Ataraxia

 

Ataraxia is not, in fact, a band easy to classify or to categorize. Their influences come, as they count us, basically of the spiritual thing and the old thing. The voices of our ancestros and of the nature they are translated to the music. It counts it to us this way Francesca Nicoli, the beautiful and talented singer of this Italian grouping, invited to be one of the most innovative of these times, paradoxically, basing their music on medieval sounds.

¿Could they be in few words like Ataraxia began?

Francesca Nicoli: Ataraxia is some artists from Italy who we explore and let us believe music, poetry and theater, and who decide to dedicate our lives completely to the art. In ATARAXIA we are traveling musicians, basically inspired for real and interior trips, toward places that still possess the nobility and the load of the centuries, ATARAXIA is the search of an interior balance.

Our history like band seems to be part of two very different times, two psychological dimensions and different attitudes as for the art and the life: before and after 1992. The ochentas seems very distant, a very distant period. We didn't have any goal that to get. Yes we had a force and determination in an absolutely deaf Italy, where the music underground was totally alibi. I remember that we were many people, 8, we play many concerts, under very bad, really incredible conditions. That it was the moment of fear and pain, some of us died, here we are with their wounds in our bodies. It was many years ago.

If 1988-1991 had been the years of death, 1992 were the year of the rebirth, a cycle of natural reencounter. From 1994 (the year of launching of our first CD "SIMPHONIA SINE NOMINE") the fight with the destination began, we were not more depressed people and deceived but combatant, and then year after year we become channels of the History and the Time, our Mother and Father, and now we are musicians traveling and warring atemporales walking through a passage with the purpose of finding the keys of the existence. Our influences were the wounds and the discoveries of our lives.

The classic versions of ("Il Fantasma Dell'Opera", "Carmina Burana"...), or the mythological ones ("La Malediction d'Ondine", "Lost Atlantis"), and the mystic histories ("Os Cavaleiros Do Templo") they are thematic habitual for Ataraxia. Which is the relationship among all these concepts?

Francesca: There is something very strong inside us that it is our culture. We come from the Celtic, Latin and Greek cultures, we were born and we grew through those cultures. We are kind of an it crosses between the lands and Oriental and Mediterranean perspectives and the Celtic lands of the north they gave us the encounters and the translations with citizens of the world that contribute the physical and spiritual particular signs of very different experiences. Our letters, concepts, thematic they are strongly inspired for all this, as much concient as inconcientement.

Which is their point of view as for the music? Could they explain to us their philosophy? They are in their work medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, sacred melodies and pagans. This fact should represent a challenge for you. How do they make it? How is their creative process?

Francesca: We are traveling through a passage, and this passage has its origins in very distant times, we possess and we are made of those times and we are bringing near those centuries to the future through the music. Our purpose is to protect all that the past has given us in the sense of to remember who were, we are and we will be. We are the voice of all the many voices that you/they have gotten lost in the centuries. Old spirits are still speaking. The music reminds it to us day after day. Our creative process is kind of an attitude (medianic), a gift inconciente. The creation is the way to express the human being divine part. In the old ritual Dionisiacs, the musicians were possessed by the God of the Nature who spoke through them. We are channels inconcientes that can vibrate expressing, translating the energy that there is around to our. We know that our influences and creative process also come from our roots, the studies that we continue (historical, classic, literary, anthropological), the way in which we grew and the way in which the nature has decided to use us to express its language.

Francesca, ¿what things in common there are among Ataraxia and Monumentum, your previous band?

Francesca: Monumentum was not my previous band, I was simply part of a recording session (only one afternoon) to record the voices, it had never rehearsed with them, I never met them to all. It was a good experience, but he doesn't have anything to do with ATARAXIA.

¿Do they know some other band with their same aesthetic and musical concepts?

Francesca: I found kind of a ' encuentro' Earth with some French bands inspired by the History. Then, only some coincidences with bands and soloists, minimum similarities; they are usually in common many differences and some basic questions.

¿How do they work with Lorenzo Busi's choreographies? ¿What things does it contribute Ataraxia?

