pic for interview with Zene

Tales From The Distro (EP.7): interview with Zëne

For the seventh episode of Tales From The Distro we had an interview with Zëne, a band from Veneto with whom we released ‘Bold and Slow’ on CD

What is ‘Tales From The Distro’? Basically we talk briefly about the release in question, then we give the ‘word’ to the band involved in the record with an interview, and finally we attach any material there is about this release. The reason is simple, we wanted to support the bands and at the same time talk about records that we helped to release without being self-referential, but simply presenting them and giving the bands a voice.

Here are the past episodes (Only in Italian):

THE ALBUM

Zëne have been friends for years, Beja is a panda-driver like us! We’ve known each other for ages, because we come from Pordenone (not far from them, between Padua and Vicenza) and they have played in our area, because we have often seen each other at other gigs, because we have various friends in common, but in the end, when they asked us if we were ready to throw ourselves into a co-production, we said yes without even thinking about it. It’s easy musically to liken the quartet to ‘Motorhead with a Venetian accent’, but the truth is that although the influences are clear, what comes out is damned personal, punk, rotten to the right point, just enough metal and rock n roll to make you shake your head and realise that these are people who can play stuff that has pull and is anything but simple and banal. We love them and this digipak CD is a must have! You’ll find out the concept behind it in the course of the interview, for now we’ll just give you some technical info: 

there are 9 songs, the record was recorded, mixed and mastered at Maldetesta Records Studio, the artwork – wonderful – is by Therewold Artworks, the graphics are by Michele Pantano and the labels involved are us, the Kollettivo Pioggia and Calimocho autoproduzioni.

Interview with Zene:

Radio Punk: Hi guys and welcome to our ‘zine! Tell us a bit about yourselves: where, how and when was this project born? Were you in any other bands before?

Zëne: Hi Radio Punk and thanks for giving us space in your legendary ‘zine!

The band was born by chance in April 2016 after a chat at the bar (and where else!?). There was no real idea behind it or even a reference sound. At the first rehearsals we played In Controluce by Wretched and Who’s next by Inepsy just to break the ice. We all came from different bands (Iktus, Deathrain, Plague), but we had known each other for years anyway. In fact, there had been more than one occasion when we had played together in the same band or in gigs with other bands. The turning point was a riff that Debo had dreamt of hearing as a spectator at a squat concert: it was the riff from Ninetyfive, the first song on the first record! From there it was as if a path had been marked out and the search began for that sound that ended up characterising us (a dreamlike sound, but very solid!).

Radio Punk: Like good punks we are about to break one of the few rules we have given ourselves, (quote stolen from Up zine) namely that of never asking the meaning of the name. So banal question: why Zëne?

Zëne: Actually, Zene was not the first name, although it had to be! Yes, it sounds convoluted, but it is the result of a series of quid pro quo! The first name we came out with on a flyer was Last Man Standing, a tribute to Steven Bradbury, his Olympic masterpiece and our passion for trashy TV and silly videos on youtube (people falling off their mopeds uber alles!). Before Kali, our logo was a dragon borrowed from a bag of pellets on sale in some discount store (we have proof, eh!). The whole thing was a choice between the two names anyway, but we don’t really remember how things turned out! In any case, at our second concert, the Rotten Cat Gang Fest at the cs Arcadia in Schio, no less than Biba (Biba!) shows up all excited about the Last Man Standing concert, which we discover is a band from Trento. LMS then remains the title of one of our songs while we retire to Efrem’s house to decide what to do. During a lunch characterised by innumerable selections of local grappa shots, names such as Rekoba (the most likely to be mentioned right up to the end), Fudo, Black Grapes (black grapes..) and other things that our memory preferred to suppress were brought up. But in the end, as it had to be, that first name was fished out, the fastest, the most impactful, the most representative: ZËNE. In some parts of the lower Vicenza area ZËNE means armpit. There are four of us. Kali has four ZËNE.

Radio Punk: Between the umlaut and the sound, your love for Motorhead is evident, so much so that we also liken you to them but with a Veneto accent. Besides these legends, what are your favourite listenings? And what is your musical guilty pleasure? 

Zëne: Motorhead is a reference band for us and you can hear it in the sound.

What we also have in common, however, is 80s Italian hardcore, from Kina to Wretched, via Impact, Rappresaglia and Bloody Riot, NWOBHM (Tank, Judas Priest), English punk (Damned, Cock sparrer), Uk82 (GBH, English Dogs). But also American hardcore (Circle Jerks, Poison Idea), early thrash metal (Metallica, Exodus, Testament) through to the proto-punk of the Stooges and MC5.

