Valentina Magaletti: “Everytime I collaborate I feel like I have learnt something new about my music and my practice”
Valentina Magaletti (Photo: Fanny Chiarello)
Valentina, you produced exclusively for the HAU Hebbel am Ufer a short film to your solo Album “A Queer Anthology of Drums“. How easy / how difficult was it for you to come up with pictures to your music?
Valentina Magaletti: It has been quite challenging due to the time spent between composing the album and commissioning the film. The pandemic really made it hard to touch base with a few people who initially got involved in the project and then couldn’t finish it.
A film is obviously not just about pictures, it is about the combination and flow of those pictures – just like music is the ongoing combination of sounds and tones. Would you say tat both processes are compairable? And why so?
I always found video and filming quite fascinating but hard at the same time.I guess I am more comfortable as a photographer myself.
Moments always add an extra sense of anxiety and I am hardly happy with the final result.
Can you tell us a bit more about the concept behind “A Queer Anthology of Drums“?
It has the connotation that resonates with who ever is listening to it. I conceived it as a percussive spectrum where everyone is invitated, without any gender or race or frequency limit.
The album is “a percussive collage of low-fi frequencies documenting a journey that never took place“ – is this as one could imagine a pandemic paradigm or just the story of an artist dreaming?
We could argue in this case that it is both 🙂
What does free-improv mean to you? Musically and politically?
It means interacting freely without academic constraints, without sounding pretentious.
Merely let yourself go in the sound of the moment.
The album is a co-release between the Cafe´Oto label Takuroku and the Chinese label Bié. A beautiful bridge between two countries that have a let´s say not always easy past history with each other. How did this come up?
I was initially very excited when Bie contacted me wanting to release the album version of the digital oversea. The release had already been very successful in Uk and Europe thanks to Cafe oto. I thought it would be great to diffuse queer culture in China and maybe go to perform it there . In reality, it didn’t worked out so far due to the distance. I am trying to re press it in Europe as I am aware that a lot of fans were disappointed due to prohibitive cost of shipping etc…
How deep and intensive is the dialogue between them and you?
Between me and the chinese label? It has been quite hard to comunicate.
The vinyl version features an additional track: “She/Her/Gone”.
What is this about?
This piece is about losing a dear person who you thought you were in love with.
Your discography features many collaborational works, with musicians like Nicolas Jaar, Thurston Moore, Tightpaul Sandra, Graham Lewis… what is it you look for in other musicians for potential collaborations?
I look for artist who operate in a universe that they create. Usually I am very found of multidisciplinary heads.
Do you feel that each of those collaborations gets to know a different Valentina Magaletti? Why so?
Absolutely, everytime I collaborate I feel like I have learnt something new about my music and my practice.
What was the last musical experience that shaked you?
I am very looking forward to collaborate with Nidia form Principe records and Shackleton.
