The best music takes listeners on a journey. And as musicians develop, they can bring audiences along on their journeys. Youthful influences sometimes give way to more mature sounds. Such is the case with post/math/experimental rockers Valerian Swing, based in Germany and Italy. In the case of Valerian Swing, this meant transitioning from a nu-metal-oriented outfit with good cop/bad cop vocals back in the day into the sublime trio that dropped Liminal earlier this summer. And don’t think you’ll hear any of that old band, who are even moving beyond more recent post and math rock influences, even if they’re not left entirely behind. Instead, look for skittery rhythms, inventive percussion, and synth lines that are involved. And the influence of film scores.
The largely instrumental Liminal takes listeners on a journey that only a well-sequenced album can. We spoke to guitarist Stefano Villani on Zoom from his home in Correggio, Italy, about the band’s history, making the album, and why it took seven years.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What kind of music did you grow up on? Who are your favorite bands?
I think it started probably in the early 2000s because both me and David (Ferretti, drums) are from 1986, so we started listening to music when we were teenagers, like 14 or 15 years old. Over here—but I guess also in the U.S.—crossover was a big thing. I mean bands like Limp Bizkit or Linkin Park, Korn, Slipknot, System of a Down.
Sure.
This was our first exposure to music and here it was very popular. It was on MTV. I think that was the spark that wanted us to form a band and play music. But after that, I think our tastes became a bit more refined. Thanks to David’s older brother, we started to get into bands like Tortoise and Don Caballero. That kind of shifted our listening to more, I don’t know, serious music. We also started getting into hardcore music and post-metal. Botch, Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Mastodon. Electronic music. If I had to pick one band, I would say Radiohead.
I can hear it as far as the artistic approach. They’re all about reinvention and mood, which I think you guys are, too. A lot of those bands, though, are not instrumental bands. Did you ever consider adding a vocalist?
Actually, the history of Valerian Swing started with vocalists.
Really?
Yeah. Our first EP was around 2005. We had two vocalists in the band. One doing the screamo part and one the melodic, like was very popular.
It was all the rage with the kids.
Yeah, it was. Then we made another album, our first proper album, in 2007. It’s not on any streaming platform or anything. There was a vocalist on the album. But after we did that album, things didn’t work between us. So we said, “Why don’t we just do instrumental?” I remember we did our first European tour for that album; we just played instrumental, and then, I think naturally, we became a sort of instrumental band. We always have like a spot of vocals somewhere, but yeah, we are mostly an instrumental band. It’s weird because we have very different tastes from each other in the band in terms of music. I think this is what makes the sound. Our drummer, David, is a lot into jazz, from classics like John Coltrane and Miles Davis to more contemporary artists like Bad Not Good, The Bad Plus. Francesco (Giovanetti, guitar) listened to a lot of experimental rock in the past. He’s a fan of Secret Chiefs 3 and a lot of Middle Eastern music. And then he became an electronic music producer, so he started listening to a lot of experimental electronic music. Now, I mostly listen to electronic music like Oneohtrix Point Never and Jon Hopkins. We mix a lot of all this influence and try build our own language and aesthetics.
I think that’s part of what goes into this term “cinematic” that I see sometimes used to describe your music. What does that word mean to you as far as music goes, and why do you think that word is attached to the band?
I’m not sure. Cinematic is something, I guess, that evokes images while listening to music. So yeah, I feel that our music has the power to be imaginative. One of the reasons is that I’m a video maker/visual artist, so we wanted to do this experimental project for this album. I’m still finishing it, but it’s sort of a feature film in CGI, with all the album tracks and a storyline that connects them. We’ve released four videos for now. We can hopefully complete it by the end of the year. Also, we’re building an audio-visual show to use live. Our music—especially our last album—works well with visuals. I think it can further ignite some imagination for listeners.
One of the things that I think about when people say cinematic is classic-era Hollywood. There’s the orchestral sweep at the big climax of the movie. Post-rock, a genre in which I would include your band, is about that moment, too. Is that something you guys discuss when composing and working up the songs? Like, “ok, we gotta build to the big bang here.”
No, it’s not something that we discuss between us. But sure, post-rock has been a strong influence on us. Bands like Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You, Mogwai are bands that have been an important part of shaping our sound and our taste. So even if it’s maybe a genre that we don’t listen to much now—and I don’t think we listened to much post-rock doing Liminal—that it’s a part of our heritage and so, unconsciously, we have this in our DNA. I think I feel an epic vibe in our music, this build-up, which is something very common in post-rock music.
You mentioned a couple of older albums, but as far as the new one goes, what took you so long? It was seven years between albums.
If I look back seven years, it’s a lot of time. We started working on this album around autumn 2019. I remember we locked ourselves in our rehearsal space, an old house in the countryside. It was probably a month, and we gathered ideas and collected stuff together. By the end of that, I think most of the songs were well-structured, so we started tracking the drums in February 2020. Then COVID happened. So COVID is the main reason why it took us so long to put this album out. Here in Italy, we had a very severe lockdown. We could not go out. We had Francesco living in Germany. Music, in general, was sort of put in hibernation. There were no concerts for two and a half years here in Italy, so I think all this put us in a sort of slow-motion mode. We started working on this album and refined it with our sound engineer between sessions over a long period, so months passed. I think we had the album done by the end of 2022, but then there was a lot of thinking about the right time to put it out and how and which people to get involved. And I have this visual project going on.
You mentioned the AV project that might go along with the live show. Do you plan to support the record with a tour?
Yeah, definitely. We are playing a couple of shows in Italy this summer, and we’re going on a tour of the clubs in Italy in the fall. And we’re trying to work on a European tour for next year. We also hope to come back to the United States at some point.
When was the last time the band was here in the US?
It was 2012.
It’s been a while! One thing that works on Liminal is the sequencing. The first track feels like it should be the first track. Was that something you guys considered when you were readying the album’s final version?
Yeah, definitely, definitely. I’m glad you noticed. I feel that it’s definitely more than the sum of its parts. We talked a lot about how to sequence, and I think we also shaped some songs in a way that made them the right moment on the track list. So even if the songs are pretty diverse, there’s an aesthetic that glues all the songs together and makes them all part of the same journey.
Do you have a track on the record that particularly resonates with you?
If I have to pick one, it’s probably “Badman (Ting).” One reason is that it’s the first time (in years) we were doing something with a vocalist. So, being able to do something new. And it’s not just a vocalist, but it’s a grime MC, and it also feels like a statement of our will to cross boundaries in music genres and build bridges between different music worlds. Flowdan is a sort of grime icon. Grime is a gigantic kind of music born in London and influenced by ragga and jungle. If I think about my younger self, I remember how ragga and dancehall were some of the things I hated the most in music. Flash forward 15 years; being able to do something like that makes me feel proud and happy. It’s a picture of how things change in life over time and how it’s always important to try to push forward in thinking in everything you do: music, art, everything in general. Something that you hated in the past? You’re probably gonna love it in the future.
