Do you know Luca? The colourful Italian musician from The Ultra Twist, Trio Banana, Trans Upper Egypt, Duodenum, Centauri, and RAWWAR? Who also is a visual artist who made clips for Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Country Teasers and a lot of others. And has collages too:

PALI: Hey Luca! Long time ago that I did an interview with you (in the Ultra Twist times). Since you’ve moved to Rome from Siena, The Ultra Twist split etc. Anyway where are you living and what do you do there?

LUCA: Hi, Bro’! After Rome I moved to Milano where I lived four years. There, I did new band with old friends who lived in Milano too. The name of the band is Centauri, we make weird country/folk/psychedelic non-sense stuff.

I tried to continue to play with bands in Rome: Trans Upper Egypt, Trio Banana and Duodenum, but it was too difficult, so I quit TUE, ‘cause I didn’t enjoy more. Trio Banana is on-standby, we never really quit but we can’t play together now. But Duodenum is a very hard band to play often.

Number 71 Monobanda, the man who plays with me, got many bands too, and he lives between Napoli and Rome. Very hard to meet each other in a year, but we are like brothers, so for us play is something more than make gigs and shows. Duodenum will never quit.

In Milano I have started my solo project Tab_ularasa 2-3 years ago. I did many records and tape and maybe too many gigs around Italy. That’s my main project now, and I’m working on a new record. It will be very experimental and different from records done before. Hope to finish soon and to put out it after summer.

Tab_ularasa make punk/folk for children and crazy people. I play alone only with guitar and sing very weird songs in Italian. In the end of 2016 I have gone back to my countryside in Tuscany and I will stay here this year.

PALI: You have got a new band RAWWAR after Trio Banana split.

LUCA: Like I said before, Trio Banana never really split and maybe we will play in the future, but not now. But Trio Banana’s drummer Gabriele Doctor Dead and I never stop to play. When I come back to Rome we play in a rehearsal room. At the start we didn’t want to make a new band to make gigs but only keep to play together, have fun, write new songs and make records.

PALI: You and Dr Dead from Trio Banana, but who is your second guitar player, please introduce him!

LUCA: After few practices we did 9 songs and a cover (Don’t Make Me Kill Again from Urinals) then we decided to make records. I spoke about that with Michele Zufux from Ferrara, one of my best old friend from Ultra Twist time. He was in a fucking great band called Larsen. They’re almost unknown, but for me Larsen is one of the best Italian bands ever. Now he plays in For Food and Dead Horses also from Ferrara, different style of music but really great stuff. We spoke in chat about that, I sent him our songs, he liked them so much that I asked to join us with his guitar to record. We were in Ferrara on a weekend last October. We never play together before, and we recorded three songs of the 1st RAWWAR tape. It was a magic day, we did everything live with only two microphones like a live gig, so we were lucky too.

Some week later Alessandro, a new friend from Teramo, did a very great master and we put out the tape on Bubca Records last March. We wanted to make a 7” but was not money, and maybe there would have been even no sense, ‘cause we don’t play so much live. We live far each other and even here in Italy the situation is quite sad for a band who play garage/punk… There is a kind of little “mafia” to book gigs, and obviously we’re not inside that stuff. The bigger festivals prefer to give a lot of money to American mythological dead bands from the 90s instead to make a cool garage/punk underground festival with new bands. They live in the past. Here in Italy the majority of “underground” people live in the past. This is not punk/rock for me. I always hope to discover, listen and see new bands. Otherwise I’m just so happy to make this tape, to play music with my friends and that’s all. If people will ask us to play it would be better, but if not, nessun problema, we will keep playing in some garages that we enjoy much than play in a shitty venue or festival.

PALI: Not long ago RAWWAR put out its debut tape on your own Bubca Records. Those three songs remind me something like Cheater Slicks between Country Teasers and a bit like early Demon’s Claws. It’s rawer and more direct and less psychedelic than TRIO BANANA was. What do you think?

LUCA: From the start Gabriele and I wanted to make something more weird and repetitive like the old blues/punk stuff. The bands that you mentioned are some of my favorites, but we have tried to find our way to play RAW the primordial blues like did Cheater Slicks, Country Teasers and Demon’s Claws. We like so much Can’s first album, Velvet Underground’s weird stuff, Gun Club. We love too Neu, Oneida’s first records and so many other stuff, but when you make music you have to try to find your own way.

PALI: Please talk about the process of recording. I think you like to do everything as basic as you can.

