Niki Gravino
as interviewed by DJ Gool for Bisoul Promotions
"I refuse to gig myself to death in a country as small as this. If I'll be going out live..... it'll be in the right venue at the right time with the right crowd and atmosphere to match."
Such the words of NIKI GRAVINO, composer/ artist/ producer whose live appearances to date surfaced with a from-out-of-nowhere CD launch, accompanied by interactive actors/dancers in a scenario akin to a gothic movie, a launch that proved for once on this island that a live show is not just a band playing live but a show. This visual impact in which NIKI excelled to leave many in awe was then followed by his participation in a talent showcase, out of which he managed to earn a foreign licensing record deal! Gosh, when artists like these come by theirs are not just performances, but strong statements within a musical scene. So needless to say, when NIKI speaks of “the right venue with the right crowd”, Bisoul Promotions is more than flattered at his upcoming appearance at GeNeTiKa!!!
Henceforth for you some words with the man who seems to have ended up on a mission he himself did not project….
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So Nik, we being of the morbid hybrid, we know more about your first act BIBLICAL INFAMY, a name not so avidly approached by the commercial media due to its blasphemous nature. So tell us, who and what were BIBLICAL INFAMY, how did it feel back then when even with this first act of yours you were already making statements within a musical subculture, and how does it feel after all these years to be playing once again with the same drummer within a less metal-edged but more electronic canvas?
N – First of all I’d like to thank you for your respect.
It is mutual. B.I. was my first ever experience in a band, and the first
time I was at the lead of anything, albeit unofficially. Commercial media
at the time was exactly that against which we defined ourselves, and that says
a lot about who we were. At the time we were simply kids in love with
music, not only because – to abuse a cliché – we had something to identify with
but also because we secretly desired to be perceived by people as we perceived
our idols i.e. we secretly dreamt to be gods. And there was no better
way to do it at the time than to pick up a fight with God Himself (grins).
B.I. was David ‘Cejca’, today the tec
hnically
impressive bass player of an equally impressive band, Beheaded; Neville Gafa,
whom I met lately (I can’t get used to the shock I get when I see radical changes
in people), James Schiberras on vocals (with whom I’m working on the artwork
of my upcoming album) and Keith Gauci. Keith, apart from being a person
I admire a lot particularly in terms of musical taste is also my drummer in
my present project. We have shared a dream for very long. It’s about
fucking time we got down to it. Then there are Alan Calleja on bass and
Franco Tartaglia on guitars. I am proud to have these musicians play with
me. About the statements bit, I am glad my music is making such an impact
even on our island. However I feel that I am past making statements.
He who builds his career on making statements will have to keep making statements
to keep it going, even when they are the last thing he feels like doing.
I don’t want to rest the lifespan of my relevance upon the lifespan of my ability
to make statements, but upon my ability to write, arrange, produce and perform
an exceptional song. That, alongside the obvious quest for recognition,
is my one reason for living.
Surely that was an answer brought by the experience of time from the mouth of NIKI GRAVINO today. I am curious to learn how you would have replied to the same question 10 years ago….
N – There is a lot of injustice in the world, and
we’re going to rip your head off, and I wanna beat Kirk Hammet in my
notes-per-second count, and I hate God and I hate my parents, and I’m
cool ‘cos my friends do dope. And I need a new distortion box. (I used
‘and’ too much before I got down to learning how to speak proper
English.)
But back to GRAVINO now!!! For a while you seemed to have hibernated, hence I wonder what was the Niki in the mirror up to during this time besides re-modelling his hairstyle to another Gary Numan?
