Let It Be…
With a new sound, attitude and way of writing, Giancarlo Erra has taken a huge leap forward on the latest Nosound album. The multi-talented musician reveals all about the record, the nature of progressive music, and finding the freedom to follow his muse.
Giancarlo Erra freely admits that he sometimes has a hard time with the term ‘prog’. As the creative general of Nosound, the Italian five-piece who’ve charted a course through post-rock, electronica, ambient music and emotionally shattering alt-rock over the last decade or so, Erra is at pains to stress that the traditional precepts of prog should allow for more fluidity.
“If someone is expecting to hear prog in the classic definition of it then they really will be disappointed with us,” he says. “I just hope it’s progressive in the true meaning of the word, in that it should progress. It often seems to be the most retro and conservative genre when it should be the most forward-thinking.”
Nosound’s recorded output goes some way to backing up this statement. Each album has offered a stylistic variation on its immediate predecessor, be it via shifting accents of tone, texture or noise – and usually all three. Latest effort Allow Yourself, conceived at Erra’s own Bench Music studio in his adopted home of Norfolk (with a little extra recording back in his native Rome) is no exception. In fact, it’s probably the band’s biggest departure thus far. Gone are the soaring guitars and digital effects, replaced instead by a new-found sense of experimentation.
Erra calls it “a radical change in direction. Just after our previous album was released, [2016’s] Scintilla, I was already feeling like I wanted to move on to something else. I realised I’d just been limiting myself in terms of what I wanted to write. There’s an effort needed in saying, ‘What do I want to do?
I want more electronics, I want more acoustic, I don’t want guitars.’ You have to free yourself to just do whatever you want. I think that really was a big change for me.”
This meant that Erra travelled deeper and further into electronica as the primary source of Allow Yourself, whose title alludes to giving himself permission to break with past modes of working.
“It was very difficult,” he explains of the process, “but it all started to come together in the end. It arrived at just the right moment too, because three years ago I started studying piano and singing more deeply. Then came the overall realisation that
I really needed to change inside, needed to help myself alter my palette of instruments. So I ditched everything that was computerbased – no plug-ins or any of that stuff – and used only real instruments, like acoustic piano and analogue electronics. I forced myself to make something different from anything I’d done before.”
As it turns out, Erra is only partly right. Allow Yourself is indeed a conceptual left-turn, but the core elements that have made Nosound such an enticing proposition down the years – sweeping soundscapes, clever melodic patterns, mutable moods and atmospheres – are still very much in situ.
On a musical level, the album is a blood brother of Sigur Rós or Radiohead.
Indeed, if we’re talking in terms of career trajectory, Allow Yourself feels like Nosound’s Kid A moment.
“The interesting thing about Kid A is that, as a long-time Radiohead fan, I didn’t really like it when it was released,” recalls Erra. “I was against the change to begin with, but about five years ago I started to like it. Suddenly I found the beauty in what I’d considered disturbing or unlikeable before. I’m guessing that some people may feel the same about Allow Yourself, especially those familiar with what we’ve done previously.”
Aside from Radiohead, Erra cites fellow moodists The National and Portishead as key signposts to the new album. Perhaps rather less apparent, on the surface at least, is the influence of David Bowie’s final album, 2016’s Blackstar.
“I was really surprised at how someone as big as Bowie, and with such a long career, could make that kind of record,” he explains. “I know he was always experimenting, but Blackstar was just so ahead of its time. To me, I think it won’t even become modern for another 10 years. There’s something magical about
that album that’s classic. It’s to do with the production and the fact he used jazz musicians. It sounds like Radiohead playing jazz. It’s one of my favourite albums of all time.”
Allow Yourself serves as an illustration of just how far Nosound have come. It began as a one-man operation in Rome in 2002. Erra was soon joined by bassist Alessandro Luci, who helped flesh out his instrumental ideas on a bunch of demos. The pair issued the first official Nosound release, Sol29, three years later, with Erra bringing to the fore his talents as songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, arranger, producer and engineer. The expansion into a quintet was a necessity when it came time to present Erra’s songs in a live format. This carried over into 2008’s Lightdark, which featured all five members.