LUCA: Sure! We recorded in this way ‘cause we did not even time to make it in a different way. I didn’t recorded RAWWAR, Mauro from For Food & Dead Horses helped us and Michele did the rest. We used a cheap multitrack recorder with two mics and we set the level of sounds just before start. I have learned lo-fi tricks from Falconx, the guru who has made my theremin and recorded many garage records in the 80s. If you want warmer sounds and really feel the people’s energy who play then the best way to record everything live, even the voice too. Sure it’s more difficult, ‘cause you have to know and try where put the mics, how sounds moving at the place where you record, and mostly you have to be lucky because when you play at high volume you can generate shitty feedbacks and distortions. Here in Italy we said “La Fortuna aiuta gli audaci”, I think in English they say: “Fortune favours the bold”, and maybe there is a Hungarian version too. (Of course: „Bátraké a szerencse.”) This time we were very lucky… hope next time too.

PALI: And your copy technic is unique I think hahaha! Do you buy some shitty tapes on a flea market and copy your music on it? How do you do this?

LUCA: Almost from the start, Bubca Records make tapes using second hand/recycled tapes. Now vinyl seems new fashion. There are some shitty dynamics to make it but if you don’t book a Euro tour it does not make a sense at all to print it. Making tapes it’s a kind of new little fashion, but it seems like to live in the past. CD is dead, the new world goes in a different way. Maybe we should discover new way to pass underground music. The task of the avant-garde in art has always been be ahead, but now young people make new stuff and invent things from very young age for multinational factories. The few people who make true DIY garage/punk stuff are like dinosaurs. We are dinosaurs, we’re going to extinct soon. I don’t care about that, I’m keeping to make my stuff but I hate nerd punks who think that the old way to make records is the True & Sacred. They are the Worst! For me, make records with second hand tapes is a kind of ironic action, and I don’t want to pollute the world with new plastic too, the worlds is already polluted enough. I find tapes in some flea markets and when I duplicate stuff I do not delete the end of the original music, so if you don’t like RAWWAR you can listen Laura Pausini, Tiziano Ferro, Adriano Celentano or classic music. Cheers!

PALI: You do all of artwork as well. Do you have got own copy machine?

LUCA: Yeah, I make artwork, collage or draw for my records. If I make a record for other bands I always ask them about the artwork, if they do not want to make it, then I do it. Almost all old Bubca Records stuff is a B/W xerox copy, but we did some colour cover too. Our first coloured cover was made for the first Trio Banana EP “Baby Save My Soul”. If a collage or a draw is colored we keep it coloured. I don’t have own copy machine, I just go to a cheap copy shop. To get a copy machine and buy ink is more expensive.

PALI: You booked last year a mini tour for The Rebel. How was that? What kind of guy Ben Wallers? I think he is one of the weirdest guys nowadays in the R’n’R underground. Is it right?

LUCA: Make a tour with Ben was one of the best things done last years. Ben is not so weird as he seems, he’s very kind, smart and cool guy. Making music is the most important thing in his life, like for me, so we have become true friends. I hope to make new tour with him sooner or later.

PALI: Please talk about the last few Bubca Records release!

LUCA: We’re not so active now as we were before, but I’m trying to keep Bubca alive. Before RAWWAR, the last record was Pist Idiots, an amazing new young band from Australia. I love them!

PALI: What are you main active project now?

LUCA: Main project is my solo project Tab_ularasa, but I hope to play more often with RAWWAR, Centauri and Duodenum. I enjoy more playing in a band that alone.

PALI: Please recommend us few cool Italian bands what are active now and you really like!

LUCA: My favorite Italian band is For Food from Ferrara. I love them from the start, they play furious noisy post punk music. Great songs, great atmospheres. They are true friends. Their first record is a masterpiece.

PALI: Future plans with RAWWAR? Anyway it’s a cool name! So rad.

LUCA: The name of the band was an idea from Michel. I suggested The Hobos but that sucks. Gabriele got no idea about that. Michele told us RAWWAR and then we were thinking: “AMAZING!!”. You can say RAWWAR like the lion of Metro Goldwyn Mayer does before an old Hollywoodian movie: ROUUUAURRR!!!

PALI: What’s your favorite local liquor?

LUCA: My favorite local liquor is a kind of stuff that you drink here after eating a lot. It’s called Nocino. It’s a walnut liquor made by monks, but not easy to find real Nocino. The best I had was in Teramo countryside last week!

Thanx Pali, I hope to come back soon in Budapest to play.

