Interview: JAMBOX - Shoegaze uit Italie

Interviews:English
  Erik Vandamme    2 januari 2017

Grasduinende doorheen het jaar 2016 botsen we op Jambox . Dit is een Italiaanse Shoegaze Band die in mei 2016 een EP op de markt brachten: Spleen. Wij waren vooral onder de indruk van de technisch hoogstaande manier van muziek maken, de heel bijzonder vocalen en de experimentele inbreng binnen het aanbod. Echter bleven we met ook wat vragen zitten, dus deden we maar een fijn interview met deze sympathieke Italianen:


Hi, can you tell something more about yourself? Who are you, where u from, how did it all started? Because our readers like to know you guys better

Hi everybody, we are three boys from Turin. We went to school together and started playing Nirvana covers for fun back in 2012. At the same time we discovered new types of sounds spacing from psychedelic to dream pop. In 2014 we decided to focus on our shoegaze side and we recorded our first single “Bleached Colours” in 2015. One year later we released our first EP “Spleen”.

I was greatly impressed by the high-tech way the songs on your EP , you are really only started in 2012? It feels like you are already eternal music together!

Nice to hear that! To be honest it’s a really low-budget record. We recorded it in only four days. Choosing the sound effects was surely the hardest part of the process. Our aim was to produce an accurate and ‘dirt’ mix capable of broadcasting an out-and-out sonorous impact; we hope to have accomplished that.

 

How it all started? Why shoegaze?

We’ve always been searching for something that represented us better and we found that in shoegaze, which is a perfect mix of our noise and dreamy sides. I'd say our journey began the moment when we plugged together a fuzz, a reverb and a delay

I hear other music influences in Your music: Grunge to Noise? How did you guys start get this experimental?

As we said before, we’ve always been in love with bands like Nirvana and other grunge/noise stuff such as Dinosaur Jr. At the same time we remained loyal to the shoezage classics such as mbv, ride and Jesus and Mary Chain. I suppose we started out like any other shoegaze band: playing the simple rhythms crossing our heads and filtering them through pedals and various effects. This is in fact the method we employ to compose a song, which we build around something plain and test in improvised jam sessions in order to add new experimental layers.

I wonder, are the lyrics on the EP telling a story?

The majority of our lyrics don’t tell any story, they are only a sort of collage made by flashback, photos, “moment of beings”, like a reflection of something passed. While others like Waikiki 513 describe some of our moments together such as our vacation in Tuscany, swimming in the sea and living in a dream, and in Copenhagen,walking into Christiania and riding bikes through the night.

In the vocals I hear something of Jim Morrison, the same dreamy way of singing, Do you agree?

There may be some influences like the Doors and Joy Division. Our vocals are almost spoken, very dreamy and melanchonic. We see the vocal part of our music just like another instrument that blends in with the rest of the sounds. It doesn’t steal the spot from the music, it just sorta floats there.

What band or artist are you guys biggest influences?

Of course there’s Nirvana in the first place, then followed by some relatively new bands like Splashh, FIDLAR and DIIV

Is there any so called shoegaze scene in Italy?

Right now we think it’s clear that shoegaze is living its “rebirth phase” all around the globe. Here in Italy there is a sort of wave that’s been growing in the last years called italogaze. There are lots of bands like Stella diana, Rev rev rev and Clustersun that are still living and tripping like they’re still in the ‘90s. We love to think we belong to a community made of bands and people whose help and feedback is essential for our work.

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Is it difficult to make money with your music in you country?

all of our stuff is self-produced and all the money we made from previous releases as been used just to record more music. Infact our main goal is to keep creating better music and not to just make money. Of course it sure isn’t easy to gain interest and a solid base of followers with this particular genre, especally here in italy

Are you guys going on tour to? Doing some Festivals? Maybe in Belgium?

We are quite busy right now, but we  are still playing gigs in our local city. In these days we are also writing some new songs and creating new sounds playing with different amps and using new pedals. We are thus trying to add tones compatible with our overall sound

The first double-single “Bleached Colours” came out last year in June, but - after a long vacation and a summer of experiments - we changed direction with our music and went through some grunge and noise influence.- I read this on you facebook page. In the first place how where the reactions on that double single?

Considering it was our first single ever we received a lot of good reviews from all around the blogosphere. It was doubtlessly great to recieve, as the new kids on the block, such an overwhelming response, though we learnt to appreciate every single message, radio-broadcast, comment: it's gratifying and pushes our work further. We also discovered a huge shoegaze community online that is constantly active and that helped us spreading our music.

Why and in what way did you ''changed direction'' in your music?

As we said before we started from the essentials that still drive our sound today and after we opened ourselves to new music landscapes painted by phasers and trippy voices.  Changing direction represents our new idea of the sound: something really strong that wants to keep a melanchonic part and in the end describes our feelings and our relationship with reality.as you can hear we feel alone into this big full black mass

Next to soundcloud, are there any physical records, like cd or maybe Vinyl? And where or how can people buy them?

Other than soundcloud and bandcamp we released our music on cd that you can only buy at our gigs. We don’t send them in other countries yet, sorry  We produced our first CD with our very own hands: printed, burned, packed 200 times.

Did this EP already open any doors to labels? Concert or festival promoters?

Not yet.

Are there any future plans, like bringing out a full album?

Right now we are writing new songs that we hope will end up in a full length album coming in 2017

What are you real ambitions? World domination?

The important thing to us is to create music and nothing more. Sadly our  bold will is not enough to gain wide spread success and recognition in the light of clear obstacles of economical nature.

What is your final opinion about streaming sites like spotify, something I always ask at artists and labels

We thing that these sort of “Social networks for music” are usefull tools only for discovering new artists and listening all the discographies: the real problem concernes the way artists are paid and the distribuction through most  of these platforms of low quality music. We’d rather support an artist by buying their physical merch.

Finally, is there something important you want to tell to our readers?

Be sure to Keep in touch

We sure will! Thanks for this nice Interview. Goodluck in 2017!