Somewhere I read that the group was born in 1990 from your association with Gino which kind of experiences did you have before and what about your musical training?
We both had experiences in rock groups even if we felt something was missing.The energy was good but we were looking for something else. Different sounds and inspirations. So Gino went to the School of Musical Paleography in Cremona , and I attended the improves course of jazz improvisation with Giorgio Gaslini and the school of Music therapy of Assisi and Milano. And so we changed our instruments from keyboards and guitar to oboe, french horn, percussion and......electronics.
Apart you two who is playing in the group at the moment? I noticed that some musicians like Gianpaolo Verga are playing with you since the beginning of the group.
The line-up depends a lot from the project. Gianpaolo actually has been with us with his violin in many projects for more than twenty years. During last years we are working with Enya Idda ( ritual actions, sensorial scores, setting of areas..) and Afra Crudo (ethnic singing and static dance) during our sleeping concerts. Concerning other projects we collaborate with Mariolina Zitta (nature music), Lorenzo Pierobon e Alberto Guccione (harmonic singing).
Your group was created in a period where many post-industrial groups had chosen an esoteric and ritualistic path do you feel part of that movement or do you think your evolution was not conditioned by their sound?
We are very attracted by the esoteric path, but we don't think to be part of that movement. It's simply a coincidence. By chance we read R. Guenon and by chance something happened….
Ah ah. This is an old story. Many years ago (a little after punk) we had the name “ I ti purgo” (I purge you) contracted in “Ittipurgo”. Then we added an “H” probably because we were unconsciously attracted by the mysterious Hittite civilization. Then , after the reading of “Enten Eller” the philosophical text of S. Kierkegaard, it became Enten Hitti. It had a good sound , without thinking a lot about. Still without a big research we had all. The connection between Nordic atmospheres and the South and the East of the world. The tension between aesthetics and ethics.....
I also read that you collaborated with Walter Maioli, founder and core of Aktuala and with Vincenzo Zitello you feel like being successors of groups like Aktuala, Nadma , Zeit or Futuro Antico?
I knew Walter Maioli at the school of music therapy then we met frequently in the caves of Toirano and at the Symposiums of Prehistoric and Tribal Art of Val Camonica. The line Art of Primitive Sounds had a wide suggestion on us and somehow, not intentionally, some things we made derive from suggestions generating from above mentioned groups.
You collaborated with musicians of different musical areas like Sigillum S , Alio Die, Franco Battiato, CSI, Officine Schwartz and Walter Maioli including a various ethnic musicians around the world . Who do you feel is closer to your approach?
Every name you mentioned represents one aspect of our music approach. We are close to the meditative atmospheres of drones and nature sounds as we are to a certain kind of electronic music or post-industrial sounds. But we are also close to the pleasure of melody. It's a complex of different elements that appear in different moments of our lives. Sometimes , just before turning off the lights, we generate songs half way between Nick Drake and Claudio Lolli. In other moments we bring out hypnotic tracks remembering Third Ear Band, Penguin or Aktuala and so on…Anyhow the mark of our music is a certain airiness (wideness), a solitary, desert and minimal atmosphere that you can find when we play electronic music, ethno-ambient or even in the two chord songs....
Is your implication in music part of a path of unlimited discovery or is music the element that generates your curiosity?
Yes certainly music is part of a wider path. We are attracted by theater, dance, literature, performance and every kind of creative form that could be a way of personal transformation. Off course music was one of the first passions. I think that between 15 and 20, a bizarre age, everyone finds his way to express his anguish and his dreams. Music was much a thing for us ......
Well I think that the public knows that our performances are always very articulated including a rigorous gestural and sensorial canovaccio beyond a sound canovaccio. So recorded material obviously reproduces only part of what we are doing. A DVD could reveal also the visual part but anyhow it would lose a very subtle part composed by smells,atmospheres,tactile sensations that cannot be reproduced technically.
Your research on traditional and electronic instruments is part of your range of curiosities, did this never push you to conceive and eventually build new instruments?
Sure. We built different litophones with sheets of serpentine stone found between the waste material of the quarries of Val Malenco. Or different kinds of rattles made with nails,glasses, snails,corks or rusted metals found on the beaches after winter coastal storms. But also bone flutes, trumpet shells or sounding pumpkins. In my cellar i still have a strange wind instrument made with the skull of a mule.........
What is the role of improvisation in your music?
Total! Most of our compositions start from improvisations. Then they are re-elaborated and fixed. Anyhow also when we play live we start from a canovaccio. So it's quite rare that we reproduce it exactly in the same way... I feel this as a limit… because something gets lost... Forever.
You consider yourself as musicians,composers or simply artists that use different expressive modalities ?
The second one.
Which is your preferred record and the one you like less among your discography?
I don't know… Nostalgically I say that “Giant clowns of the solar world” even if made in ‘96 still is absolutely actual and airy. On the contrary there are some records we would probably not do again . “Musica Humana” of 1999 ,that for coincidence will be re-released by Lizard in march 2016, seemed to be somehow dated. Listening to it today however I found it contains a lot of vitality, may be with some naivety, but full of life.....
Starting from 2000 your productions are less frequent , what is the reason behind it?
From 2000 to 2010 we were occupied in many activities. Theater , dance, trips, and some emotive turmoils…It has been useful it's like much material had deposited a sediment taking it's time to come out without anxiety… then in 2010 it re-appeared.
You produced your last CD financed through internet. How was the experience and will you repeat it in next future?
“Fino alla fine della notte” was partly produced through a campaign of fundraising, but the experience wasn't so interesting. People who took part were mostly friends and acquaintances. We would have needed a stronger communication/promotion from the portal where it was on. Then all this anxiety concerning the deadline! We had to reach the target within 30 days. No I don't think we will repeat it......
After “Fino alla fine della notte” which are your next projects?
As I told you the re-release of “Musica humana” record concerning our experience with Consorzio Produttori Indipendenti. Probably in 2017 “ A tutti gli uragani che ci passarono accanto”, the record which is closer to the song form we ever made, will also be re-released. During next month we will start to work our new record “ Via lattea”. It will be a record upon the research of archaic “feminine”. With many guests. But it's to early to speak about it now… Live we will perform “Labyrinthos” a sound ritual of disorientation and rebirth. More a psycho-magic action following Jodorowsky than a performance.
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