We have never hidden our passion for bands like Kiss, Litfiba, Beatles, Nomadi, Doors, Cream, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Pitura Freska, but the list would be long.

Radio Punk: What is the concept behind your album Bold and Slow? Would you like to tell us a bit about the album’s themes and the choice of artwork?

Zëne: We will answer with a self-quotation: ‘Bold and slow is a record about the passing of time and life. Bold, bold, but not pretentious. We do not intend to teach anyone anything, only to tell a story. So it can happen to be in the clouds, on the top of a mountain and realise that you have been chasing a spectre for a lifetime while the world continued on its course, leaving out the essentials.

And so one looks at the city from above at night and wonders what all those existences are chasing, what moves them, whether there is a path or whether one is driven by the mere fact of being alive and having to get by no matter what happens. And the fleeting glance of a roe deer running away in the cold of the fog is a counterpoint to a cigarette smoked in the immensity of the desert, an archetype of the greatness of creation, fear of emptiness and the choice of asceticism to fill it with meaning. It is not vain hermeticism, nor an exercise in style, but an attempt to seek poetry and beauty in this life that despite everything we have chosen for ourselves.” The album is therefore a summa of positive and negative experiences, an account of life and our personal way of understanding and narrating it. The cover instead is the work of the great and irreproachable Alicia (I didn’t know she also did theatre!), aka Therewolf Artworks. In fact, the cover inspired the album’s title: Bold and Slow is a paraphrase of Axis: Bold as love by Jimi Hendrix! Bold because it’s bold for our sound, Slow because, honestly, it took us forever to complete it with the covid in the middle. Watch them and you’ll understand!

Radio Punk: You come from various parts of Veneto, tell us a bit about the local scene (places, collectives, bands, record shops, distros, etc.). Has it changed since you started touring?

Zëne: You know, the world changes faster than people and you often find yourself in places you no longer recognise. We grew up at the evenings at the former Capannone Sociale, the No Dal Molin garrison, the old Gramigna, the ae Rose concerts, the Caos in Brenta, the e20 and the Mesa, the Country Star (‘daea Vecia’ for the connoisseurs), Sabotage, Lynx club, Tacu Tacu, Transilvania and many other places that no longer exist or have changed in nature. In 2003, Beja and Debo began a new journey with their first band, Raiot (a demo can still be downloaded from punk4free!), while Efrem was already playing in the mythological Mades (we recommend listening to their latest album ‘Nessuna speranza’ from 2008). The constellation of bands was as varied as the group of punks and skinheads who met up at weekends between scrounging trains and the first car pools (in Vicenza, the meeting place was Stefano Urru’s JoyRecords).

As bands we remember Discordia, Brandelli hc (perhaps the first real hc band seen by some of us), CreesyVegins, Highskull, Freni a Mano (later Testuggine with the hairiest bassist in the world aka Toni Iommi), Psycho Negatives (later Linea di Confine), Le bambine barbute di donna Concetta, CEDV, Tennentz Colombo, Green Moon Sparks, Sposa in alto mare, Dressed farts, ixGotxi, Carlito, Minkions, Armenta, Assalto, Children of Technology but many, many more (it would be a good list and we apologise to those we have not included! ). As distros we should absolutely mention Gusto Rana production (and Gusto Rana ‘zine by the good Sica) and Scaglie di Rumore, while AdaLab, Deposito 95 and Elemento di disturbo were essential places in the self-production experience in Vicenza. There were also many fanzines such as Plaf’zine and Spastikat (both printed by Debo and Beja with the help of various friends between 2007 and 2011). There would be much to say, people to mention and surreal situations to recount, but maybe there will be other opportunities (or a Repubblica insert). Some places and situations, however, endure in other forms such as Rivolta and the evenings organised by the Trivel collective, the cs Bocciodromo di Vicenza and the historic Punky Reggae where the concerts are strictly on Sunday afternoons (ciao Pec and Dea). Mention must be made of Nicola Stradiotto’s new collective ‘Underground Mania’, which organises in Villa Albrizzi Marini and the new Padova HC (hello Landini). Greetings to the ever-active Matteo Guerra (Grindpromotion), Elisa and Sciacallo (Bug radioshow & self-productions), Mirketto (Here and Now records) and Mad Coyote because they are nice guys. When we started touring in the early 2000s we were constantly discovering the various realities around us and coming from the province we were always forced to grind kilometres by any means possible. It was a slower reality, without the internet, which was coming soon (the 56k! Hours to download a song to floppy! God thank the 30-second songs by Wretched). We went to concerts in bars, clubs, squats, Raiot played in a bowling alley for the elderly people of the village! It was all very rustic! In the beginning, we got to know about events by word of mouth and flyers, then everything (fortunately) became easier. The world has passed us by, but we are still here.

