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Film director Carlo Cagnasso pays homage to our song “How We Got Into The Mess”

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BLOW UP MAGAZINE, SEPT 21

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Luton: "It's Eden. Try it. Come in. See what happens” (November 2021 - English version of the Polish Interview by Aleksandra Wojcińska

"Have you ever had a journey that you will remember for the rest of your life? You were touched by the dazzling white of snow, the color of sea water, the colors of the sky at sunset or sunrise, the green of the leaves, or maybe something else? The Luton duo, who played in Gdańsk during the 9th edition of the New Music Days, have many remarkable memories of their stay in our country and their trip to Poland. Roberto and Attilio recently released their second album together, "Eden". On this occasion, I asked them a few questions concerning both the origin and content of this material, as well as the much broader musical-related perspective of perception of art in the contemporary world.

MUAM: We met at the New Music Days festival in 2019, where you promoted your debut album. How do you remember that concert? I remember that the audience listened to you very carefully, in almost total silence, admiring the sounds flowing from the stage.

Roberto P. Siguera : Yes, it's true, it's been a while. Playing live as Luton is always a challenge for us, there can always be a panic attack, so we have to be very focused on what we are doing and those around us. The nibble always requires the utmost vigilance. So we are very happy that we have succeeded. I can admit without hesitation that we both remember the New Music Days perfectly. The audience really welcomed our performance. On the other hand, it was a great opportunity to test some new ideas that would later be found on our new album.

Attilio Novellino : I remember this concert as one of the best I have ever played. Everything turned out perfect. Place, audience, atmosphere. Magical balance. The organizers were very nice and helpful, the audience was impressed by our music and there was a very strong exchange of emotions. It all looked like a postmodern religious ritual. I often think back to this performance, I have many fond memories of that evening. It was something very valuable and at the same time elusive.

NEW MUSIC DAYS - LUTON

MUAM: What made the greatest impression on you during your visit to Poland in a positive or negative sense?

Roberto: I'm not sure this will answer your question, but let me tell you a story. I have traveled quite extensively around the world for the past five years or so, but the trip to Poland was something out of this world in terms of the oddity of the whole situation. Many strange things have already happened to me in my life. So I was stuck on a plane in Manchester for NINE HOURS due to a giant snowstorm the day before the concert. Moreover, Attilio's luggage was missing, which contained about 60% of our concert equipment, so we had to buy most of the stuff we needed in the store 5-6 hours before the sound check. There were a few more strange situations. But you know what? If you are surrounded by good people and have good energy, you can really feel that everything will be fine at the end of the day. So what can I say? We liked it very much in Poland and we hope to come back here someday.

Attilio : I also went on a daring journey - I remember the weather was terrible. I had a transfer in the Netherlands and flight attendants informed me that I was going to miss my flight due to a snowstorm. Despite this, I ran as hard as I could, throwing myself onto the plane at the last moment. I had time. I was very shaky. When I finally got to Poland, I immediately felt peace, relief and joy. It was like being pampered by a grandma you never met but felt a close relationship with. I will never forget the color of snow. I hope to be able to come back to Poland soon. I feel that this country has a secret that I would like to discover.

MUAM: Have you played a lot of concerts since then? How do you perceive your fans and the audience who appeared on them?

Roberto : Actually, we haven't played since that gig in Poland, because we went back to the studio right after that - not our home ones, but London Chapel. When I entered this magical place, I knew that I had to record something there. So we focused on throwing out ideas and choosing what's good from them, playing it, pre-producing the sketches, and a bit frantically preparing the initial arrangements in our heads. I wanted to try a lot of things that we hadn't done before. And you know, development always takes time, and sometimes it seems like forever to get something done. We don't think about our audience when recording and composing, but of course we are very excited that our listeners are enjoying our music.

Attilio: I've been playing since 2010 and using my experience to verify the impact our creativity has on fans. I often have direct contact with my listeners, I look them straight in the eye. This gives me a lot of strength and energy to continue working and has become an essential element in creating music. I love meeting artists, friends, discovering new places and communities. From a certain point, when I stopped communicating with my concert audience, I began to feel much less of this good energy. I had the impression that playing had become an impersonal act. After this concert in Gdańsk, I probably played only three more concerts. In Turin, I shared the stage with Lubomir Melnyk, an artist whom I respect and sincerely admire. Since covid psychosis broke out and devoured the world, I haven't played live. I have no idea if I will play on stage again

MUAM: You came back with another fantastic album. "Eden" is a double album that lasts almost ninety minutes, almost like prog rock albums. What made you decide to record such a long album in the era of streaming services and times when most people reach for short EPs or singles?

