Rodion - December 2007 English Version

CM>>>What means the word Rodion? Why have you chosen this artists name? I just found a classic musician from Russia and a poet who named themselves Rodion…

Eduardo>>>I always had quite a crush on russia. I've never been there but I imagine russia as an universe in itself: endless, frozen but passionate, romantic...russia provided us with some of the finest all-time geniuses, people like prokoviev, scriabin, stravinsky, dostoevski, majakovski. also the sovietic sci fi technologic imagery had a big impact on me. so the name rodion comes after the main character of dostoevski's masterpiece 'crime and punishment', rodion romanovic raskolnikov. I liked him because he was not an hero: rather he was full of doubts, fears, showing a natural human tendency towards the dark side...

CM>>>Your wonderful music is something between … hm .. Italo Disco Funk, Daft Punk, 8-bit Techno and Captain Future on Acid.. How would you describe your music in your own words?

Eduardo>>>I'd probably go for 'casiocore disco funk'. I'm italian and I grew up in the eighties, during the Commodore age, so italo and chip sounds stand still in my DNA. daft punk are the best electronic act ever. funk and acid came later in my life, but I quickly become addicted to them as well.

CM>>>Its plain to see that you must been influenced by this Cartoon Soundtracks of the Eighties. Do you recognize when you’ve been infected by this funky electronic music?

Eduardo>>>I spent many hours of my childhood watching japanese cartoons. my favourite ones were those featuring lonely cyber heroes fighting for world's survivance, like kyashan or tekkaman. I think that the romantic space attitude in my music mostly comes out of them. though I was a child and I knew nothing about electronic music, those cartoons also featured lots of weird sci fi synth fx and amazing plastic soundtracks, both in the original japanese and italian version, which definitely played a big role in how my music sounds now.

CM>>>You’ve been handled as a wunderkind playing Piano and church organ already at the age of five. When have you started to learn an instrument? And who was the driving force behind your musicality, are your parents also musicians?

Eduardo>>>I think it all started when I was 4 or 5. my uncle is a choir singer and a passionate music lover and I used to spend many evenings at his place, wearing huge headphones and listening at his bach and debussy vinyl records. I remember being astonished when I pumped bach's massive organ works into my ears, some sort of a mystic experience. so I suddenly started my piano lessons: I took the thing very seriously and I kept on with classical and sacred music studies until 20 or so. If you start early and you are in love with what you are doing, it's much easier to achieve good results. so maybe I could have been playing chopin when I was 10, but I never considered myself as a wonderboy (smiling) but I definitely feel a very lucky guy because I had the opportunity to receive a strict and proper classical training.

CM>>>Later on you dived into the world of “Centri Sociali”; can you tell me something about this establishment? How did the contact with this change your life?

Eduardo>>>music conservatories and sacred music schools might be inhabited by narrow minded people. Many times teachers and parents want their kids to behave like competitive robots, and they focus their attentions on strict discipline rather than on music. there's usually no room in those schools for different kinds of music: I remember of a friend being kicked out because he released a dark-wave album with his teenage band! I always felt that music would have been my life, but I did not want to get stressed and stucked with accademy only. In italy 'centri sociali' are left winged occupied places, a bit like squats with lots of cultural initiatives: young people meet there, they smoke a lot, talk, watch live concerts, movies and so on. when I was 16 I used to spend many of my nights there. I met many stimulating people and we set up a new wave band called the 'ZU!', where I started playing synths and programming music.

CM>>>How did you felt when they kicked you off the catholic musical school? Did you felt frustrated or more liberated?

Eduardo>>>From 16 on I had a sort of dual life: classical by day, a bit ravey by night. I tried to mix the two sides but the musical school teachers where not happy with my piercing and freaky haircuts (laughing) I still felt in love with music, but I did no longer want to hear people telling me how I had to play, to dress and to behave. So I went away and I took my piano graduation by myself with private lessons. It has not been frustrating at all, I just did what I felt I had to do.

CM>>>Do you still play sometimes classical music?

Eduardo>>>Sure, I still love to play piano. I have one at my place and I play it whenever I can, though not as much as I would love to. sometimes I'm a bit frustrated because I feel that I'm no longer good as I was when I used to spend 8 hours per day on my piano, but I still love it. And when I will get tired by the modern sounds, I'm pretty sure that I'll return where I do come from.