The line-up has been in flux ever since, with one member tending to move on after each album. The aftermath of Allow Yourself is no exception, only this time it’s Luci – Erra’s longestserving colleague – who has decided to seek pastures new. Given the nature of Nosound,
Erra isn’t really surprised.
“It’s kind of normal in a band where I’m doing everything and the others come aboard in the later stages,” he reasons. “The energy keeps rising in the band. In our early days it was all a bit more perfectly staged, more Floyd-ish, while the new set-up is more raw, sparer and more direct.”
This may well account for the heightened sensations of Allow Yourself. Listening to his haunting vocals on pieces like Growing In Me and My Drug, you could be forgiven for assuming that Erra has been through some kind of terrible emotional crisis of late. But he insists the new songs actually signal an upturn in attitude.
“My music is always more about emotions and feelings than it is about social matters,” he says. “It’s more of a personal thing. What I like a lot about the new album is that it’s possibly more intense than the previous ones, but without the melancholy. Before, I think it was all a bit too self-indulgent, so this time I wanted to get out of this shell that I’d built for myself.
“I’m not really a good emotional communicator,” he continues. “I can
“Prog often seems to be the most retro and conservative genre when it should be the
most forward-thinking.”
communicate feelings just with music, but I’m very bad at trying to do that in other ways. So there are some places in the album where I’m saying, ‘Okay, this is the way it is, but I know I can do more.’ Or, ‘When I do more, I will succeed in that.’”
This renewed confidence may well have something to do with the fact that Allow Yourself is a showcase for Erra’s finest vocals to date. He attributes this to taking on a singing coach four years ago, the result being that he’s now able to express himself in a whole other way than he thought possible.
“I just wanted the challenge,” he says.
“It really changed my perspective a lot.”
The current band consists of Erra, Luci’s replacement Orazio Fabbri, guitarist Paolo Vigliarolo, keyboard player Marco Berni and drummer Ciro Iavarone. Given that Nosound represents such a personal artistic vision, how does Erra reconcile that in the studio with his bandmates?
“Most of this album started off as me on just piano and vocals, then the others start having more of an input when it comes to production and arrangement,” he offers. “On this occasion I told them to do something different than usual, something completely crazy, even if they didn’t think it would work. Just do it.
The stuff was weird, but then they really started to enjoy it and got the point. They liked to be pushed.”
In addition to Allow Yourself, which Nosound will unveil at a special launch gig in Rome at the end of October, Erra has also been busy with a solo endeavour, due next February.
“This one was born at the same time as the new Nosound album,” he reveals, “because it was all part of this process of allowing myself to do it. I really wanted to do something like Nils Frahm or Olivier Messiaen – that kind of modern, minimalist, contemporary soundtrack thing. It’s an all-instrumental work with piano and electronics and a Danish string quartet. So it’s very experimental and I’m really proud of it. It’s the kind of music I love the most and it’ll be for a docu-film that will probably end up on Netflix or something. I’m really excited about it because it’s like a new direction for me.”
In the meantime, those awaiting Erra’s next instalment under his Memories Of Machines banner, the art-rock project he shares with No-Man’s Tim Bowness, shouldn’t hold their breath. It doesn’t look like there’ll be a follow-up to 2011’s Warm Winter coming any time soon, though it’s not for lack of willing.
“Tim is waiting, but first I’ll be remixing Warm Winter [which includes top-drawer guests such as Robert Fripp, Steven Wilson and Peter Hammill], which we’ve bought back from the old record label. I’ve already started the process of working on it and I hope we’ll get the reissue with extra tracks in 5.1 sound. Then from now until early next year I’ll be busy with my own solo album and Nosound. Tim and I are talking about doing some more music together, but it all depends on our other projects. It’s not easy!”
Right now, however, Erra is completely absorbed in Nosound, and determined to follow his own vision of what constitutes progressive music. Allow Yourself, he says, feels like a bold new beginning for both him and the band.
“It’s the first Nosound album that isn’t about regretting the past. It’s to do with enjoying the present and building for the future. It’s like I’m liberating myself in a way and just going forward.”
“I ditched everything that was computer-based – no plug-ins or any of that stuff – and used only real instruments, like acoustic piano and analogue electronics. I forced myself to make something different
from anything I’d done before.”