be inspired by and to work on in the future. Or maybe we might compose a soundtrack based on some book. Our direction was taken long time ago and we are thinking to continue on this interactive project, based on combining different kind of arts such as cinematography, music, literature.
Thank you dear Stefania for your interview together with the crew of Radio Tempi Dispari
