From the Archive: Interview with IN/ELEKTRA, Silvia Cignoli and Valentina Guidugli (November 2019)
Hi Silvia, hello Valentina welcome on the blog Neuguitars, let's start from the beginning: how did you meet?
Hi Andrea, first of all thank you very much for this invitation, it's a pleasure to talk about our work. We met on the web through common friendships and we started to exchange ideas, music ... it was a period of mutual knowledge and we let the ideas settle for a while. Then the occasion of a live together in Milan, for a concerts' season organized by my friend Massimo Giuntoli and the ideas took a more concrete path, we started to really confront ourselves, to mix ideas, to experiment, improvise and compose together in a very long sound brainstorming.
You have met despite being opposites, classical and Conservatory for Silvia, pop and rock for Valentina. What was the common ground on which you met yourself?
The will to interact and experiment, to put no limits on the fluctuations of the musical language and to take anything for granted. Being the one the interlocutor of the other has led to many revolutions in our musical life and we have created and fed the land in which IN / ELEKTRA has been able to grow. All this initially manifested itself with the need to create a sound, a timbre that represented us and that one tried to pursue in the other's imagination. Of course, improvisation has helped to bring out our peculiarities.
How long did it take to create your debut "Shimmering Behavior"?
Some tracks of the album are in our repertoire from a long time, however they have presented innumerable reworkings both from the formal and timbral point of view (for example "Aurora II" and "Through Scenes"). Other tracks on the album instead (such as "The electrical spirit described to the magnetic body" or "This weird glow underneath your door") were even born in the studio. However from the recordings to the final master it took about a couple of years, a slalom between all our side activities and the will to be convinced of the proposed work.
Why the choice of the Industrial Coast as a label for the release?
The label was interested into Silvia's music months ago, giving the availability for the realization of a project on cassette support, so they were very happy to welcome IN/ELEKTRA and we were glad to be part of a truly transversal Label that hosts excellent artists.
Why is it a format that is now obsolete like the cassette? You forced me to take out my vintage Sony Walkman ...
It's a support that fascinated us for various reasons, represents an era, our passion for a vintage aesthetic, a continuous exchange between hi and low fi. Furthermore, Industrial Coast is exclusively a cassette label.
What instrumentation do you play? Silvia, the last time we met you were very undecided about which electric guitar to choose....
For the bass Valentina mainly uses the 4-string fretless bass with D-tuner (a Lakland), which is more flexible and follows better the needs of timbre with the use of pedals. In iher pedal board there are fuzz, distortion, ambient effects and different octavers, each one “blended” according to the needs, as well as the ebow that we both use.
Silvia uses a Music Man 25th Anniversary, with a "virgin" sound suitable for processing but which show a crystalline and soft sound too. She uses partly digital effects(such as the Line 6 multi-effect Pod Hd 500, the Electro Harmonics Superego and the Octaver Multipler, the Tc Electronics Triple Delay) and partly “handmade” analogue, thanks to the privileged collaboration with Andrea Tremolada (Tac Electronics). Thanks to Tremolada she has reproductions with custom modifications of pedals such as Fuzz Fat Factory, Reverberation Machine, Chasm Reverb, Parallel Universe, Echo Bender…. In the last times she prefers to play "in line", directly in the system, but she is nevertheless satisfied with her Fender Blues Junior amp.
Your next projects? What are you working on?
As IN / ELEKTRA we are working on the promotion of the album and its live presentation, as well as a video clip. We hope to be able to give more details soon!
