Interview withMMMF
MMMF is a relatively young project from Rome and just made their first output ‘In the Lab’ available to the public. We’d like to introduce you to this promising new project…
Nino (N): The band is born by our common will of taking a stab at a "different" and charming project. We wanted to try some new musical paths, notwithstanding we come from very different musical backgrounds. This project immediately put us on fire and if on one side we didn't give us a precise and defined identity, on the other side we let our ideas do the talking.
RoD: Your Biography says, you founded the project in December 2007, but when did you start making music and when did you decide to go public with your work?
Spreka (S): I started playing piano at the age of 9 and when I was 14 I started writing my very first songs. In the beginning I wrote simple musical lines since I was a fan of Beatles and all that pop-rock stuff. Then came hard-rock, heavy-metal and so on. I played in an Iron Maiden tribute band for a while then I was involved in a hard-rock band called Sine Verbis with some friends. Then I played also in a symphonic power metal band and in an alt-rock project. When I was 20 I realized I was too old for making music so I started writing for two musical webzines here in Italy, but these two guys gave me new life and energy and so here I am ready to spread MMMF's music all around the world.
N: We started making music from the very beginning. We wanted it so much that we have not lost any time. So when we had the idea of having some good material, we recorded it to see the reaction on it.
RoD: I’m a bit curious. What does the name MMMF stand for?
S: Musik Machen Macht Frei
N: Many Money Many Friends
Cesaro (C): Music Makes Men Friendly
RoD: You chose the name ‘In the Lab’ for your first release. Why?
C: Because it is a lab experiment. A completely empirical experiment, totally free. There's no musical science behind our projects, but only a great will of going forward...
S: As you have probably noticed listening to our EP, our music has not defined boundaries yet, you can listen to down-tempo tunes like ‘Sea of Sins’ and then you get punch-drunked by the techno bridge in ‘Screamhead’. So our music can be dubbed as a Lab where everyone is free to test its ideas, to share them with the others, to mix and combine without taking care of what people would think about them. We are pretty young and we have not decided yet what is our musical direction: we play, we compose... that's enough!
N: The title came thinking about what was our project about: an experiment. From here we get the title of the EP, and we try to present us as the owners of a real musical lab.
RoD: How are the reactions on the EP so far?
S: Quite positive. Yours was the very first review outside Italy. People seem to like our music, press so far has said that it's good but some says have to grow up, but this is obvious to us! What you get on ‘In the Lab’ is just a little glance on MMMF's first tracks. Someone says "we're in a hurry" and maybe that's right, but we strong believe in what we do, we wanted to spread our music outside our rooms and so we recorded this EP after getting requests from our myspace page. And by now we were right!
N: Quite Good! Someone says ‘In the Lab’ is not a homogeneous work, but it was our will to put in here different tracks with different moods, just to see what kind of music our listeners prefer.
C: Sincerely I would have never expected such a great response, I'm more than satisfied!
RoD: The song ‘The Cripple’ has a quite minimal arrangement with only a robotic sample and I was wondering where the inspiration for that track came from?
C: I've been having a lot of problems writing lyrics. ‘The Cripple’ made me understand it's not essential to put lyrics on a song to tell something. The Cripple is my ex-boss, the whole song deals with him, the rhythm that characterise the song represents his not linear walking and in the end you can hear the rage I got inside working for him. I'm really satisfied. Every time I listen to this song I think about him. This was the first time I get to describe a person only with music.
RoD: The last track on the EP is rather an ambient track and you can hear the waves crashing against the shores while listening to it. Why did you call the track ‘Sea of Sins’? Is there any specific thing you’re referring to with that title?
S: The song is about a boat sinking in the North Sea; at least this was my original idea! If you listen carefully, in the end of the track you can hear the "S.O.S." message in Morse code. The whole track describes this sinking: from the waves to the radio signals till the Morse code it is the snapshot of a tragedy. By making the title we thought "There's the S.O.S.", it deals with the sea so ‘Sea of...’ what?!? ‘Sea of Sins’. Here you are.
RoD: All your current tracks are instrumentals. Are you planning to integrate vocals in upcoming releases as well?
N: Probably we will, but the insert of vocals in a song will depend on the song itself. There could be some collaboration in that sense.
C: This project is satisfying me as it is now. I would integrate vocals only if I got the chance to work with high-class vocalists who love this kind of music. I won't put them only to have someone singing on our tracks...
RoD: Speaking of that; are you already working on new material?
N: Yes, we are always working on new tracks. There's some material already ready, something else in "work in progress". Obviously our priority now is to promote this EP, to promote ourselves and to get good responses. Time will tell...
C: Sure! Our Lab is working 24/7 because our minds cannot be hold in. We'd like to collaborate with other artists as well, to have different situations to work with. Our Lab is always open for every kind of experimentation.
S: While I'm answering this question I got a project for a new song opened on my pc, so as you can see we're always working. Just forgot what you've listened on ‘In the Lab’, some tracks will have the same flavour of a ‘Screamhead’ or of an ‘Escape’, but we have composed something different, something more dark-oriented. We will probably have also some 8-bit element in our new tracks, but we don't want to mix all our influences just to say "Hey, we're a complete band!" Now we're composing and next month Cesaro will be jailed in a secret place in the Apennines, mixing and mastering these new tracks, so in September we'll have the final works in our hands. Then we'll decide what to do with these dozen new tracks... maybe what I've said here will be denied and you'll get a completely different work... break-beat or techno... who knows?!?
RoD: Are there any plans for live shows in the near future?
N: We really care about the live dimension. We want it so hard to play live, we just need to find the right place and the right time to play live, this is the only problem now!
C: We hope to be able to do some gig in the next fall and to present a catchy setlist to our fans. We are working hard for playing our songs at their best without using some playback or some pre-recorded sequence. We want to play live every single note we've written.
S: We've been contacted by some booking agency but we haven't signed a deal yet. We're organizing some gig here in Rome, but also in the centre and southern Italy. By the way, if there's a booking agency or a promoter who wants us to play in Germany, in the Netherlands or somewhere else, just write on our myspace page and we'll talk about it! We'd like to come there and play for you.
RoD: Thank you for your time; do you have any final comments?
C: I just wanted to praise you for the review you wrote. I think there are so many ways of working, some of them are just nonchalant, others make us see a great care. You described exactly our project and we just have to say "thank you". Ciao!
S: I agree with Cesaro. It seems like you have read our minds writing that review. To all the readers of Reflections of Darkness, let me invite you on our myspace page (www.myspace.com/mmmfmusic). Add us, comment us, insult us, threaten us, love us. We'll be here listening to every one of you!
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