Roberto : Thanks. Of course, at the very beginning it was not our intention to record such an album. You know, it always comes from intuition and how the individual factors will stack up, you never quite know what will happen before the final stage of creation is reached. Sometimes you also make a mistake and have to go back to your roots. It's a bit of an abstract process that is hard to put into words, but you know what I mean. I believe "Eden" is such a total immersion experience. It's a bit like stepping into a maze of dreams and dreams that aren't just blissful. At times it is walking on a live wire.

There are times when you shouldn't listen to it, and there are times when you have to enter this world and become a part of it. When you reach for this album you have to accept the fact that you will need a few approaches to feel what it is all about, but we believe this album is worth the effort. It's Eden. Give it a try. Come in. See what happens. Don't try to explain it. It is obvious now that we often do not care what people choose the most. It's not our business, we humbly present our work to the world, that's all we can do :)

Attilio : Thank you very much. From my point of view, the release of a double album is more than a thoughtful move, a statement of faith. Our musical ideas, which we have shared with listeners in recent years, did not meet the expectations of those who produce albums, and perhaps even people who listen to a certain type of music. It didn't seem like a good reason to change our view of work. After all, our music emphasizes our functioning in the world. If the expression of honesty and the personal character of art were to replace calculation and matching, this choice would likely have a number of side effects.

If we only picked ten tracks, it would be easier to get the attention of some good label or gather plays on digital platforms. Even so, every time we envisioned restrictive cuts on the material, we felt our creation would be mutilated in an unacceptable way. I trust that famous personalities of the international music scene who listened to our album did it with attention. The praise of one of them in particular deprived us of sleep for a few nights. At the same time, it became clear to us that "Eden" does not have the features that would allow it to appear on any music market or fit into any marketing strategy. In this way, it finally became clear that the specter of our time is the constant dynamics and changeability in the modern world, not only in the music industry.

MUAM: I am impressed with the recording process for this album, which you described in the press materials. You've been playing for eight hours a day in total darkness in the middle of the night, eating 1 meal a day without completely sleeping - it is really impressive. You can clearly hear that this process had a significant impact on the sound - this album sounds best late at night, when all the sounds of everyday life fade away ... How did this recording process affect your everyday life? Roberto: Yes, listening to this album late at night is a great choice. I also recommend full darkness, although it all depends on the needs. You can also listen to selected fragments, arrange them freely and match them together like a puzzle. It's great fun. The recording process itself helped to put it all in order. Overall, I believe that something really interesting always happens when you do something in complete darkness or in situations / conditions that you impose on yourself. Sleep deprivation and fasting can also be really enlightening. I recommend you try it.

Attilio: In the process of creating the album described by Roberto, complex and in some respects absurd, various phases followed one another, which by sorting everything allowed to achieve a result far exceeding our expectations. By starting these raw and magical sessions in London, we will later be able to create 21 tracks that will make up the album (a few of them did not fit on it). It was not only the act of composing, but also many other activities related to writing, I would say drawing (or painting?), Arranging and re-arranging music. Following an almost masochistic ritual and successive cycles in which birth and death follow rebirth, we built each fragment on the corpse of the previous version. It's as if each piece has shared scraps of its own body, to enable the new being to live by remembering and drawing from the blood what has already been. This process was not only very ambitious, it also turned out to be very risky. At some point, these particles started to be delivered directly by us. I will never forget the feeling of drowning I felt from exhausting the work I put into completing the work, and I realized that there were still another 12-13 parts left and time was running out. These musical fragments were like hungry animals in a cage. Sometimes it felt like it would never end. which was bothering me with exhaustion from the work I put into completing the work, and I realized that there were another 12-13 parts left and time was running out. These musical fragments were like hungry animals in a cage. Sometimes it felt like it would never end. which was bothering me with exhaustion from the work I put into completing the work, and I realized that there were another 12-13 parts left and time was running out. These musical fragments were like hungry animals in a cage. Sometimes it felt like it would never end.

