RED LIGHT SKYSCRAPER
Tuscan landscapes and Henri Matisse inspire these Italians’ latest.
Red Light Skyscraper are an Italian four-piece on the rise. Inspired by the verdant Tuscan countryside of their homeland, colour naturally plays a key role in their radiant instrumental soundscapes. Take Matisse, for instance, a moody multi-dimensional single that they released earlier this year, that throws light and shade intermittently, creating an atmosphere of warm ambience and musical dynamism. It seems that dodgy electrics played their part in the creation of this instrumental wonder, evoking the work of one of the giants of modern art.
“Yes, it was inspired by Henri Matisse,” confirms Red Light Skyscraper’s guitarist, keyboard player and occasional vocalist Carlo Parillo on the phone from Siena. “We composed that music one night when we were at the rehearsal room, and we had a problem with the main light. Two LEDs coming up from the bottom of the room turned the room red. It was an ambience that reminded us of the painting L’Atelier Rouge, and so from there we decided to name it after Matisse.”
Do Red Light Skyscraper have any plans for songs about other painters?
“It depends,” says Parillo. “The titles are normally chosen after the music has been written.” So no songs made to order about Pablo Picasso? “I imagine something about Picasso would be really hard to listen to with all those Cubist angles, and it’d probably have to be in an obscure time signature, too!”
Red Light Skyscraper released their first album,
Still The Echo, in late 2017, featuring blistering guitar melodies that fluctuate effortlessly over sonic mountains. They’re currently working on their second, anticipated for 2020. Another new single of theirs is called Thermopylae, a combative number with a 3/4 time signature that “sounded like a battle inside the drummer’s head”, according to Parillo. The fact that their drummer, Matteo Vispo, was studying classical Greek literature at university at the time, may have had some bearing on the title.
The colour red inspired Matisse, and the observant among you will have noticed it’s also in the band name. They chose their moniker after an outing to see Mogwai in Bologna. As they emerged from the concert hall they saw the city’s only architectural superstructure, the Unipol Tower, lit in vermilion. And so they started life as Red Light, Skyscraper! in 2013. Parillo joined in 2014 when he moved to Tuscany from Naples where he’d been studying his doctorate. Parillo brought prog influences and led a purge of the punctuation marks.
“I very much grew up on bands like Genesis, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin,” he says. “We’re also inspired by the music of Slint, and Italian post-rock bands like Giardini di Mirò. The other guitarist loves the blues, the drummer likes Rage Against the Machine, while the bassist is into progressive metal bands like Tool. We’re a mash-up of different types of music.” Keep an eye out for their upcoming second album because, like the Unipol Tower, we reckon it will be unmissable. Ja
“I VERY MUCH GREW UP ON BANDS LIKE GENESIS, PINK FLOYD AND LED ZEPPELIN.”