N – Well I was always into something. If it wasn’t
B.I. I was into God, Theology, Philosophy and/or getting laid. After I
left Covenant I delved deeply into Christianity, and that is a far cry
from the Maltese underground music scene. Thus it could be taken as
hibernation. But I must say I have learnt a great deal from a great
deal of people, be they writers, priests, occultists, band-mates, or the
people whom I love and respect. SkyN was a great training-ground for
me. They are very talented and demanding musicians and I played loads
of gigs and experimented with a dozen styles with them. I needed SkyN
to break away from being a Heavy Metal guitarist (no disrespect to Metal
guitarists, they thought me most of what I know musically) into becoming
a musician. I’m still on the way though. I love Gary Numan but I can’t
say I modeled my hair on him … he he. Plus, the eighties as my main
form of influence seem restrictive now. I am a very greedy person. I
want to be sure I drawing from as many influences as I can muster. Then
I got into the world of studio recording and production, following a
long and rewarding infatuation with Trent Reznor’s genius. I’m over it
now, thank fuck. The guy was ruining my life. However the studio bit
stuck, and at this point in time the studio is as important as my voice,
the guitar or the drum-set. It is one of the main templates fashioning
my creative endeavour.
At this point as we sit in Niki’s own FOREFACE STUDIOS for some sips of port wine, I ask -- why FOREFACE? What’s in the name?
N – As I said I am a reader – unfortunately, time does not permit me to be one in practice nowadays – and philosophy is my most sinful indulgence. Just before my gross infatuation with Reznor I had an infatuation of a different kind with Michel Foucault, the French post-structuralist who died in 1984 for the love of boys (AIDS). The guy saved me from God, and eventually I had to save myself from him. He too got to a point where the overriding influence he had on my life was turning me into something I never wanted to become. In a nutshell, one of his basic philosophical strategies was to pull the carpet from under our culture’s feet, effectively using the pen to mar our safely closeted ideas with fundamental uncertainties. One of the ideas that he (and others of his same mindset) sought to ‘abuse’ was our idea of the ‘beneath’, the ‘before’, the ‘origin’… i.e. depth. Surfaces became one of his favourite playthings, and mine. Aesthetics is, essentially, the practice of organising surfaces, without the absolute necessity of meanings lying behind texts, music or other works of art. Surfaces are the meaning of art. However that meaning does not lie as unchangeable datum in the work itself. Rather, meaning is continuously created through a myriad of conflicting, colluding or simply ignorant energies and bodies, meeting the work of art by chance, or by necessity, who knows? Foreface is in fact a term I coined to give a name to that which happens when meaning is created through this meeting. It is a face, so it doesn’t lie beneath, before or at the origins of the surface. Rather, it lies at the fore of the surface, of the face of things. That is FOREFACE for you. It is about giving works of art a face we can fathom.
I am also informed - well you actually read parts of it at a Bisoul art night - that NIKI GRAVINO is up to writing a short novel besides his musical adventures. So what is up with Keith (your character in the story) nowadays, and can you reveal more about this side of yours many might not know of?
N – Writing would be the thing I would do for a living if
I had a parallel existence. But time is our tragedy as dying bodies.
Actually I
wrote that short story without finishing it off. After it I got into the
doing for another one, this time a fully fledged novel. However I never
got beyond the creation of basic characters and a couple of fundamental scenes,
sub-plots and basic research into the occult, crystals, deep-vein thrombosis
and musical aesthetics. The novel you’re asking me about is called ‘Walk’
and Keith is the main character along with some other important ones.
To cut a short story shorter, Keith is a character who embodies the fear of
death and the rude desire to die in one troubled mind. ‘Walk’ is a novel
about death and desire, about love and the implosion of selves into an intricate
otherness, remorse and the numb suffering of wasted lives, writing and being
written upon. But it is also a novel about redemption, albeit a sinister
and metaphysically violent form of it. Not much else I can say, since
I still hope to get some works published some day. Thanks for the question
though. I suddenly feel interesting again (chuckles).
And while at it, I note that other press has not failed to observe there are 2 Niki Gravinos, maybe 3, or at times even 4. But what is this enigma after all? Aren’t we all a collage of different experiences moulded in varied moods? How do you see yourself and why all these surprising reactions to your ambivolence?
N – And you’re asking me?! I am a body, a node of a frenzy of energies, language-games, experiences (as you would put it), continuously reinterpreted – and to that effect, changed – just like everybody else. There are, however, bodies that for some reason or another push toward homogeneity, and others towards heterogeneity. I have lived a big chunk of my life preferring (as if I could have chosen) the latter. And it has been put to use artistically. Lately I have been exploring the virtues of homogeneity, and it too has something to give. To say that there are many Niki Gravino’s would be just short of pretentious from my side. I’m more comfortable saying that Niki Gravino does not exist independently from the gaze of the ‘other’ (who could also be myself). I am no authority when it comes to speaking about myself. Honest. I avoid knowing myself when I can. Knowledge of the self is the beginning of wisdom, if wisdom is another word for quicksand.