It was not easy to keep our concentration at a high level and the rhythm of work in the long period in which these events took place that undermined (maybe made us lose?) The meaning of our existence. Before Eden was released, I felt that I would have been unable to resist losing almost everything that was most dear to me in the world and made its sense. However, I understood that at the same time lagging behind the outcome could be the only way of salvation. The events (pandemic) confirmed that my fears were well-founded. Completing the recording of this double album became a milestone for me.

MUAM: And what happened after London? Did you work on details in three countries - Italy, Jordan and Scotland? Please tell me about it. Did you invite guests to cooperate?

Roberto : We always collect various sketches, ideas, demos that are a way out of our comfort zone. There is a need to change the methodology of work and the space around us in order to find new, exciting inspirations and symbiosis, but it is really good to keep common sense in this. Getting stuck in the studio for a long time can be very boring and a form of escape is needed. I invited a few guests to collaborate with me when I was in Jordan - a drummer, a cymbal player and a double bass player. Then we integrated and mixed it all, we don't remember who played what. Personally, I like it very much, it's like chatting in a room full of dancing ghosts.

Attilio : The artistic residence of Luton may be in England, because we started a lot of rehearsals in Manchester, where the reception of our debut album was greatest. An Australian DJ recently called us "pan-European" musicians, which is probably the best definition of our musical activities. I live in Italy, in Catanzaro (Calabria), since forever. I don't believe the world is a playground where you can choose where to live based on work, income, and play opportunities. Something much more mysterious and indescribable connects people with places, and music with spaces. The only guest musicians on this album are octopuses, no one else.

MUAM: The title of the album is symbolic, it refers to different aspects of paradise. You wrote on the cover of the album that it is mostly about the beginning of life or everything. What does "paradise" mean to you personally?

Roberto : To be honest, it is difficult to express it unequivocally - I would like to leave an open interpretation to our listeners in the broadest possible spectrum. It is absolutely clear that we all strive for Eden, but really what we are striving for is much more than a place of peace and redemption. You will meet many surprises as you climb the mountains of your life. I just wanted this music to sound like the state of a soul that freely chooses its flow, which is not clogged with lust and pride, but flows clean and natural like the ocean. But ultimately we cannot live a life of paradise in our capacity, free from sin and misplaced desires. Eden comes from the source of everything because everything is connected.

AttilioA: Each idea of ​​paradise has two sides - on the one hand it represents a place of total bliss, on the other hand, admission to this place is forbidden to man due to its nature and corruption. This story clearly cannot be dismissed as a nonsensical story, but it does reflect the opposition people are destined to confront. As if there was something in the existential dimension of man, something intense, rooted. It is about the disproportion between his mental abilities and animal attributes, which prevents him from accessing the state of bliss and staying in it permanently and peacefully with his fellow men. All efforts made to build a common structure capable of joint functioning of people and accepting uniqueness end in exclusion and hierarchy. Man will probably have to deal with this dispute for so long

MUAM: While recording this album, you were looking for answers to basic existential questions about the meaning of existence. Did you find any answers during these sessions? Or is the recipient to find them in music?

Roberto : We would like every listener to find something for themselves and good luck in finding these answers!

Attilio : After I finished recording this album, I felt an impenetrable emptiness and even more questions popped up in my head than before. This is art, this is life.

MUAM: "Eden" is an experimental album that combines the influences of neoclassic, industrial and ambient music. This is an original combination. Were there any albums / artists whose work inspired you in a special way during the recording of this album?

Roberto : No, I personally did not have such albums. I rarely listened to music at that time, nor have I been listening much lately. I think the only thing I come back to sometimes is John Coltrane's recordings. I think these inspirations are more painting, reading / writing, some Anatolian carpet and little life things.

