All Prog From Italy Appreciation Thread

new interview

Mindflower is one of the most exciting musical experiences happening now in Italy or anywhere else for that matter.  The collaboration of founder Fabio Antonelli, Fabrizio Defacqz, and Alberto Callegari, Mindflower is a unique meld of progressive music incorporating elements of art rock, acoustic music, classical music, lush ambient soundscapes and various types of vocals.  The combination when guided by the band’s unique vision produces a sound quite different from other bands on the site.  And while they have created some good things in the past, nothing prepared me for the current project, “Little Enchanted Void,” which is one of the most amazing listening experiences I have had since hearing “Hounds of Love” for the first time.  I’m not saying it sounds like Kate Bush but just that it awed me in a similar way.  Soft and flowing with dreamy strings, delicate vocal harmonies, and hauntingly beautiful piano accompany the story of a search for enlightenment.  The albums take their time to deliver a listening experience that must be absorbed slowly for proper appreciation-but your patience will be rewarded by a unique form of sophisticated “chamber prog.” 

 Fabio Antonelli and Fabrizio Defacqz have graciously agreed to take a moment to answer a few of my questions via email as the band works on finishing the new album.  My great thanks to them for doing this and making an unfinished demo of “Little Enchanted Void” available to me which was very helpful in preparing this. 
I thank them also for handling the translations of English/Italian for me. 

Please tell us how Mindflower was formed and introduce us to your current bandmates/collaborators.

The Mindflower’s project was born in the 1994 on account of an idea by Fabio Antonelli, who has gathered around himself various musicians, among whom Alberto Callegari and G. Fabrizio Defacqz, that are still fundamental members of the project-group.

Till today many musicians worked together more frequently to this project, like Giuseppe Rossetti, Corrado Bertonazzi, The Matrix Quartet, The Fairies Choir, Carlo Pisani and last but not least Andrea Bassato.

Who are some of your favorite Italian prog bands of the 1970s?

Fabio: Locanda delle fate, Le Orme, Il paese dei Balocchi, Raccomandata ricevuta ritorno.

Fabrizio: P.F.M., Orme, Banco, Osanna, Tito Schipa Jr, New Trolls.

Who are some of your favorite modern day Italian bands?

Fabio: Orme.

Fabrizio: Orme, Ludovico Einaudi, Samuele Bersani, Niccolò Fabi, Franco Battiato.

Outside of Italy, name some musicians who have inspired you over the years.

Fabio: I usually don’t listen to much music for pursuing the inspiration, and I create a void in my soul. My favourite musicians are Mike Oldfield, Genesis, IQ, Satie, Grieg and most of all Beethoven, that is in a place where nobody will ever arrive at.

Fabrizio: I listen to a LOT of music me too, I have my preferences but I try to avoid to compose something reminding me their music, even though it’s natural to make a list, not necessarily in this order: E.L.P., Yes, Genesis, P. Gabriel, K. Bush, This Mortal Coil, King Crimson, Haendel, Purcell, Stanley, Bach, Beethoven, Mussorgsky, Prokoviev, Dvorak, The Who, U2, R.E.M., The Cure, Pink Floyd, Satie, Faurè, Widor, Saint Saens, Holst and many others.

What do you think is the current state of progressive music? Do you think the prog rock scene is healthy and vibrant?

Fabio: I really don’t think that progressive music is in good health for creativity, it is too much connected to a superficial, not musical and very little inspired technicality. Anyhow the scene is lively for the numerous present proposals and I believe that there are quite a lot of people really or potentially interested.

Fabrizio: I don’t feel ferment in a exhibition of technical ability, I prefer all the bands that choose essentiality and simplicity without being banal, and they are not many.

What is the state of business for Italian bands at the moment? Can talented musicians find a way to be heard and recorded both at home and abroad or is this right reserved only for the most commercial of performers?
Fabio: in Italy the situation is rather difficult, because everything is reserved to the most commercial music.

Fabrizio: if you can’t find somebody that really believes in you and that is well disposed to invest his money in your work, probably you will be left alone and unknown.

