To inhabit the Fifth World is to transcend. Aural synergies ignite synapses, a slow burn supervenes as bodies are swayed towards movement, reality asks fantasy for a last dance well knowing that it might never end, tomorrow remains an enduring horizon. Artetetra a collective/tape label founded by two Italian gentlemen, Luigi and Matteo, in 2014 in Potenza Picena, exists at the center of this narrative. Working with the likes of Kuthi Jin, Rainbow Island, Kink Gong, Los Siquicos Litoralenos, Shit & Shine, Ak'chameland and German Army — these pillars of obscure sounds, constructed by distant echoes of a heavy bass and memories of orchestral dreamscapes, hold up the framework for the emotional transitions used to create an auditory landscape that transports us to paradise.
Yet, while the inclusion of palm trees seems imperative, paradise in Artetetra’s realm remains fluid, there is no cage only the winged and the chained. Notions of the exotic are still championed because they are redefined altogether as Artetetra’s globalized perspective becomes innate through empathetic exposure and soulful desire. Understanding sound as both a language of influence and a mirror that enhances and distorts, pressing play is an invitation to experience life differently. To take hold of their sonic hand is to submit, wading waist deep into waves that crash, burn and reveal. Coeval dives in with a chat with Luigi and Matteo.
1. First let's start off with the basics, can you guys talking about the founding of Artetetra in your small, hometown of Potenza Picena? How did you both meet and what innate sense of purpose did you feel in creating the label? Was it creating a home, filling a void etc.?
We met each other in high school in the golden age of almighty cover and played together since then. Gifted with an American military radar named after “Snoopy” watching the coast of former Yugoslavia and a supposed national primacy in the percentage of disabled people, Potenza Picena is a lonesome but nice town on the shore of the Adriatic sea in region Marche. We like to think about it as a mixture of Ciprì e Maresco imagery and Harmony Korine’s flicks, but maybe we do exaggerate.
After starting to work on our first experimental fascinations, we came in contact with the small but quite rooted and prolific community of musicians and artists from the area. The region has a baffling history of No wave and post-punk influences from the 80s which never got really huge on a national level but contributed to creating interest around music that was on the fringes. In particular after starting to rehearse with our project Babau in 2014 and joining the band Tetuan, we came in contact with the local community and began to deal with a totally new group of activities: mostly DIY productions and and everything around it.
In that same year, we found ourselves studying in different cities, so the label was the only activity we could take care of and contribute to while separate. It simply was a natural reaction to logistic constraints and a lot of free time.
2. The music you release and the artists you work with live in the realm of a redefined genre known as Quinto Mondo which straddles the intersection of the psychedelic while being firmly rooted in a very visceral, auditory language. It's more so music to be experienced actively than listened to passively. What do you want listeners to take away from their experience or be paying special attention to?
We see Quinto Mondo as a fun, radical approach to recover and expand on the idea of the exotic as entirely different world sketched by means of music. In this sense, palms and tribes are cool, but we wouldn’t preclude other possibilities to play with the idea of “the other” to create something new. In this sense, let’s talk about it as the music of the globalized world, where the exotic is everywhere and nowhere to be found and it’s thus fun to use it as an horizon for one’s sonic imagery. But is anyone’s right to interpret this tag in his own way.
That said, we love immersive imageries, personal languages but also inner contradiction. From this perspective we like to think that as much as looking into a wunderkammer, listening to our releases means experiencing a group of codified although very ambiguous and aleatory scenarios through music. Just listening to music is ok, but it’s more fun to think about the small universe the albums relate to.
3. Over the years there has been a steady resurgence in all things nostalgic, translating to mean the upswing of vinyl, vintage and something you guys champion, cassette tapes. They say all things from the past circle back but it's interesting because you seem to be using these elements from the past only to create new forms. In terms of creation and originality, is anything ever new anymore? Or just a reiteration of the past?
We like the cassette format mainly because of its intrinsic advantages: costs are reduced, especially for short runs and limited editions and it forces the listener to experience the album as a whole, discouraging him to fall in the SoundCloud-like waveform-skipping practice. We also really like the paste the magnetic tape gives to a lot of the music we produce. In this sense, we try to avoid the sense of nostalgia or “retromania”: it’s all just about trying to explore new possibilities in different and largely available formats, from the digital, to the CD and, of course, tapes.
Although we are huge supporters of the digital way of downloading and sharing music, we believe that physical releases are still able to circulate better and create more interest in the different communities.
4. You use the word "exotic" a lot to describe your music and I imagine that is synonymous with notions of paradise. What does paradise look like for you?
Expanding on the aforementioned interest in this field, paradise is a part of the imaginative universe we like, starting from the more orthodox and cheesy one of exotica, but we think we are also way off that. In this sense paradise could not only be the naive untouched lands imagined by generations of tourists but also more in general everything that is permeated with ideas of uncompromising bliss and relentless relax. Is the place you need to be, even if you’re just listening to stuff at home.