Attilio: Those who love experimentation are well aware of the risk that any form of expression whose codes become too rigid can quickly become ordinary. For this reason, adherence to specific styles and compositional plays as slavishly can be torture. While we recognize that the space for innovation has inevitably been saturated with time and the amount of music that is described as experimental, we strive to bring to our music everything that has influenced us throughout our lives. Both Rob and I listened to a lot of things over time, with varying intensity but unwavering passion (despite the breaks) and had different experiences and collaborated with different people. For example, we both struggled with dance, art, but also small rock clubs. These experiences probably helped us to put what we create a broader perspective at the time of composing. But as we said before, our affinity is not just musical. Ninety percent of the content of our conversations is about something else, just as the suggestions and advice we exchange when creating songs are based on non-musical imaginations. One of the things I like the most is listening to Rob's comments about the work in progress or in progress, and honest responses. In our discussions there are references to animals, cities, philosophy, food, movies, places, political doctrines, mythology, nineties football, all kinds of beings. I'm sorry I can't play them for you. :) But as we said before, our affinity is not just musical. Ninety percent of the content of our conversations is about something else, just as the suggestions and advice we exchange when creating songs are based on non-musical imaginations. One of the things I like the most is listening to Rob's comments about the work in progress or in progress, and honest responses. In our discussions there are references to animals, cities, philosophy, food, movies, places, political doctrines, mythology, nineties football, all kinds of beings. I'm sorry I can't play them for you. :) But as we said before, our affinity is not just musical. Ninety percent of the content of our conversations is about something else, just as the suggestions and advice we exchange when creating songs are based on non-musical imaginations. One of the things I like the most is listening to Rob's comments about the work in progress or in progress, and honest responses. In our discussions there are references to animals, cities, philosophy, food, movies, places, political doctrines, mythology, nineties football, all kinds of beings. I'm sorry I can't play them for you. :) they draw on non-musical imaginations. One of the things I like the most is listening to Rob's comments about the work in progress or in progress, and honest responses. In our discussions there are references to animals, cities, philosophy, food, movies, places, political doctrines, mythology, nineties football, all kinds of beings. I'm sorry I can't play them for you. :) they draw on non-musical imaginations. One of the things I like the most is listening to Rob's comments about the work in progress or in progress, and honest responses. In our discussions there are references to animals, cities, philosophy, food, movies, places, political doctrines, mythology, nineties football, all kinds of beings. I'm sorry I can't play them for you. :)

MUAM: How do you feel listening to this album now? :)

Roberto : Quite strange, but in a positive way. Often, when I finish work on a project, I have to cut myself off from it for about two months, rest. To do something completely different than to do music. Then I suddenly come back to it with new ideas and move on. I get bored very quickly with what I have already done. I don't feel the need to go back to something, I prefer to move forward creatively.

Attilio : I am very melancholy. Listening to this album is for me like looking at photos from the past. I try not to do it in every way. If that happens, I hope that it won't trigger a wave of emotion in me.

MUAM: Each of you has an impressive musical background in the form of film music and various projects. What is Luton Creation for you? Is it a space where you realize your craziest ideas, your secret place where you are yourself (I mean what the Darkside project is for Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington, for example), or maybe something more?

Roberto

: Yes, more or less just that. I would add that this is a place where the sounds of chaotic nature have a chance to materialize. It's a dream room. Playfulness, mystery, alchemy.

Attilio

: Working on music for Luton takes me to a place just outside my safe zone and keeps me in touch with it. Crossing this threshold allows me to acquire the elements necessary to become better. After "Black Box Animals" I went back to working on the material for my solo album and realized that the perspective prism through which I was looking at the sound had changed. My ability to shape sounds has enriched and may have lost its directness. "Eden" was a big step forward. So important that it leads me to believe that further progress would require energy that I would probably not find anywhere else.

MUAM: How did the pandemic affect your life? I missed concerts and watching movies in the cinema very much. Have you been to the concert, cinema, theater after lockdown? What did you see, what did you experience live?

Roberto: I spent the first lockdown in Scotland and it was interestingly very productive time for me, I didn't feel any great chaos in my head, but rather calm. There was a lot of recording and walking, which turned out to be good for me. During the second lockdown, I returned to Italy and then felt much worse, I was very depressed. It was like a series of endless daily ups and downs. To this day, I feel such anxiety, discomfort and separation at times. We'll see what happens in the near future - we live in a very strange and unstable world, I can't imagine what might happen next. So far, I went to a local festival. I liked its location very much, but felt no connection with the music, nothing moved me. I have the feeling that many things that are happening nearby pass us by, but I hope that soon everything will come back to life. It has all been going on for so long ....!