"Little Enchanted Void" seems to be less guitar-rock oriented than "Mindfloater" and yet more adventurous. How was the musical approach of "LEV" different from the style of previous works "Purelake" and "Mindfloater" in your view?
Fabio: LEV reflects a natural evolution in the perception of the meaning of harmony and of interior changes. It is more essential and intimist, maybe because it was necessary to go in the depth of the comprehension of the expressed concepts.

Fabrizio: LEV has been conceived as a constant musical flow from the beginning suite to the end, while for the past works the approach has been less planned and unitary, also if the concepts are more or less the same recurring.

"Little Enchanted Void" reduced to the briefest of summary, would seem to be the story of a being's journey on the path to enlightenment. The fairies, flowers, hills, and lakes scattered throughout the stories are symbolic metaphor for things and events in life. Is that correct? If so, are you writing about a religious/spiritual quest of the soul? Or the more daily journey of a human looking for happiness? Or something else completely?
Fabio: the enchanted world made of fairies, flowers, grand dark spaces is a symbolic world describing the journey of a creature made of light to the perception of some philosophic theories. Then it’s more spiritual, metaphysical, a journey for the comprehension of a personal description of the meaning of purity and endless energies. I hope that mine couldn’t be reflections too much ambitious, excuse me.

Fabrizio: when this creature has begun his journey in the past works, he has not the awareness of everything he met during the walk, and LEV probably is the moment in which he reaches or comes nearer to this awareness. It is like our life history, we born without any particular reason, and during our life we make some choice that brings us in a direction that we don’t know; but if we are helped to look further the things that are around us, if we can realize what is over the void, at last we probably reach more self consciousness.

One of the most fun and interesting things about LEV is the "fairy council," a group of angelic voices who come in and out of the music providing advice and council to our main character, via singing, chanting, and soft mysterious whispers.  Tell us a bit about the fairies in relation to the album.
Fabio: the fairies belong to symbolic language. Perhaps they are more angelic, mystical figures, they lead us sweetly in the long walk taking us by the hand, and they really exist, I think that it’s necessary to know where to look at. In real life the fairies council exists, we have just made a photographic service, and we have programmed a video clip and a theatrical performance with the fairies.

Fabrizio: they are like a “deus ex machina” for this light creature, and they appear with a function that could remind the choir of ancient greek tragedy, as a deuteragonist; they are always present also if the protagonist believes to be alone, and bring help to him when he’s down and tragically hopeless.

There are two things about the new album that make it so stunning. First, the sense that "anything can happen" when you listen. It is not strangled by convention. It is wide open, sonically spacious, adventurous, and free. You are swept under the spell in the first song and held in anticipation until the end. The second thing is the simple beauty of the melodic solo piano parts. They convey a sense of hope and yet also melancholy in the same moment. What was your process of capturing these musical ideas as they came to you? Did this new material feel stronger and more special to you than previous projects?
Fabio: it does not exist a creative process in capturing an idea, those ideas reside in a light of the heart. The creative process intervenes in the thematic development, the construction of the harmony and of the sonorities. I hope again to be not too much spiritual in the answer but it is sincere, heart-felt like the musical ideas.

Fabrizio: the absolute freedom in this work comes from the necessity of join and melt three similar but not equal musical sensibility and experience, in a continuous process of meeting – fighting of ideas and proposals, and after this sort of musical brainstorming at last we have found a common line to take for express the hope and the melancholy that pervades the journey.

Purelake is dedicated to your Mother. Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood, your parents, your family life as a boy growing up. Also tell us where you grew up and where you work today.

Fabio: I live a peaceful life, maybe a little melancholic because I don’t live in the enchanted world, but someday I will reach it. Today I live and compose music in a medieval village south of Milan, together with knights and strange creatures.

Fabrizio: he lives in a really fabulous world.

The gorgeous artwork and photography adorning the booklet of your solo album, "The Art of Dreams in a Little Bottle," suggest that you have a keen eye for visual beauty. Name a favorite painter, a favorite film director, and a favorite movie.
Fabio: Salvator Dalì, De Chirico, Moebius- Tim Burton- The Neverending Story, Momo.

Fabrizio: I love Hyeronimus Bosch, Leonardo, Escher – De Palma, Kubrick - Phantom of The Paradise, Dune.

