Chris DeLine

Perhaps it’s a combination of variables that has left Thee Piatcions‘ sounding like a refreshing detour from the exhausted stereotypes that typically define shoegaze: “Wall of sound!”; “Reverb!”; “Distortion!”; “Etheral vocals!”; you get the picture. Hailing from a small town in Northern Italy (Domodossola), the band has remained below the surface for some years now, reshaping their psych and garage influences into their own sound. While it’s not as though each of those previous clichés can’t be heard within the group’s music, what’s ultimately so attractive about the band’s sound isn’t something which is so easily definable. Artrocker has introduced the band with an understandable “Nu gaze” label before settling on a vague (and hilarious!) sentiment, classifying Thee Piatcions’ sound as similar to “artyfacts from the first psychedelic era, kinda like the Sonics after dipping their cocks in a beehive.” While not only leaving one hell of a mental image, the quote also brings to light a balance which is expressed through the group’s music. Take for instance the band’s recent single, “Time.” While it apparently wasn’t even supposed to be released, the song is ultimately one of the finer examples of the glossy refinement that the band brings to the genre. In this installment in the Influenza series, the band recalls the song’s timeline, following it through the original recording process to its final product; adding how it has become a transitional track for them—one that bridges the old and the new.

Actually, “Time” shouldn’t have been released. It was just supposed to be a demo for us, somehow an experiment for us us to check what we had become and where this could lead us. We weren’t that rough garage band anymore and we needed something to prove that change.

But the recording session went so well that the first time Monica (our manager) heard the songs, she suddenly decided to release it as an EP based on “Time” itself. And we were excited too, ’cause it wasn’t so bad after all… But we wanted a different view on the song, and Monica suggested James Aparicio (of Disc Error label) as sound engineer, to get a different mix. He also worked with Spiritualized, so he knew perfectly our idea of sound. He did few cuts and so the single version was born.

It has been a long year, finally we had a brand new rehearsal room, OUR rehearsal room (!), with all our stuff ready to be explored, letting us to focus on the main purpose: looking for our sound! It’s pretty hard making something new nowadays, especially in our kind of music, but you can always try to find your peculiar sound, that little thing you’re proud of…

Frankie fell in love with a lot of vintage fuzz pedals, and Dave too, who finally got a Space Echo (and trust me, it’s not just a “vintage” fever. When you touch one of these machines, you can feel how they’re alive! Very inspiring…). And a Sherman filterbank just became S.K.A.I.O’s new best friend. A totally weird way of raping an organ sound!

We used to have a lot of jams, testing our new stuff and “Time” came out in this way. Don’t forget about our continuous fascination for Indian ragas and you get our little anthem. Definitely, “Time” means a lot to us: it’s the borderline between our musical past and what we are now but it’s also our way of clearing the shadow line, becoming adult, each one with his own direction and purpose that you won’t regret.

[This post was first published by Culture Bully.]