Attilio: I didn't think I would spend months in a house jail. This time influenced me in two ways. On the one hand, it accelerated certain situations that were already uncertain in my life, throwing the final blow to their resolution. On the other hand, it opened up spaces for reading and reflection. Since the pandemic, I have decided to turn my TV off and never turn it on. I believe that the resulting hyper-reality made every TV narrative saturated and recolored, just like every movie. I feel like I'm living in a movie, so I don't see the difference between the screen and reality anymore. During the pandemic, I continued to write my doctoral dissertation and devoted myself primarily to reading philosophical texts. There I found what was real. This summer, I went to a few concerts, I also went back to the cinema. Nothing is the same as before. But surprisingly something still seems alive.

MUAM: Thank you very much for the interview!

Roberto : Thank you very much!

Attilio : Happy birthday!

https://miedzyuchemamozgiem.blogspot.com/2021/11/luton-to-eden-sprobuj-wejdz-zobacz-co.html?m=1

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Journalist Jaroslaw Kowal interviewed Luton for Dni Muzyki Nowej Festival, Jan 2019.

Jaroslaw Kowal: Is that correct that “Black Box Animals” were written and recorded in various places across the Europe? How long did it take to make a whole album?

Rob: Yes, That’s correct. The whole thing took about 7 months, If I remember well.

Attilio: I think we had a clear vision from the beginning, it’s been a delicate and complex process but at same time everything was quite instinctive and so, step by step, we ended up at the crucial part of the album and for what I remember the last month was something really intense.

J: Was it initially planned to record music in several places or did You made that decision spontaneously?

R: It wasn’t initially planned, but since I was traveling quite a lot in Europe at that time, at some point I just realized it was way more enjoyable and spontaneous writing/composing on the road, getting ideas whilst hiking in the wilderness instead of being isolated in a studio like we normally do, so I personally tried to keep that way as much as possible. It was like a back and forth nature/studio.

A: Being all the time in a studio could be extremely boring and unproductive, sometimes. The fact the Black Box Animals was recorded in several different places is in my opinion what makes this music authentic and possibly with a so called wild character. So even without planning that much, that happened eventually.

J: “Black Box Animals” is a very dark album, with field recordings included and many different instruments, yet I wouldn’t call it a 100% experimental music - there’s a lot of melody in it. What is a perfect balance between those two worlds that for many musicians are opposite and can’t be combined?

R: Melody was already part of the intuition when Luton thing started, but at the same time nothing was really planned as we were open to the different explorations and sonic practices. I remember when I initially spoke about the idea to Attilio, I was probably way more into the orchestral part of the package but the bigger picture eventually came to us ended up in this sort of collision between those two worlds, strings and abstract electronics.  We weren’t interested in being stuck in a single genre or label, though. In this terms we probably see Luton like a sort of open laboratory.

A: Neither do I consider Black Box Animals as a 100% experimental album and even  the use of field-recordings is something marginal in my opinion. Creating compositions for classical instruments, sometimes even really ancient ones like russian zithers for example, and blend them with their opposite in terms of nature of sound, that was the main effort in this case. The contrast between a certain dark atmosphere that permeates the whole work and melody is just the natural consequence of the process in itself.

J: Is experimental or improvised music actually evolving? Do You see it changing across last five-six decades or is it more or less the same? On the other hand pop music - which is often seen as music without a soul - is clearly changing year after year. That makes me wonder, which of those is actually more progressive?

R: That’s a tricky question. I’ve never considered pop music a thing without soul, anyway. Music is music but also it is much more than that. We could discuss about that for a long while now and I’m pretty sure that would be very exciting to find out where every word could lead us at some point, the language-like stuff would come out, but at end of the day, I don’t really believe separateness is a great idea, so if you relate the word “experimental” in a John Cage way, thats perfectly fine by me then. We experiment with sounds. That’s what we do and lots of musicians in every genre do, after all. Everything else changes all the time and nothing really ends. It’s not like the world’s gone to shit now and stuff like that, almost the opposite I’d say. It’s a feedback loop, we -as human beings- don’t really need to put some language on it.  

A. I personally think that experimental music is always in a never ending evolution. There are several artists keep going in really interesting directions, and this for me means looking for a personal expressive code, basically. But, in my opinion, there’s an annoying downside in contemporary music which is in the difficulty to perceive distinctly the artistic value from the marketing side. Marketing has nothing to do with quality in music or in art in general. Everybody knows that but unfortunately is really frequent that poor and soulless music are sold as sensational hype in really closed circuits, which is something we don’t really like or support honestly. About pop music, well, my preferences are often limited to what I used to listen to when I was younger, so for me it has an almost exclusively emotional value.