What things do bands like Mindflower consider when deciding whether to sing in English or Italian? Many Italian prog fans say they prefer Italian vocals. Do you have any thoughts on this debate?
Fabio: personally I give more weight to the musicality than “nationalism” and patriotism: english language is more musical and sweet, even if I have the greatest respect for the choice of whom that sings in italian, and makes it very well, with sweetness, like Aldo Tagliapietra (Orme).

Fabrizio: I find strangely unnatural to write a lyric in italian, I think that english language results more malleable to prog music, also if there are a lot of italian prog song really well written.

Does Mindflower tour and if so, where will you take the tour for this album?
Fabio: It is in our projects and in our hopes. It will be uneasy because we would realize a theatrical performance with ballets. At this moment there is nothing definite and we will work it out when LEV will be released.

Fabrizio: I dream an animation film based on LEV.

To her fans, there is simply nothing on Earth like Italian music. So much so that Italian symphonic has its own dedicated genre section on ProgArchives.com. In your view, what is it about Italian progressive music that makes it so special?
Fabio: It’s hard to give an answer, also if I think that true talents are scattered all over in the world in an accidental way, thank you for the great esteem to Italian progressive.

Fabrizio: I’m not so sure to support the statement that Italian prog music is better than other countries prog music: once there was some great band, well-known in all the world, but most of all were lost into oblivion in Italy.

When will "Little Enchanted Void" be released and where can readers buy it?
Fabio: We hope for a good outcome in the first months of the next year, after the sessions of piano recording near London in November.

Fabrizio: I hope as soon as possible. The readers will be informed on www.mindflower.it where they will be able to buy it.

Any other thoughts, statements, or things on your mind (no pun) that you would like to share directly with the ProgArchives readers?
Fabio & Fabrizio: a sincere thank you with all my heart, it’s really important that there are friends listening to our music, in order that we don’t feel alone in this little enchanted void. Thanks to you our walk will be enlighted. And thanks to you Jim, your sensations comfort us and help us and they are very precious.

Fabio and Fabrizio, thank you so much for sharing time with us, and thanks to Mindflower for giving the world “Little Enchanted Void,” the album of the year!

[Jim Russell/Finnforest interview October 4, 2007]

More info on Mindflower: www.mindflower.it  (be sure to click Fotos to see the fairy sessions!) and also www.myspace.com/mindflowerprojects. You can hear some samples from the new work at the myspace site! 

Discography:

1. Fabio Antonelli Ensemble:

The Art of Dreams in a Little Bottle

2. Mindflower:

Purelake

Mindfloater

Little Enchanted Void (coming soon!)

More from the Mindflower myspace site:

And now Mindflower?  by Donato Zoppo

There is a strange creature that has been named "progressive rock" for years.

An entity that has taken his stand between different expressive areas and various art forms: it has created a meeting with rock and the European cultured tradition, jazz, folk music and extra musical areas as literature, theatre, graphic art, esoterism.

In the multitude of definitions that usually the critics palm off upon this kind of music, once upon a time I happened to meet one really unusual: "evolutive" rock. I liked it. To tell the truth I like it still, because it involves a mechanism of participation and involvement of the listener, that evolves himself – I mean that he deepens, elaborates and matures – owing to this multiform and composite sound event.

But too often we omit another aspect: also the musician evolves. We think of the course of Peter Gabriel, from Genesis to his soloist masterpieces, we think of Peter Hammill compared to his Van der Graaf Generator, we think of Robert Wyatt in front of the Soft Machine.

The progressive composition is bold, enlightening, formative: it gives the author the possibility to widen his own expressive field, to open his mind, to develop his creative inspiration. In a word : it is evolutive.

Mindflower is a perfect example, the demonstration that time and studies – in addition to a natural bent – grant the prog musicians, often blamed by the critics that consider them marmoreal, pachydermic, unable to free themselves from their proposal. Surely this is not the case about the Piacenza boys, that are witness of a parabola started from the most canonical new progressive (as Marillion, of course) to get to a classic and contemporary mixture that does not refuse links with the rock and electronic music language.