Francesca: A concert is kind of a theatrical drama. Our performances are based on many expression forms like the music, the texts, images and theatrical acts and of dance. Lorenzo takes charge of these last aspects and he gives us a great support for the music, like it happened in last times, when these performances were more related. A live show is based on the concept of a CD, when the music is born we begin to elaborate the suits with Lorenzo, I also have very special ritual clothes and we conform kind of a kaleidoscope of colors and acts. Now our performances are divided in two parts, the first one based on the Medieval times and the second in a liquid circular dimension of the Atlantis.

You play and they record shows made in medieval places as churches, castles, palaces, this grants them a different atmosphere in the scenario. ¿How other things rescue of this type of experiences?

Francesca: We experience and we feel that the best concert is always given acting in an old place, where the stones and architectural structures offer us an enormous inspiration and the earth flows copiously. The magic of these experiences is the great energy exchange between us and the audience, together we break the dimensions of the time and the space to explore the primary Kingdom.

¿Could they be some impressions about each one of their disks?

Francesca: "Simphonia Sine Nomine" CD: I visited the cemetery today, anxious to see the statues, faces without expression and without name, so distant, evasive, loaded with abstract silences. The statues observed me more than what I observed them. I was me who was hiding, they were never there, it was me the only blind man of the other side. A symphony of classic music, with victorious, martial pieces, cut orchestral, Renaissance and Baroque memories, gentile, delicate melodies, tocata and she escapes.

"Ad Perpetuam Rei Memoriam". The thematic one refers to the states of the mind and the heart, gathered in the pages of a voluminous book, "Prophetia" the epilogue of a bitter tragedy in a succession Kafkian of questions without answer in a test inquisitoria of our times. The slow march of a humanity that he/she tries to be known supporting the load of their own existence. Finally the rebirth and the refundación of the harmony in the flowing circle of the Nature where all expression and sound wins a metaphysical value.

"La Malédiction d'Ondine" tried about all the women deferred by the history, wrapped by the waves, crawled by the course of the rivers, absorbed by the dark overflow of the lakes, the echo of the ups and downs of so many feminine souls repeats an infinite quantity of times, we listen that song, we made more than a song of it and we are repeating those tones like the echo of an echo for you, we capture the laments of so many sirens that fed sporadically with its own past. This is our song for all those souls made of pain, it fights, loss and abandonment.

"The Moon sang on the April Chair/ Red deep dirges of a November Moon" CD is divided in two parts, one dedicated to the spring and the childhood and the other one to the Autumn and the death. "Once she was dancing in a cliff, dressed of white with a crown of white irises in my head, it was not very big, maybe of ten or eleven years, the target and the blue they were my colors, the wide sea and those walls, a little far away the fireflies and the sirens, the aroma of the spring and the white and old pleasure of the childhood, while the clementinas and the lemons even stay in the memories of my childhood. The moon gave me its song while it occupied its seat of April........

The time has passed, the life has been drained, the Autumn is what I am, a red funeral song under a moon of November, please, you call they write the hieroglyphics of the instinct of the pleasure in my skin and deep deep in the lattice of my heart, it is cold, it is November. The words have dried my language, the submerged remains of the shipwreck are the only instants that I maintain, while the heart palpitates..."

"Il Fantasma dell' Opera" CD it tried on the monster that possesses the brilliant idea, that that guides you toward the sublime creation. The Ghost is only in many artistic forms and especially in the most occult: the music. Erik, ghost of the Opera is a labyrinth of double senses, tunnels, corridors, doors that open other doors, mirrors that hide expensive that take masks. Their world is based on the fiction, it plots charms, infantile fantasies, he/she cannot receive love without acting, to hide its face. He becomes this way the voice of a mobile violin, the pursuer's fury, the devote lover, the infinite pain, the burning suspect. He died with or without mask, that doesn't care, he is the man without face that he/she returns to the earth. Praised you are Erik, our Monster and Ghost of the Opera!

"Concerto N. 6" CD it is dedicated to the big Italian Baroque composers and the film of Corneau "Tous Les Matins du Monde". A tribute deeply sense to the Teachers of the Music of the past, a suffering search in the deep meaning of the music, an individual contribution to the era and the Baroque harmonies, a singular trip in the purity of the sound.