J: You are both from Italy, but at Your facebook page Stockholm is set as a home town. Are You located there at the moment and why did You decided to leave Italy?

R: We’ve been to Stockholm a couple of times. We were involved in a sound residency in electronic music at Ems Studios, a truly magical place with an extraordinary vibe and amazing staff. We recorded massive amounts of raw sounds and crazy “bleep booops shshshs trtrrtrtr” (…) from this incredible Buchla modular synthesizer but nothing from those sessions really ended up Luton, eventually. Sad story. But a couple of tracks in the album were recorded there and especially “Sodermalm Phantom Cab” is something really influenced by our Swedish adventures at EMS studios and good times spent together in Sweden. Said that, I’ve been living in Manchester (UK) for a couple of years now and Attilio lives in Southern Italy. There’s not a really specific reason why I have decided to leave Italy I’m afraid, I guess I was interested in leaving my comfort zone for a while at that time.

A: The connection between Black Box Animals and Stockholm is something really strong and without our time spent together in Sweden, our music would not be made in this way, I’m pretty sure. I personally have always lived in Catanzaro, a small windy city in the deepest south of Italy. But generally speaking, traveling is always a great inspiration for the musical composition. However, I tend to always come back to my hometown. I’m going to spend at least three months in Madrid in Spain in the next few months and I am curious to see what this will bring to my music.

J: Stereotypically Italy - or even whole southern Europe - is seen as a sunny place with parties from dusk till dawn, but Your compositions are very far from that. Is it actually that rare to hear Italian band playing so dark and melancholic music?

R: It seems we’re definitely far from that then ahah, but yeah lots of music from Italy it is indeed. It’s not that rare at all. And If you have the chance to check out some experimental music from ‘60-70s too, Archivio Rai or early minimalism, Luciano Cilio, and many others, well, that’s not sunny music at all. Speaking about melancholia, well could be probably because of a sort of mediterranean DNA, couldn’t be? It’s a cultural thing or something like that I guess. But yeah, sun is good. FACT!

A: What Roberto said is true, I believe that the melancholic connotation of music reflects a character, but it is something really difficult to explain with words indeed. Søren Kierkegaard said: “if you ask a melancholic what reason he has for his condition, what do you know what is it, I can not explain it? “Therein lies melancholy’s infinitude.”

J: I’ve seen Your rider and it seems that You have a very clear idea of how Your live shows should look like - no front lights, just monochromatic light behind You or completely dark room with the smoke. I can see how it fits music from “Black Box Animals”, but do You need that only for visual aspect or does it help You get into right mood? Is it somehow helping You on stage?

R: Something truly interesting happens when you listen, performing or doing things in the darkness and/or in self-imposed situations/conditions. I mean, it doesn’t have to be complete darkness, but we try to avoid any interference from music, like visuals, heavy lighting or too many things going together at the same time. Maybe in the future could be different, we are open to explore different ways actually.

A: Darkness is something really helpful to stay focused, but also for meditation and contemplation in general, and I believe it can facilitate people joining any kind of experience. In regard to the live show we would like not having any kind of aesthetic or sensory impulse to interfere the sound. This is also really helpful for us to play in the right condition in order to enter in our dimension. A black box.

J: First sentence in Your bio states that “Luton is an anti modernist duo” - is that because modernism is mostly about realism and it seems that Your music is more about “magic”?

R: That was a statement by Attilio so I would like to ask him if he could explain to us. But yes, about magic, what could I really say? I really do like the idea about that, if you ask me. Music or I would say sound primarily is magic indeed to me, like a primitive force or an invisible spirit world that I pretend to comprehend, and in my mind disturbing a system that I can’t understand and see what happens, well that’s what I call an experiment. At the same time the nature of sound is really similar to botanic or biology. With sounds you can say these big abstract things, something you can’t express with the alphabet. When the word fails the magic happens. Paying attention, contemplation, contradiction, moving all things back where there is nothing is probably my subconscious purpose. And -in this purpose- nature of sounds is my white light, my teaching voice.

