Clap! Clap!

Inventive producer Cristiano Crisci combines African rhythms with electronic music for his unique musical style. Tom Jones digs into his infectious love of music of all kinds to find out where the Clap! Clap! sound was forged

We catch up with the inventive producer and talk about his unique sound, the new album and working with Paul Simon

Charismatic Italian producer Clap! Clap! has fast garnered a reputation as a distinctive and innovative force on the electronic music scene. Fusing disparate influences that focus on traditional African rhythms with a modern, dancefloor aesthetic, the highly inventive producer has found an energetic sound that bristles with a bright array of colours and cultures that form a fun and hedonistic melting pot. His debut album

Tayi Bebba and his new follow-up A Thousand Skies have consistently challenged the current discourse on electronic music, even leading to him producing three tracks on Paul Simon’s latest studio album.

FM caught up with Clap! Clap! to find out where his unique style comes from and hear about some of his unusual music making processes…

FM: How were you introduced to music growing up? What sparked your interest?

Clap! Clap!: “When I was a child I was attracted to Hip-Hop culture. The first tape I bought was De La Soul’s Three Feet High And Rising and that tape opened a new world. I immediately started to dig CDs, vinyl and tapes like The Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, Naughty By Nature, Lords of The Underground, Digable Planets, A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde etc. At that age I tried for a long time to share those treasures with my friends, but it was not easy in Italy at the beginning of the ’90s to find young dudes interested in cultures like Hip-Hop. After much searching I finally found the right guys and we started our first crew. I was an MC and a producer; it was fun growing up doing beats and rhymes with my friends here.”

How did your musical philosophy change and evolve over the years?

“After some years immersed in Hip-Hop culture, with the attitude that a 16-year-old boy can have, I was unavoidably attracted to the Punk and Hardcore scene as well. Falling in love with bands like Fugazi, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Black Flag, Refused, The Fall, Hüsker Dü, as well as Snapcase, Breach, Botch or Satanic Surfers, NOFX, Lagwagon, and so on.

“After a few years I decided to start playing an instrument and chose the saxophone. I started to get into the world of Jazz, from the Dixieland and Charleston to Bebop, Hard Bop and on to free Jazz. Sonny Rollins was, and still is, my biggest inspiration – I’m in love with his unique style. Of course I started to be a fan of heroes like Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra too. As I started playing alto and baritone saxophone in small Jazz clubs around Tuscany with my trio, I was in love with baritone saxophonists like Gerry Mulligan, Sahib Shihab and Art Pepper, as well as more experimental musicians such as Albert Ayler, Roswell Rudd and The Art Ensemble Of Chicago.

“I was also attracted by the Psychedelic and Prog Rock Italian and international scene, listening to bands like Area, Campo Di Marte, Khan, If, West Coast Pop Experimental Band, King Crimson, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and Jethro Tull.

“During the years I started to mix all my favourite music and started to be keen on bands like The Slits, The Pop Group, Pigbag, DNA, Mars, A Certain Ratio, James Chance and The Contortions and all the ‘No Wave’ scene. So I started my first Punk Jazz trio. After a few years performing and composing with that trio I came back to my first love of Hip-Hop, but this time more into the origins of the samples. I started listening to the Funk and Soul world. Artists like Gil Scott-Heron or Roy Ayers or The Stylistics gave me a huge inspiration so I bought a sampler and I started to produce beats again. At this point I was looking into those with another mind and approach. I deepened my digging into Dub and Reggae culture and then Motown.

“After not so long I started to follow the electronic music world. Aphex Twin’s Richard D.

James Album was the first electronic album I bought and it felt like entering new era. It was a new era! Amon Tobin, Squarepusher, LFO, Autechre… with every album I was getting more addicted to IDM world and analogue machines.

“In 2006 I finally started my first electronic music project called A Smile For Timbuctu. We released three albums and we started touring around Europe with our live set. Then after a few years, I wanted to start a solo project and released my debut as Digi G’Alessio in 2008 with the EP The

Rain Book. Digi G’Alessio was like an overture of my musician life – producing beats and sampling from Jazz to Punk to Prog Rock to Blues; but it was the project that made me discover the African music. The Rain Book was oriented on African tribe samples and from there I started digging a lot into the African world. From there I produced an EP called Ivory – that was the first Clap! Clap! embryo, which has since grown into the current project.”

How do you think your formative experiences with live music have shaped the way in which you make music today?

“I think it really gave me an open mind and stopped me being limited by rules. Also, to perform music with a band is so different to a solo project. To share music and emotions on stage with other people has helped me to share the same energy and feelings with the crowd when I’m performing solo as Clap! Clap!.”