CM>>>Let’s talk about your album “Romantic Jet Dance”, can you tell me at first something about the title and the artwork of the album. How is it connected top your music?

Eduardo>>>The title and the artwork of my album both come straight from the Gomma factories. Sure we had lots of talks about it, but it's part of a good label teamwork to provide the music with a proper imagery, and it's nice to see how my music gets interpreted by Gomma. I think the title quite says it all: the music is sometimes mellow and romantic, sometimes fast and hectic. and though not strictly conceived for the club, it's basically dance music. the artwork completes it in a nice way I think: there's humour and explosions, and there's airplanes quickly moving forward and backwards through past, present and future.

CM>>>As I said before your music is a funky explosion with fragments from the past but also so fresh and new. I would like to know how you get inspired to produce your tracks? Is it just a result of these films and cartoons of your childhood or do you also assimilate stories of your life when you write a track?

Eduardo>>>people are a bit like sponges, they absorb everything passing through them, even if they don't want to. it happens to me as well, and things in my music sometimes just come out from I don't know where. I just let them flow and try to have fun driving them together in a musical form. a good music piece is much like a play or a story. it has to tell you something. the sponge provides me with the characters and I put them together on an imaginary stage. I usually spend time thinking before writing a tune: I write my sketches on paper, I imagine the story and only after then I start tweaking knobs.

CM>>>… when have you developed the idea for the album and how long have you worked on it?

Eduardo>>>the romantic jet dance album is more a collection of tunes that I wrote during the last two or three years than not a concept album. I sent all of my tunes to Gomma in 2006. then they had a rodion listening overdose and together we chosen what to put into the rodion debut LP. it has been quite hard to squeeze everything in a compact and coherent album: we had to leave many tracks out and to cut, edit and rework many of those we left in. As it usually happens, now we find that some things could have been done in a better way, but we are all very satisfied about the final results. I reckon I'm a very meticulous guy when we talk about music, and the Gomma guys are among the very few ones which I found to be as meticulous as me, if not even more. so I'm happy we did an extensive and accurate work together to produce this album: I feel I learnt many useful things on my music working with them.

CM>>>You've been critically highly acclaimed and stars like Lindström, Franz Ferdinand or LCD Soundsytem are your self confessed fans. Do you think that the people from the catholic music school have noticed that you and your music are so successfully?

Eduardo>>>No, and I don't really think that they would care about it ...(laughing)

CM>>>Your music owns a unique style, but isn’t there the risk that people always compare you with the style you became famous? I mean if you would change the style of your music radically isn’t there the risk that you have to start at zero again?

Eduardo>>>Usually the music business requires you to be labelled with a simple and easy to understand style tag. So Rodion is Italian and he makes Italo. But that's not definitely true. Sure I love Italo, but I think that if one is willing to listen with open mind, he could find much more than Italo in my music. I've always been used to listen and produce music in very different sauces, from string quartet to bossa nova. The romantic jet dance album features the sound I've been after during the last couple of years. with Gomma we tried to define it in the clearest possible form. but in the meanwhile I kept on learning about production and listening at new music, so good chances are that my future works will evolve and sound in a different way, still retaining the rodion style.

CM>>>That’s a good topic, what are your musically plans for the future? Do you dream of some collaborations? Or doing something completely different?

Eduardo>>>I just can't stop making music, I feel quite bad whenever I'm not working on a new track. at the present moment I'm working on many remixes: one for tomboy's 'flamingo' has just been released on gomma and one for my friend fabrizio mammarella and his telespazio project is out now on tiny sticks, plus I'm working on some other remixes wich will be released in 2008. I think remixing is a good production exercise. In the meantime I'm trying to release the debut album of my pigneto quartet freaky band and a first technopop split on our new roman roccodisco label. but what I care more about right now is working on a new rodion album. I'll take my time: I already have many sketches to work on and I think that I'll throw in more songs and featurings, though I generally like taking care of the rodion by myself.

CM>>>How did you get signed on the Gomma label? Have you met them by accident or have you send some demos around?