"Historiae" is a medieval sound book. It contains a village archaic ghost, a labyrinth of the soul whose center is a square, each narrow street it converges in the center and it bears the emotional weight of many lives that, arrivals to that square, lack sense, they are annihilated by the Time that erases the simple history to only remember events. Traveling on and under these roads, gathering fragments of histories, listening to the weak narration of the pilgrims or the foreigners builds our oral tradition, but instead of words notes, sounds, airs flowed. Now we are also pilgrims and narrators and we are arriving to their distant lands and villages to bring near them this "Historiae", he will become his and to their shift they will take it for those paved streets before arriving at the square.

"Odando" MAXI CD (inspired by Virginia Woolf's novel). Musical and lyrically it is very different to the music of the Half Age, it is something very surrealist, without moral, more related to the Gothic ballads although also to the music orchestral and lyrical, many different styles. We feel and we play with enormous freedom. Did He/She arrive, a man, a woman? ¿Did he have the brilliant blue of the steel in a silver lagoon, was she a slave traveling for the seas of the South, was he the groan of the wind, of the wind of the Southwest, a man, a woman?

"Os Cavaleiros do Templo" Live in video Portugal + CD is our live first recording. It is inspired by the history of the Gentlemen Portuguese Templarios and the architectural constructions that made. The video has a special introductory part recorded in a medieval atmosphere and a beautiful inspired sequence of images in the castles and cathedrals of Portugal. Portugal is a large chest of secrets. Our discreet and silent trip in an earth whose pleasure is the first one in the time, it has been kind of an initial voyage through the noble testimonies of the stone in some points of our road. It is a miracle to see those places full with nobility and sanctity conserving intact the power of still transmitting you the wisdom and the spiritual load of the centuries breathing. We return in music what we receive from the silence. For the order of the Gentlemen Portuguese Templarios who hide in stone symphonies the old mysteries of the wisdom and the balance. The voyage continues.

For many years we have gathered elements (pictures, trips to -mostly archaeological particular places - you notarize, collections of historical documents, etc.) to transfer to the music the events better known present in the old writings of all faith, country and philosophy, Lost Atlantis embodies the ancestral myth of the submarine earth, an inheritance of all us, without caring of where we came. The legends count us that approximately 50.000 years ago two important civilizations (that they showed big spiritual powers, but at the same time they possessed fascinating and dangerous technology) they combatted in a terrible war that took them to the disappearance. Before being devoured by the Oceans they left signs for the possible inhabitants of the earth so that they didn't repeat the same errors. These rakes are present in many old constructions as the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico and in some Mediterranean islands and of Oceanía. We begin our it travels to rediscover these ' señales'. Our primary inspirations have been the old writings and the trips. We imagine to the civilization Atlantis in decadence. The genetic code written in us is that of survival and the personal survival means the destruction of other alive beings and the world that it surrounds us. All this is very sad.

At least here in Argentina, their audience comes from the Progressive Rock as well as of the Heavy Metal. What do they say about it? Keeping in mind that their music is quite far from these goods.

Francesca: This curiosity has it listeners that come from the most varied parts in the world. Every time (quite followed, I should say it) that receive this question sincerely we don't know that to respond. We are very according, grateful and we feel that our music, somehow, it has broken the barriers among the goods, in fact they cannot put on ' here or allá', our free musical inspiration should be defined as kind of a ' spirit ancestral', the old stones and the water speak to each other, through the music we can perceive their silent voices. For this reason, I believe, a lot of different people are interested in our music.

How do they make to get the place that their music deserves? Is it difficult to reach their desires without support of the press?

Francesca: We don't really know which it is the place that our music deserves. We only know that we should continue, to cross the difficulties while we have something to express. We answer a great quantity of interviews and that means to dedicate weeks and months to this purpose, it is very exhaustive, but necessary to diffuse our project. Many bands decide to answer alone to the big magazines, we never behave this way and we have very good contacts with fanzines and small publications.

Would we like a lot to have Ataraxia in Argentina... do we Have some small chance?

Francesca: Up to now we don't have plans of going to their country, in all ways in the last times have played so in places that we never hope to visit, any thing it can happen in the future. Personally we would be vastly pleased of knowing Argentina.

Thank you for their time, the last words are all his.

"Decoding, hieroglyphic announcements

I feel amazed

in the opal sphere

I feel amazed

Where will you take me to die, sweet hands, where will you take me to die?"

 

Sergio Vilar/Fernando Amaya