And maybe to prove them slightly right, what are you up to nowadays besides music & script-writing? Or what could we suddenly expect from the career-driven Mr Niki Gravino?
N – I am trying to impose some order on my life. All I want to do right now is write music. Anything else apart from a basic social life and an acceptable love-life (I am one gifted with a patient girl for a partner) is extra and a potential disturbance. Boring eh! (laughs). This is bad press (laughs again).
So
what about the term “designer art-rock” when all the press is
more to hint at the term electronica each time they address you? Please delve
a bit into this tag you gave your current musical direction!
N – Designer Art-Rock is a term an A&R scout and I came
up with after serious thought whilst contacting some record companies.
It sure does the curiosity-job-bit! However there’s a lot to it, at least
for me. Many people are baffled by the set-up of my band. What exactly
are you? A solo artist or a band? I believe that having options from which
to choose is the death of the possibility of any freedom. And I like freedom,
at least that which I can afford. Once you have options, you cannot choose
what is not in your plate. So I decided to get rid of options. I’ll
take a piece of that, and that… and that one too please. Thanks. Where
is it sir? Well, you look for it! Niki Gravino is a solo artist in continuous
communication with the musical soul of each of his members. I have never
feared change and letting my band change me as a musician is an option (oops!)
I am slowly but surely realising. In that respect and much more, Niki
Gravino is a band in the full sense. The point is vision. Having one at
least. And that’s where the Designer Art-Rock name comes in. I see
myself in the line of artists with a certain artistic weight. No, not
everyone is an artist. And there are bad, mediocre, acceptable, good,
and exceptional artists… even though one is always mired in subjectivity… if
the subject exists at all. We all know why Tori Amos, Prince, Reznor,
Peter Gabriel, Peter Murphy and the like are who they are today for music fans
and artists alike: gods. My music is a quest for genius and I will not
rest before I achieve it. And it is essentially rock’n’roll. At
one remove from the rock’n’roll jamming-band paradigm, however, my music is
not only written, arranged and produced. It is designed, like drugs are
designed, like clothes and skyscrapers are. This ‘designing’ serves the purpose,
not only of blowing my ego disproportionately, but primarily to introduce the
kind of organic interrelations between the parts that make a song or texture
that one finds in composers like Mike Oldfield, Reznor or Vangelis. Everything,
every nuance of each instrument or sound, as far as I can perceive, is there
for a purpose. And the purpose is the song. On Vitamins and Eyecream this
is as far as it went. But I miss something in it. Life. The kind
of life an electronic band like Zoot Woman have, just to take a pick.
And that’s were I recognised that a band is needed not just to perform live,
but also to influence me through my interiorisation of my own interpretation
of the members of my band and their interpretat
ion
of my work. So it is Rock’n’Roll after all. It is a painstaking
process, but we all have the distinct impression that this phoney form of democracy
is working.
Further sips of port wine and some set-up improvisos later at the aforementioned Foreface Studios, my ears are gently soothed to Like Feathers from NIKI’s debut CD-single. A couple of songs later and I am left to enquire that now that the time is right, what does NIKI GRAVINO as a band have in mind to deliver the BISOUL crowd (the right crowd) to make for an even better than right atmosphere at GENETIKA!
N - Basically this gig is going to be to the point and intense. Intensity is all I care about in a live performance. I don’t like long gigs. Only a few artists can afford long gigs without losing you. And I am not one yet. The closest one gets to perfection the more space is left for intensity if the attitude is in place. And we work on attitude! As I am always too eager to stress; we don’t play just anywhere. Genetika is an opportunity to gain new listeners and to introduce those who are already in the net to the new directions we are taking. We may even piss some people off. But that’s the idea ain’t it?! (chuckles) We are still working on new material, and whatever we manage to block will feature in the gig. The rest, people will have to ‘come and see’ as Jesus would put it.