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Earlier this week, Qlowski threw at us "Desire," the latest dark transmission from their sophomore LP, The Wound. Out November 1st on Maple Death and Feel It Records, the band saws through anti-anthems washed in monochrome, as plush and velvet in orchestration as they are harsh in truth. Stretched out across the globe, members Mickey Tellarini and Cecilia Corapi shared with us their insights on the new release, detailing inspirations of poetry, grief, and political strife.
What have you been up to lately? What have you been listening to, reading, or spending a lot of time doing?
Mickey Tellarini: I actually haven't been listening to that much music recently, I think mainly because I lost my earphones three days after I bought them and just went like fuck it! But I've just started a new job as an art handler and that involves a lot of driving around on my own and so I can finally listen to music again: Tristwch Y Fenywod, Roger Doyle and Klein. Some books I really liked recently are Bluff by Danez Smith, Panic Response by John McCullough, and I've just started Modernism In The Streets, a collection of essays by Marshall Berman and I'm loving it.
Cecilia Corapi: I've been trying to learn how to balance mama life with a full-time job and two bands. Enjoying introducing my baby to some old classics like The Modern Lovers, The Clash, The Cure but also some beautiful new records like Someday, Now by Katy J Pearson.
For our readers unfamiliar, tell us about the origins of Qlowski. How did you all meet and decide to start making music together?
MT: I feel like the story of this band is quite bizarre and extremely common at the same time. The readers should know that Cece and I met when we were 16 and were in a relationship for nine years! Qlowski started at some point during that time. I started recording some stuff on GarageBand and Cece was like, this is cool, let's start a band. Some years later we both moved to London from Bologna, Italy, and broke up in the space of a few months—but we're besties forever! Around that time we met Christian, he was playing drums in one of Cece's other projects. We needed a drummer and it sounded like a great idea to have one who was going to move back to New York in like three months, but hey we're still here! Lu joined two years ago. The day Danny (bassist on Quale Futuro?) told me he was going to leave the band I was at the pub with some friends and my friend Ben was like, oh I know someone!, and here we are now, scattered around between London, New York, and Glasgow.
How do you feel looking back on your catalog? Do you still like or relate to your past releases?
MT: I actually haven't listened to our first two EPs in years. I think of them as cute. Quale Futuro? I think it's still a fairly good album and I still love some of the songs in there and the way it sounds.
CC: I like to look back and see how much we've grown and refined our sound and sometimes I even feel a bit nostalgic thinking of how lo-fi our first EP was. We never play them live but I still love our old songs, especially "Taking Control," "Days," and "Ikea Youth."
Could you tell us more about the concept behind your upcoming LP The Wound and what it was like to work with Daniel Fox?
MT: I think I started writing the lyrics for the title track sometime around the end of 2021. Looking back at 2020, the pandemic, George Floyd and the BLM movement, and what was left a year or so later of that period, at least for us here in London and the UK. Mainly I had this feeling of defeat and hopelessness, once the momentum was gone everything just went back to normal, or actually things got worse in many ways. It felt like there was a wound left open, bleeding, but almost as if that wound stopped generating resistance and was slowly rotting. Skip forward six months or something like that. I was watching Love Is The Devil, a fictional biography of Francis Bacon, and I think at some point Bacon said this thing in an interview talking about his paintings, "There's no beauty without the wound." And I was like, woah! I remember messaging the band's group chat about it straight away. But basically, the rest of the album was written as a series of reflections on this theme. How can we generate resistance and beauty from wounds, trauma, grief, and defeat? Can we transform personal and individual desire and love into collective action?
CC: I remember talking to Mickey one day about wanting to make an album about grief and realizing that we both had the same need. We experience so much pain as people and as a society, and we're left with the wound and have to learn how to deal with it. We all have very different tastes in music, but the band we all agree on is Gilla Band, so Daniel felt like the perfect person to help us expand our sound, and work on some of the darker and noisier elements. Working with him was a real treat! Daniel and I have been knowing each other since 2015 when I opened for Gilla Band with my first-ever project, Naughty Betsy. It was probably like my third gig ever but I will never forget how kind and not judgmental Gilla Band were towards us.
How would you describe working on the new album compared to 2021's debut LP Quale Futuro?
MT: All of QF's demos were written and recorded mainly by me, then Christian flew in from New York five days before the recording started and we transformed the songs together. And then straight into the studio and the instrumentals were done in three days, 24 hours in total I think. This time instead, we've been playing together as a band for a couple of tours and we worked on some of the songs for months, others instead came about at the very last minute, and some parts were written directly in the studio.
CC: The Wound has a bit more of each one of us in there. Compared to the demo approach that Mickey described, we wrote some pieces of this new album separately and then we expanded them together. Both "Praxis" and "Desire" came about when Mickey and I were just playing with my keyboards at home and I had no idea that they would evolve the way they have.
Earlier this week, you released the album's third single "Desire." How did this one come together and what influenced it?
MT: This is a theme that has been bothering me for years. Desire as a collective force of liberation. Desire is the most personal of human experiences and yet it can't be resolved in the individual. That's why neoliberalism is so fucked and can't work.
CC: Writing this song has been so much fun! The chorus came out from one of our catch-ups at mine and it's the first time that I wrote without limiting myself thinking, how am I gonna play it live? I just kept adding keyboards on keyboards.
I was also really impressed by the album's lead single "Surrender." Could you tell us about how this track came to be? I read you were inspired by the work of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
MT: "Surrender" is ideologically inspired by some of Darwish's poems and interviews. How he talks about what it means to be defeated and the Palestinian resistance. But it's also about the current state of this country. Where you could get sentenced to five years in prison for planning to block a motorway as an act of protest, while our taxes go towards financing a genocide, and our housing system has been collapsing for decades, etc.