Radio Punk: We were among the co-producers but the bulk of the album was self-produced by you. How difficult is it to self-produce an album? Would you have any advice for a band that wants to release their work self-produced?

Zëne: Schei (money). “Ghe voe i schei pa nare a Gardaland’ used to say the wise Efrem (“you need money if you want to go to Gardaland”). The most difficult thing to deal with when producing an album, if you want a result that doesn’t sound like a burp in a cave, is always the financial part. Luckily, in our circuit you can always rely on labels like you at Radio Punk, Calimocho DIY and Kollettivo Pioggia, all co-producers of Bold and Slow (thank you!), who keep the vibrant underground scene alive and active. Remember, when you buy a CD, a vinyl, a shirt, a pin, you are funding a world that has no other source but solidarity! A piece of advice? Discuss with others, don’t be afraid to experiment, dare and above all don’t give up! At worst it will be YOUR burp in a cave.

Radio Punk: I think we have the right confidence by now… Who are Zëne outside the band? What do you do in life and what are your passions/hobbies besides music?

 Zëne: Well, what can I say, we dabble in extreme sports, underwater motocross and implosive excursions to the Titanic. Actually, we are very normal people who listen to a lot of music, watch movies, The Simpsons, Beavis&Butthead, The Simpsons, play music, watch The Simpsons, read, do the sports necessary to not die of rickets, and work just enough to swear and come home quite tired but with the desire to watch The Simpsons. We also have cats and dogs. We like The Simpsons.

Zëne. From the left to the right: Debo (guitar), Efrem (Drums), Beja (Vocals), Brus (bass)

Radio Punk: We often notice that bands struggle to find dates outside their territory. How do you go about finding dates? Is it difficult or have you found a network of people who have allowed you to get out of your area? Again, do you have any advice?

Zëne: It’s not easy to get out of your territory, especially if you come from the provinces.

Unfortunately, as anyone who plays music knows, there are situations that are very closed to newcomers, while others become cages from which it is difficult to get out according to a concept of exclusion and not inclusion; a defence of one’s own little garden dictated by fashions, by the inability and fear of renewal, and in which useful people are needed rather than friends (about the concept we want to sing in The Fall).

Sometimes it seems that followers and videos on Instagram count more than attitude and love of music to emerge, the ‘hype’ that can create a situation at the expense of its content. 

We managed to get out of our territory and out of Italy through a network of friendships created over the years, according to that concept we have made our own according to which punk is union and not competition, but also thanks to our great passion and energy that we have infused into Zene. The advice we can give is to play what you feel, not what people want to hear.

Radio Punk: We close by thanking you and asking you one last question. Punk is often associated with an old-school concept that used to translate into organising gigs by letters or word of mouth, printing self-published records with political prices, printing fanzines and doing radio or paper counter-information via leaflets. Over time, the way of communicating has evolved, almost entirely transforming this into streaming platforms, social networks for searching for dates, webzines and blogs, and in recent times even live twitches and podcasts. In light of this, how do you exploit the various online channels? Do you think there is any old-school medium that is still useful and current? Thank you again, bye!

Zëne: This question was broadly answered above. The world is now interconnected and, like everyone else, we too surf the mare magnum of the ether. Without wishing for rhetoric and romanticism, we do not think it was better to send letters or write to each other on messenger; any medium is good and progress is welcome if it is useful! As far as we are concerned, however, we really appreciated the radio passages that were made for Bold & Slow (Thanks to Mario Tio of Materiale Resistente, Iavan of Search and Destroy and Carlo of Frullatore on Radio Azione). Passing a song on a radio programme allows you to make the songs of your record known to a wider and more varied audience, at the microphones you can talk in more detail about your band and the meaning of the songs. This can still be an old school method you can use (on the other hand you are Radio Punk and not Tik Tok Punk)!

Kudos to the stoicism of the fanziners; may the toner god be with you!

Thanks again to you and to those who have read this far! Underarm kisses!

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