The album with which Edda is back on record is called Illusion, who spoke to Fanpage about the work on the songs, the voice and spirituality.
Edda (ph Ray Banhoff)
With each new Edda album there is a slight thrill that runs up the spine of the world we once called indie. Every time Stefano Rampoldi says that he could be the last one, that he could no longer find the alchemy of the birth of a piece or bear the effort of creating a complete piece. Then fortunately it is not like that and so, since his official return as a soloist, after having disappeared from the radar for years, we have reached six albums, including the latest Illusion (Al-Kemi Records / Ala Bianca) which sees the production of Gianni Maroccolo , ex Litfiba, CSI, Marlene Kuntz, among others. And after some funk influences that characterized the previous album, Edda returns to pop, with melodies that sometimes clash with her voice, sometimes crooked, certainly also characterizing for her way of singing. And although he doesn’t love this voice, this time he liked it, his anti-caption texts fit well, pictures of sensations, nothing didactic (and it so happens that it comes out at the same time as that of the Verdenas, with whom he shares this characteristic), in which a series of topos of the singer-songwriter (who hates being called that, but it serves to make us understand) return, from the alternation between male and female to the strong spiritual sense that sometimes contrasts with the frankness of sex, sung in its various forms.
“Now I’m into pop music, that’s the direction” you told me a few years ago, but this time you decline it in a different way. Are you always in that direction?
Considering the record I made, they still seem like my songs to me, they are songs within the Italian tradition. Today I listened to the Verdena record, well I’m not there, I still write songs, but every now and then I manage to make some good ones and I hope that there are some on this record too.
Surely you have in common with the Verdenas the non-didactic use of the lyrics, this not necessarily wanting to tell a linear story…
Exactly, I’ve never written a text starting from a meaning, you know like “Now I’m going to write something and tell this story”. When I have to write a text I’m simply looking for words that come out of my mind from somewhere at that moment, then I find the meaning later because maybe – and I don’t want to bother with trivial psychology – it’s a matter of the subconscious, but I’ve always done it this way and I’ve always had a good time.
“The horoscope recommends killing the family” this has something psychoanalytical, in fact.
That sentence is a bit provocative, also because as a great scholar of Chi l’ha visto I have realised, over the last 40 years, that many things are produced by the family which in any case remains a building block of society, within the which more often than not there are problems, but it remains a provocative phrase. Some families would be better off if they didn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean that, in general, families don’t work.
While I was listening to L’ignorance I was thinking about the work you did on the voice, and I read that it’s something you worked on particularly…
Still wondering how I sang on this record. I’m very satisfied with it even though I’ve never been a fan of my voice, which has always been criticized a lot, but on this record I really sang in a trance, perhaps also because I was very responsible in the studio. I also found a different way of singing, even here it wasn’t decided but it came like this but I can honestly tell you that I like the way I sang.
Does the work done with Gianni Maroccolo also have something to do with it?
Certainly, having made the record with him, his presence influenced me also due to the situation that arose in that week which was one of hard work and great responsibility. We wanted to bring home a record where he saw me as a guitarist and this created even more problems, but I trusted him and in the end it went well.
“Above all, the question I ask you is intriguing: who are you?”, this is Miss Good Evening. It seems to me one of the fundamental questions not only here but throughout your discography.
Yes, I’m someone who also asks himself spiritual, philosophical questions, I’m like that, a bit profane and a bit looking to be a better person. That’s one of the most important questions one should ask, but I’m a singer and these things come out to me mainly because I have to write lyrics.
But, as you said before, it could be the subconscious…
I don’t want to do the intellectual one but maybe that’s the case, these are questions I’ve been asking myself since I was twenty, it’s part of my journey as a person.
“Amor de mi vida, give me a way out, Tell me you understand me”. Is there a need to be understood?
Waiting for the approval and approval of others makes you start off in the wrong way, you must, first of all, understand who you are. Society wants to mold you and indulge in its values which, however, do not correspond to yours and a big problem arises from there. But I advise others and myself to listen to themselves and try to accept themselves: also because who tells you that others are better than you or have better answers? You have to listen to the other and then draw your own judgment.
In the passage from Trema to Carlo Magno we understand the breadth of the sounds of the album: how did your vision meet that of Maroccolo?
The production of the sounds, the sonorous dress is really Gianni’s idea, I really didn’t know how he could have made a record in which I am the main guitarist, also because I have a very poor guitar vocabulary. But he had listened to auditions and knew very well how I would play. Among other things, I didn’t even manage to do what I had done on the auditions, once in the studio I managed to be even less performing than usual, but thank god it worked. However, the idea of sound comes from his ability to use and see things, I didn’t even have an idea of what would come out, sometimes I listened to the pieces after weeks. Only with “Trema” only one night has passed since working on my guitar and I was amazed, I asked myself if I had played that thing and he looked at me as if to say: “Yes, you played it but I put some mine” but this was the game, he knew very well what my limits were, perhaps too many.
“If I breathe you I don’t exist” comes from “If you don’t arrive I don’t exist” from “L’appointment” by Ornella Vanoni?
Yes, it’s a tribute to the great Ornella.
There are several, right?
Yes, perhaps, certainly there is the chocolate ice cream in Pupo and Malgioglio.
You have always moved a lot in a religious and sexual semantic field. I find it less than the first but there is still a strong fluid connotation, something that belongs to you since before it became strictly topical.
My sexual fluidity is what then leads me to spirit. One thing they taught me when I was 20, in the catechism of the Are Krishnas, is that “You are not this body and if you are not this body, you are neither man nor woman” and from there a great confusion arose that I brought to my mind over the years. Then I wasn’t serious, I didn’t cultivate this knowledge, I let myself be carried away by this idiocy of mine, but it’s been 10 years now that I’ve taken this path back into my own hands. For example, in a song I speak in the masculine and immediately after in the feminine (it happens, for example, in Charlemagne and in Brown, ed), someone may think that I have made a mistake, but no, it is really like that. It’s like a dress you put on, you are not that dress but whoever wears it.
Are you interested in your position within the recording world or are you happy with the songs once you’ve made them?
This is enough for me, I’m basic, I try to write a song and I don’t even know how I do it. When it comes to me it feels like I’ve climbed Everest, that’s enough for me and it goes on. Only, boh, maybe in the future I won’t be able to write songs anymore and since I want to stay attached to the music I spent whole days playing jazz guitar. I don’t like jazz, but it’s to increase my guitar skills.
You say this thing about songs often. After Semper Biot you said you weren’t sure there would be another album and after Fru Fru you told me you could stop if you didn’t get the songs anymore.
I can’t tell you how the songs come out. At one point, Maroccolo wrote to me that I should have written two more songs for him, I couldn’t say no to him because I owed him a lot, I felt bad… but at that moment I wrote this song, “La croce viva”, which for what is my writing is a masterpiece, a song like this rarely comes to me, maybe I had listened to a song by Üstmamò… In short, writing songs is something that IDK, I can’t explain to you, but wanting to stay in music if I won’t be able to write songs I will commit myself to play guitar on my own.