When Luca played first time there with The Ultra Twist at RNR666 party

an island, close to the sea, full of sun and green

in a huge and chaotic, besides beautiful and unique city

BIG MOUNTAIN COUNTY is a relatively new but great psych garage rock band somewhere in Rome. They are blessed with ability to write hits, even in the manner of Butthole Surfers. Moreover the bassplayer Wolfman Bob is our old comrade. He played at rnr666 party in Budapest with three different bands: wild garage rock Ultra Twist, lo-fi punk Trio Banana, and of course Big Mountain County.

How you have become musicians?
As for many other musicians: listening to music at home, trying to play any instrument and finally being completely captured by the desire to play over and over.

Your hometowns are Catania, Bari, Pescara, Rome. There are long distances between these cities. How you have got together? You understand each other without problem, or there are difficulties because of the language differences?
We come from different and quite far towns, but there are no particular language differences. So no communication problems. Alessandro and Bruno have met each other in Catania, their common hometown. They met Bob in a music festival, where they were performing with their respective past bands, Bruno and Alessandro with “The Boliers” and Bob with “The Ultra Twist”. A few years later, they all moved to Rome, where Alessandro and Francesco met each as roommate. They began playing guitars and writing songs together and soon they decided to start a new band, involving Bruno as drummer and Bob as bass player. We believe that the difference between our origins is one of the keys of the band. Alessandro and Bruno come from Catania, a hot and spirited city, Bob comes from another lively and dynamic town, whereas Francesco comes from a quiet village close to Pescara. These differences reflect on our music styles. So yes, we have different languages, but just “musical languages”. However, this is not a problem, but an unbelievable resource, since playing and writing together is a continuous mutual exchange, which every time creates new songs, new sounds and new atmospheres. We definitely like to be different but to appear as a unity on the stage.

You spent a month together to produce a better sounding in a house on the base of Etna. Was the session successful? Could you use that under ground latent energy?
Definitely yes! We live in Rome, a huge and chaotic (besides beautiful and unique) city. Sometimes we need to escape from the rhythm of the city life in order to find new inspirations. Therefore, when we had to complete our first LP Breaking Sound, we decided to stay a month in a nice house on the base of the Etna, where we had more time and the right atmosphere to write new songs and find out new sounds. Those days were relaxing, inspiring and stimulant. That was the right place in the right moment.

In some songs (e.g. Brain Machine) I have discovered the strong influence of Butthole Surfers. Are there accidents, or are you also big fans of those funny guys?
We know Butthole Surfers and we like their music. Anyway, we do not know if they directly influenced some of our songs. As said before, we are four and we have various and very different musical influences.

Psychedelic music is very trendy nowadays, almost every second village has a psych fest. What do you think about this revival?
We like psychedelic music, we play psychedelic music, so we follow the trend… Psych music surely is not new, but we believe that many bands are proposing new different, modern and interesting interpretations. We think that this kind of music can be fully expressed just during live shows. Therefore, we promote the spread of psych fests and we hope every second village will have more than one psych fest. We are so sure about this that we are contributing to the organization of the first Rome Psych Fest, which will be held in next October.

As band what was your biggest show experience?
We had many unforgettable shows, but if we have to choose one, that is Sarajevo in 2013, during our first European tour. We were very far from home, not only because of physical distance, but also because of history and culture. However, we felt at home. People got really involved by our show and our music. The atmosphere was perfect, in poor words, unforgettable.

Where is Big Mountain County geographically?
As for songs, pictures, or poems, each can have its personal idea about the Big Mountain County. Therefore, we cannot say where it is. In our minds, it is probably on an island, close to the sea, full of sun and green lands. Do you know any place like this?

What are your plans for the future?
In this period, we are promoting out live CD Anachronicle, out for Area Pirata Records. In the same time, we are writing new songs to record our second studio LP, which will be more psych and experimental than “Breaking Sound”. Our idea is to record in autumn and release the album at the beginning of 2017. Meanwhile, in next October, we will share the release of a 12 inches split, out for Annibale Records with the Italian band “Lame”, a project of Stefano Isaia from Movie Star Junkies. It will contain two new tracks by Big Mountain County, one to dance and one to dream.

And for the past? What would you change in the history if you could?
To answer this question is not easy. Everything could be better, but worse also. We think that what is done is done. Fortunately, just music and songs remain. We prefer to learn from the past in order to make the future better.

pic: Gyerage. More BMC at RNR666 Party in Budapest pics