Eduardo>>>I've been much impressed by the Gomma showcase at Sonar in 2005: munk were mixing techno and gloria esteban while holding a bottle of jack daniels in their hands and whomadewho played an unexpected ultra tight funk rock show. so I decided that they were open minded enough to receive a rodion demo.. laughing

CM>>>Have you created this awesome “Euro Fighter” video? Or who made this great cynic video..

Eduardo>>>The video has been made by mathias modica, one of the two Munk guys which run the Gomma label. He told me nothing about the video, I just found it by chance on youtube! but I liked it a lot: humour is an essential part of my music and I'm sometimes quite a cynic guy.

CM>>>I also saw a video of your live performance during a Gomma night. I saw that a bass player has accompanied you. Are there more musicians with you when you are on stage or is it just the bass-payer? … and who is he?

Eduardo>>>The current rodion live set features me and a bass player. I sing the vocoder and play a strap-on distorted plastic keyboard. Instead of standing still in front of arcane boxes, I decided to go for a rock'n'roll approach, which is much more funny and goes better with my music I think. TSO, my trusted bass player, plays with me since 3 years now and he is also the bass player of our pigneto quartet project. plans for the future also include a drummer on stage, for a true rodion electric orchestra.

CM>>>Keeping in mind that you where trained as a child to play music in churches, I ask myself what do you prefer more today: playing in front of an audience or do you prefer more the work in the studio?

Eduardo>>>I like playing live, I play in front of people since more than 20 years now. but it might also sometimes a stressful experience. when I sit in the studio making music, I feel like I could just go on like that forever...

CM>>>What kind of gear do you use for your music? Do you use also kind of vintage synths or do you create these Eighties sounds with plug ins?

Eduardo>>>I use both vintage and software stuff in my studio. I like the look and sound of vintage instruments and I'm also fascinated by the potential of computer generated music, so I mix both in my music. I'm not in the hardware vs software thing: every proper musical instrument, being it acoustic, electric or synthetic could sound good if you dedicate time and passion on making it work.

CM>>>I’ve read that Marco Passarani helped you to work with electronic instruments. From where did you know him?
Eduardo>>>I know marco and the pigna guys since a long time: we all live in rome and this not such a big city. I will play against marco next week in the roman dj football league! then I was at high school with mario pierro, one half of the mat-101 and jolly music projects, ..which by they way influenced my music a lot…and now working on his raiders of the lost arp solo project. he's a nice guy and some sort of electronic guru who was into electronic stuff well before me. so he taught me many things about synthesis and computer music. I'm also a good friend with francisco. we lately worked together on some tracks of a wonderful horror movie music project he's after.

CM>>>After all are your parents proud of your music or are they upset since you’ve been kicked out of the church conservatorium?

Eduardo>>My parents are just great, my mum always encouraged me with my music studies and she still keeps on supporting me as rodion: she reads all of my interviews on the net and she knows better than me all of my live dates. she even bought something like 20 romantic jet dance copies on itunes and she is giving them as a christmas gift to her friends!!

CM>>>What do you do besides producing music? I mean do you study or do you have a day job?

Eduardo>>>Music is my life, I always clearly felt this so I always tried to make a full time job out of it, which is not always an easy thing to do. besides rodion I did and do many sound design and music production works for advertising, games, websites, movies and so on.

CM>>>Is Rome the city where you are deep-rooted..?

Eduardo>>>Yes, I was born in Rome and though I've many times thought about moving, I always lived here. food is excellent, climate is nearly tropical and people are nice once you get used to their habits …(smiles)

CM>>>Which place in Rome is your favourite one… for example when I would visit you in Rome, which place you’d definitely show me?

Eduardo>>>It's a difficult question, there's so many wonderful things here...sure there's all of the ancient roman ruins, full of tourists and charme. but I'd probably take you to a walk and then to a 'trattoria' (our term for popular restaurants) in garbatella, a neighbourhood where true roman people still live. this is what I usually do with my guests.

CM>>>What do you need for a perfect day in your life?

Eduardo>>>Days made of at least 48hours.

http://www.myspace.com/r0d10n

Photos Copyright: Rodion taken from MySpace website
Interview Michael Mück