5. When working with the slew of artists that you do from Kuthi Jin, to Rainbow Island, to most recently with German Army, what is your collaborative process like? Where does empathy come in to play in terms of understanding and honoring another artist's creative ethos as the label releasing them?
We like collaboration a lot. We really enjoy elaborating together on any aspect of the release as much as possible so that we can align the very personal aspects of each project and album with our own vision and idea of the thing. It applies to everything from the artwork, to the promotion, to communication surrounding it. It gives us the opportunity to always work in a different way. For example, for the German Army release of “Animals remember human” we worked together with the american label Crash Symbols and Ben Zoller in a very interactive way in which we expanded outwards from our different takes on their music. The result was a dense mixture of influences and images that made the album what it is.
6. You've had a pretty wild ride after you were featured in Issue 400 of the Wire Magazine, having been booked at festivals like Club to Club. What's been the most surreal moment for you both as you continue to grow your label? How do you combat doubt?
The fact itself of receiving such attention in a very short time span along with the opportunity to not only come into contact with a lot of the people we were following and listening to, but getting to know them as well is still pretty surreal itself for us. To answer the second question, we don’t think it’s matter of doubt. We just try to keep on developing our aural argonautics in whichever direction they are going, we want to stay curious instead of forcing this notion of being “staying true to yourself.” There can be no doubt if you don’t really know what you are doing.
7. The tape series "Functional tools for a better house living" is very intriguing when we start of think of music as something functional instead of enhancing. Can you expand on this idea and the role of music as you see it in our quotidian? Do you always have music playing as if its a soundtrack to your lives? Music to me is never just "background" noise, it has an emotional influence, always. Is it democratizing to make music (an art form) practical?
“Functional Tools” came from the suggestions of mixing the creation of Muzak for daily activities’ enhancement with a tongue-in-cheek approach that wants to bring borderline tunes outside the safe zones of dedicated listening. It was also a way to publish music genres that we like, but we would not fit with the whole line we are keeping.
We have nothing against Muzak, or better its Cage-esque evolution in Muzak-Plus. Different kinds of music fill the aural spaces in different ways. Music can either be a background for activities, build an ambience and sometimes it’s at the foreground, and there’s no real “better” or “right” way to listen to it. The aim of the series, specifically, is to fill the space of all useless and repetitive daily actions with music that could resonate accordingly, creating an uncanny but quirky, day-to-day experience.
8. The artists you work with are from all over the world, do you have a shared ethos and if so, can you describe how that is nurtured and made to evolve? How is each relationship different with each artist you work with?
We’d say that as all the things we have seen, we build our ethos and practice along the artists we collaborate with through time. The label’s core is an ever growing patchwork resulting from the discovery of new artists and other personal approaches to the broad and shapeshifting field we operate in. Each release and project contributes in multiplying ideas of what our world is like and to whom we speak.
9. How do you approach sound and what purpose does it serve in our daily lives?
Sound, as many other things, is a language to communicate and an instrument to do things. To be more specific, it is the language we understand best and thus one of our primary tools to interact and understand the world around us. It has different functions and brings in different sets of values and contexts depending on the way it was produced and purpose it was conceived for, but it never forces you to enjoy it or have it represented it in one way or another. Sound is a pretty plastic material,, it is fluid.
What can be taken from the endless stack of dusty field recordings’ collections is that context and background are not something you absolutely need to “get” a specific kind of music. There is an eventual gateway for a deeper understanding that you travel through to consequently achieve a higher enjoyment of the music you’re listening. Everything else is absolutely secondary.
10. How important is community to you? There is a certain outsider status maintained seemingly in the obscure but is this desired as an identity?
We can understand the outsider feeling that our label may transmit to people, but Artetetra does not want to be music for outsiders made by outsiders. It’s music for everyone and we believe that while sometimes challenging, it should not be seen as made for a restricted group of privileged people that can get the vibe and delve in our often incomprehensible “internet slang”. The idea of a community is really important to us. It helps precisely in making those intimate fantasies a process of shared world building.
From this perspective, internet and its surreal “pile of stuff” has helped to define the very imaginary borders of the “fifth world” we inhabit; so we think it is as important as building a community outside of the screen, albeit a little more isolationist.
11. Having organized a variety of events, concerts, gallery nights etc. you've been able to create a physical space for Artetetra to come to life. Can you talk about what it means to provide and curate a space for people to interact with your world?
Since we started releasing music we always wanted and needed a personal space to operate in, much like a HQ for all our dirty deeds. Giardino Magnetico at Gallleriapiù in Bologna with Islands and Communion and now the series of events we are organizing at Standards in Milan are a few perfect examples of this. For us, curating a space and organizing concerts and performances is a natural progression of what we do as a label; which is to create a definite time and space for the music we like to exist, be supported and to be understood on a deeper, resounding level.
On the internet, a lot of the things we do may seem to have a bold, ironic attitude, not to be taken too seriously, as if they were a long series of concatenated over the top puns but this is quite intentional. For this reason, to go see it live means to discover and walk the line between trivial, fun reverie and genuine curiosity for new discoveries. We assure you it’s always a pretty thin to walk and often overlaps.