A: You should add something really crucial to what you said, Rob. Capitalist Realism, the book by Mark Fisher was a great inspiration for the making of the album. We both are into Fisher vision of the modern life, and we are sadly observing that the widespread feeling of resignation and unhappiness that permeates our lives in general really depends on the capitalistic system and the neoliberalism that has changed any aspect of the social sphere. So work and life, social and real life became inseparable, capital follows us when we sleep, and unfortunately as you can imagine music and arts are included in the symptoms of our current cultural malaise too. Luton is anti-modernist in the sense that we try to reject our frustration of dealing with a so called entrepreneurial fantasy society, by trying to support ourselves to the ritual, the shamanic, the primitive, but also the anarchist side of the music, possibly without being attached too much to something in particular in terms of genre or hype.

J: It’s a bit of a cliché to call an album a soundtrack to non-existing movie, but “Black Box Animals” sounds very cinematic.  Did You draw any inspirations from cinema art?

R: I personally studied cinema and wrote about that quite a lot when I was younger, so most probably thats still a big influence to me, but yeah we are both inspired by movies for sure. In terms of sounds, I think the way I worked with the orchestral part in this album is what makes the whole thing very cinematic, stuff like 4d sounds, spatialization, timbres etc. We are now interested in a different approach for the new material which is slightly more like painting or drawing abstract lines but with sound dynamics. You have to capture the right thing, but you don’t know what the right thing means exactly. Most of the times, I have not any clue about what’s going on, I’m just one of those dots between all these abstractions around me like a string extending from the top of my head to a distant cloud or star. It’s really odd.

A: Ours is a cinematic music for sure. Rob and I often discuss ourselves a lot about cinema and we constantly share different point of views about that. This in fact has played an important role in our friendship, I must say. For a song of the album, “Sodermalm Phantom Cab”, we asked Ion Indolean, a young Romanian filmmaker, to direct a videoclip. His style is in some ways similar to new Greek neorealism. We would also like to experiment with other forms of cinema and filmmakers in the near future.

J: What I’m quite sure is that dance and theatre are inspiration for You - both of You have experience in that field. How different is that to writing music without a script You need to fit to?

R: They are, indeed, especially contemporary dance personally. Writing music for commissions is challenging, sometimes frustrating, not always rewarding but you generally learn a lot from it which is good.

A: Experience I had with dance and theatre helped me to develop the ability to adapt my sounds to a context that was almost completely unknown to me. I find it much easier to express myself with self-defined limits. The work I did for Luton was facilitated by the complexities of previous experiences.

J: There are lots of the instruments on “Black Box Animals”, but I guess it’s not possible to bring them all on a live show? How different is this material live to what can be heard on album?

R: Thats considerably different. I would say the album is more like a sort of slow journey whilst the live version maybe a bit more like a black vortex, and consequently more physical, droney and abstract, but also we’re trying to get the job done with some reiterative piano moments in between and we’ll see how it goes. Does it make sense? I don’t know, everything is a process indeed.

A: At this stage we should prepare ourselves to the darkest side of Luton. However, there will be the presence of the piano which is something we’re really into at the moment.

J: What struck me the most is that You’ve started Luton just recently, but it feels like You understands each other perfectly. Were You a friends before starting Luton?

R: Well, I think we impersonate each other in a way, as we actually met each other only twice in the real life and we also live in different countries. But -you know- in Luton we’re just two guys swapping these sort of messy lines on a white canvas, making a lot room for fuckery if you know what I mean. For me that makes sense and it’s way more interesting and flexible that being in the same room jamming on ideas or having strict roles. There’s a kind of mix between mistery, alchemy and playfulness between us and I think we really enjoy.  

A: We live in different countries, that’s a fact, but that doesn’t make much difference. Sometimes our level of interaction might be really intense and so our conversations. This is one of the positive sides of the internet age, after all. We’ve known each other for several years but in my opinion he’s like a childhood friend of mine. Connections between people have something mysterious and impossible to understand on a deep level, sometimes.

J: In January You’ll perform in Poland for the first time. Do You have any favorite artists that comes from here?

R: Penderecki and Eugeniusz Rudnik.

A: Apart from Penderecki, I enjoyed the music of contemporary ambient-experimental musicians like Gregg Kowalsky and Jacaszek.

A mention for my friend Nicholas Szczepanik too, American but with Polish origins.

J: Thanks for Your time.

R: Thanks so much, guys

A: Dziękuję, do widzenia.