CC: Being in a band is full of ups and downs, and at times you ask yourself if there's any point in keeping going. During one of these times, I remember telling Mickey, almost as a joke, can you please write one of your bangers? A couple of hours later a very first version of "Surrender" was born, and she was beautiful, so beautiful that we had to record it as soon as possible. We decided to record with Louis, a friend, and an amazing producer (have you heard how good the Italia 90 stuff sounds?) and musician. Louis [Milburn] immediately understood our idea and came out with the incredible loop that you can hear in the verse of the song and even convinced me to play something different from my SIEL Orchestra in parts of the song!
The music video for "Surrender" is also a real work of art on its own with its sumptuous costumes and silent film expressionism. What was the production process like working with artist Maura Sappilo and getting all dolled up for the camera?
MT: Ah yeah! I'm very happy about it, to be honest! I guess that after we finished recording the album we had this feeling that this album was black and white, no colors this time, whatever that means! Also since we played "Surrender" for the first time we've always imagined it as a silent film, a bit silly and over dramatic. Maura and I have been friends for a good six years now. She likes to tell everyone that she taught me how to pour a pint when I first moved to London. Anyway, she's an amazing visual artist and an honorary member of Qlowski, and I think she just outdid herself on this one! The costumes and the creative direction are just so amazing!
CC: I'm extremely proud of this video. I started a Pinterest board for it before we even recorded it because since the beginning this song has been giving me very strong B&W images. I'm very grateful to all the people who worked on it. Maura is such an amazing artist and without her, it wouldn’t have been the same. Suzanna also has done an amazing job with her Super 8 and bringing our silent movie fantasy to life.
Could you tell us more about the track "Mastering The Motions"?
MT: Like "Surrender" and "Desire," "Mastering The Motions" revolves around the bass line. We really wanted this album to be bass-driven! Also, I love how joyously violent the lyrics are in the chorus: "Take them down / hang them up upside down," which refers to what the Italian people did to Mussolini after he was captured and executed by the partisans.
CC: This song has one of the most magic moments of the album in my opinion, where drums and bass create such an incredible atmosphere and everything goes quiet and the lyrics are basically just spoken. Very different from the rest of the record but what can we say, we do love strong contrasts. Also, I love the lyrics that Mickey came out with and I keep getting this phrase stuck in my head: "Rage is the spark, love is fire."
What about "A Vision?"
MT: I think I wanted it to sound as disturbing and dissonant as possible because it's actually about landlords. They are the wolves and vultures feasting on our flesh. It's also about how psychologically destabilizing it is to literally live in mold and at the same time be terrified you could get evicted at any moment. I guess I needed it to be somewhat hopeful, and Cece's keyboards bring the light. Join your local tenant's union!
I also really like the slow crescendo of "Praxis." Can you tell us more about this one?
CC: As I mentioned before, "The Wound" defined my path in dealing with grief. One of the biggest wounds I carry with me is the loss of my Grandma who I lived with since I was born and whom I loved very much. This song is for her, she always looked after everyone, friends, family, or strangers and it's my promise to try to do the same in giving back everything she shared with me.
How did "In Cold Blood" come together?
MT: I might be wrong but I think we finished this one in the studio while recording, it came about at the very last minute before leaving for Dublin. I think it's one of the most collective songs on this album and I really love it.
CC: I find this song quite hard to sing, both because it's quite complicated and mainly because the lyrics are so emotional. The Italian government and Europe are responsible for the death of more than 3,000 people every year trying to reach our coasts crossing the Mediterranean Sea. One particular case is close to my heart. On the 26th of February 2023, a boat carrying migrants sank amidst harsh weather conditions while trying to land on the coast near the town where I was born. That day was also the five-year-anniversary of my grandma’s death.
Finally, what about the closing cut "Off The Grass?”
MT: In "Stronger Than," "Can You Tell," and "Off The Grass," I tried to explore from different angles the revolutionary aspects, implications, and possibilities of and within love and relationships. How can we approach them differently and what alternatives we can build through them? This one is about failure and building something from the bits and scars you've been left with. It felt like the perfect closing song.
I'm curious to know more about the zine you put out in conjunction with your last album, Quale Futuro? Do you think you'll do another for The Wound?
CC: Watch this space! But yes, we have added a zine to the album, but in a different format, inspired by the Crass record sleeves. So, on one side expect a beautiful photo poster by Nika De Carlo, who also took the wonderful photos for the album cover, and on the other side a selection of words and images from us and other artists and authors. Everything was designed by the one and only Volo, who curated the album artwork as well.
MT: Oh yeah that was so much fun! We put that one together during the pandemic so everyone we reached out to was excited to have a little project to work on and it was amazing, it really was wonderful to feel that sense of community while we were forced into isolation. And yes, as Cece said, watch this space!
Mickey, are we going to hear more from your Station Station show Musique Jetable? What’s it like putting those broadcasts together?
MT: Oh yes! Starting a new season this month. I love doing those broadcasts so much! I love trying to find a way to mix together all the very different things I love and listen to in a one-hour little journey.
Aside from the new album, what are some future plans for Qlowski?
CC: Tour is next! We really missed playing live and meeting lovely people all over, so our focus will be on enjoying that for now. We did have to cut out some songs from this album because the time to record was quite tight so who knows maybe we'll keep working on that or maybe we will try something completely different.
Any last words you'd like to share with our readers?
Free Palestine!
The Wound is out November 1st on Maple Death and Feel It Records.