I see trumpets and pieces of trumpets (oil, mouthpieces, mutes…) more or less everywhere. I’ve recently interviewed Greg Kelley of Nmperign, I don’t know if you know him, by the way I told him about the choice of playing that instrument, that is actually also the only one I more or less play. It demands…
Tag: Italy
Federica and Andrew (Kitchen Legs) – “We’ve changed our tastes over time, but even the most ridiculous music choices one might have made back in the day shape who you are now”
It’s pretty clear that you like cassettes, both as publisher of music, and as listener(s)! But what is nice and strange is to see so many ‘mainstream’ releases on cassettes, survived after all of these years, like Grace Jones, Prince… You know, it’s rare. I saw for instance many still having their dubbed cassettes, musicians…
Manuela Benetton – “After 15 years in Berlin, I am more interested in a place that it is human, has energy, where people have interesting and intelligent things to share”
Cool! “Storia della filosofia indiana” [“History of Indian Philosophy”] and “Der Baader Meinhof Komplex” are the first two books that I see! Sign of a twisted personality? Funny that one is in Italian and the other one in German. I know you live in Berlin since a lot of time… I suppose you like the…
Paolo Bertoni – “It seems to me very wise to be afraid of happiness, in fact romantic soul prevails over every other aspect, obscure and catastrophic too, of myself”
What is “Scared to Get Happy”? It’s funny, as it somehow fits with the (most probably stereotyped) image I’ve got of you: as a journalist, I see that 90% of the stuff you write about is not really considered ‘happy music’: industrial, gothic, dark, experimental, isolationism, concrete… I often asked myself if you – like…
Riccardo Gorone – “Taste doesn’t often reflect the beauty and the width of music, so, in my opinion, is not the right criteria to listen to music”
I see interesting gear around, like the two amps beside the turntable. What are they? They are a sort of work of art. The little speakers are made of ceramic. They generally born in one colorway, but with the customization of a local artist, these became unique pieces. I have to pairs: one in yellow…
Isobel Blank – “The sense of partiality, meant as the difference that identify anyone, has always been a fundamental part of my qualities”
Connections among different forms of art: that’s what seems to emerge from what I see, from the DVD of Michel Gondry to the ‘physical’ mixture in placing records and books together. As far as I know one of your main interest is to cross or even destroy borders between different art forms (if art can…
Stefano Pifferi – “Writing about music was a sort of teenage desire I satisfied later in my life: it allowed me to discover everyday a new part of this huge mosaic scattered all around”
It looks like a ‘listening studio’: there are nothing but records, a table and a laptop in this room! I guess you take listening very seriously, and as far as I know you didn’t give up yet in writing about music (as for instance Davide Montoro recently did). What is still pushing you to do…
Fabio Ricci – “I think that part of life lies in the acceptance that your ego can die. If it never dies, it will simply kill everyone around you in the end”
I’m interested in some particular objects among the records, like the photo of the woman, in black and white. It somehow reminded me instantaneously the cover of vonneumann “Il de’ metallo”, then reprised in “Il de’ blues”… who are these persons? They both have a melancholic expression… Wow, I hadn’t thought of that at all,…
Simon Balestrazzi – “When it comes to experimental, obscure and unconventional music, Italian musicians were and still are among the most interesting in the world”
Well, you told me that you ran out of space for records and… they look really packed, I must admit. How are they organized? Or disorganized? In strict alphabetical order. But with a few twists… being a potentially compulsive record buyer I forced myself to a rule: no record can be placed in the “archive”…
Lino Brunetti – “The world of music and its fans is basically a multitude of funny nutters – me being one of them – and maybe that’s just the fun and the beauty of it!”
Oh, finally: Simon and Garfunkel! Their “Greatest Hits” is one of the few records that I’m heavily listening since I was a boy! I love them, but few of my ‘musical friend’s are fans… As far as I can see, you are one of them, right? Actually, I can’t really say that I am a…
Maurizio Pustianaz – “I like to be free to listen to the music whenever and where I want to, so I rip the records I’m purchasing, just like I was doing in the 80s, when I was taping them”
I see that you somehow wanted to show me those series of LPs. What do you think of the vinyl revenge/retromania that obsesses a lot of people? I mean, I love the ‘full size’ of LP covers, and the warm sound of vinyl, compared to the sharp one of CD… but for some reason I…
Marc Urselli – “I used to tell the guy ‘I like this and this, what do you have that sounds similar?’ The good old day of human record store clerk recommendations!”