Did having such an open music policy make it that bit harder to focus when you first started producing music?

“I think it actually helped me… I love to experiment much more than to stick to a single genre. Having such a large range of music that I’d listened to and loved over the years helped me to be much more creative when I’m trying to find new sounds and rhythms.”

What have been the biggest challenges with merging electronic music with such far-flung and rhythmically complex structures?

“Rhythms! I’m always looking for perfect dynamics for my beats. Most of the time it’s not possible to find the groove I’m looking for using just analogue or sequenced machines. I usually create beats with samplers playing one-shot sounds, but for me the best way to find the perfect dynamic is to sample full percussion lines and mix them together. So my new challenge is to create this dynamic using only machines and no samples, but I still love experimenting with the rhythms from samples.”

Where and how do you get your field recordings? What have been the challenges you’ve found there? Have you built up a library that will come in use for future music?

“From everywhere… movies, documentaries, VHS, tapes, CDs, vinyl, YouTube, and of course by myself. I was very interested in the sounds of Siberian tribes when I first heard them. It’s incredible how their yodelling and percussive rhythms sound so similar to some African or South American tribes. The sounds were very warm even though they come from very cold places. It’s similar with Ainu people from Asia. It’s like a strong feeling from the roots of the earth that does not depend on the weather or the geographical location.

“Travelling a lot through Italy I’ve discovered many native instruments and incredible chants. I asked my friends if they could remember some lullabies their mothers sang them as children. Everyone could only remember one or two. These traditional songs being lost! So I made the decision to try to save these treasures by recording what I can. I asked some grandmothers to sing some lullabies and old chants for me to record and keep safe for the future.

“I’m doing something similar with the musical instruments. The south of Italy is a place full of traditions and traditional music. For example in Sardinia there was the master Pinuccio Sciola who invented the musical stone. He created millions of instruments from stones, like the launeddas flute, typically from Sardinia where there was also a launeddas school built. I’m doing this research in Italy not only to archive these treasures but also to

try to use some recordings for future productions and to bring my ‘digging’ even closer to the place that I come from.”

How closely do you work with your stepbrother in making instruments out of scrap?

“Yes, my stepbrother has built up lots of percussive instruments and his drum kit is homemade with washing machine pieces and other crazy things. On my new album I loved involving him in the production and I even moved my studio into his basement so that we could record every day. Sometimes I had started a session and then he built the right percussion to play on it, then other times we started a track from his rhythms and I built up the whole song after.”

So was A Thousand Skies made in that studio then? How long did it take and can you tell us more about the journey of making it?

“Yeah, the album was made in my stepbrother’s basement – the headbanger studio! It was given this name because it has a very small door and despite having been warned, people hit their head on the frame every time they came in. I recorded the album in three months, which started with an idea of a sound quite different to my first album Tayi Bebba. The headbanger studio helped me a lot in my sound research. I involved other musicians, to give the songs a different aspect not only with the solos but sometimes also in the rhythm structures. The album has live-recorded trumpet, flute, pianos and drums; all of these elements made me find the sound I was looking for on the new record!”

What equipment did you use on the record?

“I play kalimba, marimba and different kinds of percussion. Then of course SH-101, Juno-106, MC-202, SP-404 and Korg ESX1 are always part of my standard set-up, which I used on most of the album. That’s not forgetting the inevitable laptop!”

How did you end up working with Paul Simon? How did that feel working with such an icon?

“His son, Adrian, played him my previous album ( Tayi Bebba) and he fell in love with it, then wrote an email to my manager asking for a meeting with me.

“I met him in Milano, after a show on his European tour. We spent a wonderful day together and talked about cultures and music for a long time. He explained to me the microtonal music theory invented by Harry Partch and lots of other interesting things, then he played me some demos and asked me if I would like to play on one of them. So then we started to work on the track I chose. Paul liked the result very much and then asked me to try another one. In the end we made three songs together and this is still the most amazing experience of my life! I also received an email from Roy Halee, sound engineer for Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and The Byrds, with congratulations about the sound of Tayi Bebba and that was the ultimate pinnacle. Paul is a true and humble person. He instantly put me at ease. Incredible. The world needs more people like Paul.”

What are your plans for taking Clap! Clap! onto the live circuit?

“I’m in love with the new live band project of Clap! Clap! and I plan to take that show on the road this year. I’m also performing live with the VJ Loup Blaster around Europe and doing my first solo US tour this March. I can’t wait!”

My stepbrother built a drum kit with washing machine pieces… I moved my studio into his basement so we could record every day