And there is more than this, since this group makes itself spokesman of a spirit, of a creed, more than a musical project. There are occasions in which music is the sound track of magic, sudden, enchanted events. Mindflower knows them…

Fabio Antonelli supported the group Art And Illusion, a new progressive band of the 90s: after the album Monolithos (Mellow Records, 1993), Fabio apply himself to the creation of Mindflower with Fabrizio Defacqz and Alberto Callegari.

On 1995 they make themselves listen with the debut cd Purelake (Mellow Records), the first wedge of a mosaic in constant settlement. The excerpts spreads in ampler forms, among acoustic pastels after the manner of Anthony Phillips, minimalist meditations recalling Mike Oldfield, sweet new age and more concrete rock outburst.

Six years have elapsed, and the second cd improves and sublimes that formula: Mindfloater (Mellow records, 2001) is a little jewel in balance among art rock and unplugged, instrumental excursus and magnetic melodies, more concise and communicative.

It would be incorrect and reductive to consider Mindflower only a musical group. They always have called to my mind a wises' assembly, a coenoby of of enlightened men. Behind there is a way of thinking, a "reserved philosophy " that the boys does not completely conceal yet.

They use veils in order that the message might be understood by whom is really able to perceive it: behind the value that they want to watch over – "the true essence of the simple things" – a world made of melancholy and hopes, gladness and resignation, wisdom and childish ingenuousness hides itself. A constant search for purity, symbolized by the "pure lake": something far, virginal and elusive by the majority, but it is so near to make us astonished…

In this knowledge journey, the meetings with elves and fairies don't belong to a foregone and vulgar imaginary folk-prog, the hill and the paths are not showy elements: they are symbols of a forgotten dimension, more correctly parallel, revealed only to whom has new eyes to see it. Mysterious and enigmatic, made of whispers and code signals, locks to open with the keys that the band gives to the worthies, the music come out of naturalistic contemplations, metaphysical observations, theories like the one of the "point" and the parallel universes.

Between the two Mindflower works there is a passage work, or rather a turning point: it is the soloist work of Fabio Antonelli, having the evocative title The Art of Dream in a Little Bottle (Mellow Records, 1998). A pause from rock with a piece for group, chamber orchestra and choir: an ambitious opera for the young man from Piacenza, that arrives at a sort of watershed in his own career.

It is hard come again, because the cd reaches decisive peaks, amalgamating Renaissance memories and a transfigured conception of folk ballad, the most gentlemanly melodies and the coloured pop-rock pulsions. A gentle treatise of light and serene contemporary music, expressing the author tension towards these cathartic worlds that can break off with the untenable postmodern dullness.

The essence of the "pure lake" is here: a place-non place that could bring out the reality differences, attacked and annihilated by the flattening, conforming, zering contemporaneity.

2007: a renewed group of Mindflower starts out again from this soloist cd. A rush work, of emotional sharing but also a chisel work, a careful labor limae opera, for the long-awaited Little Enchanted Void. It's the concept to which the boys give soul and form is typical of Mindflower experience and for the first time includes the presence of a character: the opera protagonist is a "creature of light" setting out on an elevation journey, from the original chaos to the purity, helped in this trip by the fairies' council.

The result is a precious, refined work, having a great visual impact and pictorial intensity, although a more minimal and intimist approach prevails in it. The different influences and "souls" of the band, with the guests that have taken part in the opera, lead the project to a level of further quality but also of a greater artistic awareness.

A full and void play, of bright and iridescent episodes and others more hazy and obscure, makes effective the development of the narrative plot; the minute approaches of classic and chamber music modules to typically art rock canons are a skilled device for immersing the listener in "little paths in a great universe" about which the cd mentions.

Between a comprehensible chamber rock and the usual acoustic brush strokes, with sophisticated arrangements and a faultless sound care, the album expresses complicated concepts with simpleness: the theory of the point, the lines, the spaces and the universe, the symbolism of the fairies and of the creatures of light.Although far from a Zappa's "total music", the Mindflower's formula is ample, connecting high and low sorts, without sacrificing the melodic, introspective, sometimes much twilight, now and then even ecstatic data.

Going against the stream compared to the artists directly aiming to the general public, with proposals rendered vulgar and poor (of ideas and credibility), Mindflower turns to whom is able to melt in their musical world.