A tribe of turtles dominates over the wooden shelves full of the dubbed cassettes. A telephone cable adaptor underneath it all, the kind of object that tells me that technology has got a hard road to get into this house. An impressive image, at least to my eyes. Can you comment on that, please? Well that’s…
Enrico Coniglio – “Venice is one of the most humid places in the world! Humidity affects everything, not only the sleeves of my discs but my instruments and most dangerously my old bones…”
Pretty messy mate! Is there any order? As you may have noticed, my records are not ordered according to any criteria, neither gender nor alphabetic. I just didn’t get into it… so when I’m looking for an album I almost never find it, then I play another one that I didn’t even remember to have….
Dmitry Vasiliev – “My mother told me that when I was less than two years old, my favourite toy was the old radio, a big box with loudspeakers inside, table size”
The pictures you took are very very dark, and in one of them I see what I guess are the (still sealed) releases of Monochrome Vision. I know you since a long time now, and I’m always impressed by the immense culture you have about anything VERY experimental in music, VERY dark, harsh, somehow difficult…
Emiliano Grigis – “Having less and less time I prefer to use my visual memory and a physical connection to music”
I notice on the down left corner “The Idiot” of Iggy Pop… I can’t avoid asking you: are you going to drink whiskey, watch “Stroszek”, listen to that album and hang yourself? Jokes apart, I see also one entrac’t CD with his awesome minimal packaging and the historical Verbatim box for CD-Rs. Are you still…
Amy Denio – “I don’t listen to music spontaneously very much. In reality, I hardly ever buy music!”
I see a lot of unknown (to me) names, even some with Cyrillic fonts… How did you get that stuff? I know you’re a very multicultural and always meeting musicians, right? Almost all of my CDs were given to me by friends, or by people that I met on tour. Not visible is a pile…
Andrea Marutti – “As soon as a new record enters the house my very first concern is to add it to the list, even before opening it or listening to it”
Dear lord! At a first sight I thought that you do also have records in the toilet… you knew that our common friend Bruno Dorella keeps cassettes in the kitchen? I’m often asking to the Concrete Shelves contributors where and how they like to listen to music, especially when they listen to harsh or extreme…
Stefano Isidoro Bianchi – “It’s rare, I must admit, that I play a record just to listen to it”
Hi Matteo. I’ll be happy to take some photos of my records for you, but now I have to send out the January issue of Blow Up magazine and the packages are actually covering me the view of the LPs… No problem, send that stuff anyway, it would be great to see the shelves before and…
Marino Malagnino – “Doing noise music does not mean to do be idiots”
Well, among these foggy and dark photos, that make me figure that you live in a messy but inspiring and creative cave, I noticed “Vangelo secondo Matteo”. Is it really a religious CD? Why do you have it? I remember that you told me time ago that some of the musicians that you involved in…
Vasco Viviani – “I have a dream to fall into a second-hand music shop and find all that I’ve already bought and then lost…”
As far as I can guess, these records are randomly stored in a few IKEA drawers under your TV set, right? But I’m not surprised to see that you totally mixed different genres, I know that you have very wide tastes. But I didn’t expect Luca Carboni! I love his music… and how can you…
Bruno Dorella – “Harsh noise music really cleans my brain, it resets it actually, it makes my thoughts very clear, so I’m gonna cook something delicious”
“I sent you the photos of LPs and CDs, as I’ve put the cassettes in the cellar. I pick a few of them every now and then, and I put them in a wall holder in the kitchen, which is where I like to listen to them. Please note that, about the vinyls, this is…
Paolo Bandera – “Whatever sound I am listening to, I really like it LOUD”
It’s absolutely impressive, but it does not surprise me, I knew that you’re a heavy collector. And, as expected, I see a lot of what I can call ‘heavy’ stuff, things like Swans, Suicide, Throbbing Gristle, Boris, New Blockaders… you with Sigillum S and maybe even more with SSHE RETINA STIMULANS are known for having…
Gianmaria Aprile – “I don’t like holding LPs closed in a plastic envelope, ‘cause I like too much listening to them.”
Well, I knew you have a lot of vinyls, but what I notice in the pictures is that many of them are like ‘consumed’, are they mostly old? How did you get them? I was very lucky ‘cause I inherited a rich vinyls collection from my uncle… and of course, today, I keep buying others…
Vittore Baroni – “I do not listen to a lot of Swaili folk tunes…”
Well, your collection is amazing, especially the LPs… so you even need a ladder to reach soem of them. How can you remember where a specific record is stored? In which order are they put? They are arranged alphabetically and for genres, Italian stuff has a separate section as well as jazz and classical music….
Why Concrete Shelves?
I’ve always been extremely curious about other people’s books and records. Mostly records. Each time I enter a new house, I often identify the spot where CDs, LPs or cassettes are stored, I forget the other people in the room and I keep staring at the shelves (or sometimes just stacks) of sometimes unknown names,…
Concrete Shelves 