SkOll presents Neo Geo, his new album

Rome, 30 November – Last Monday the video of the single was released Neo Geo, taken from the homonymous and new album by Federico Goglio, aka SkOll. Identity singer-songwriter, now in his fifteenth album, returns to the music scene although only one year has passed since his last success, namely D'Annunzio. In this new work, however, there are some novelties, which concern both the textual and the musical level.

Let's start with a question about your new single, Neo Geo: it seems a criticism, not too veiled, to social networks and their distorted use. So, what's your relationship with this tool?

"Neo Geo" tells of a world revolutionized, distorted, distorted by the social impact of virtual networks and "communities". We have witnessed – without even realizing it – an epochal change that has radically influenced global customs and habits within a decade. The man has changed, he has been overwhelmed by the new sociality. The most deleterious and modernist conception of the concept of democracy is imposed everywhere: its maximum expression is no longer the cross on the ballot paper, rather the sharing of a plate of spaghetti. The mechanism is based on genius dynamics: those who share it are led by the system to believe that the object of sharing affects the whole world, being pleased to receive a handful of likes that it considers unjustly valued, convinced, enthusiastic. On the other hand there is only the mechanical, distracted, instantaneous gesture of one who reacts to any impulse. The illusion of finally counting something is accomplished. An illusion paid dearly, in the idiotic conviction of having made a bargain: our habits, our fears, our passions, our virtues and our vices completely handed over to the "lords of the steam". Here is "Neo Geo", the new world. For me – in the use I make of it – social networks remain means of communication, tools, like others, useful for launching signals to be immediately decoded in the real world. "Neo Geo" itself is conveyed and promoted through the network. It is an invitation to act, however, to go further, to listen to it, to go to a concert, to interact with those who live using all the senses, even the most hidden ones, that we have.

You are well known in the musical world of identity as a songwriter who sings the "private" rather than the "public". Why did you decide to change course in this new album, including also songs that deal with issues of social relevance?

I've always written both "private" and "public" songs (to use your definitions). More intimate stories and more shared, communal stories of men, of sacrifice, of example. It is true, however, that for the first time in twenty years it has drawn principal inspiration from social themes. The title of the disc itself is obviously not random. The most common theme is that of the new worlds, declined in plurals that end up intertwining and showing off for what they are: pieces of a single mosaic. Here then is that the new, very rigid forms of social control are nothing but traits of the same "new world" design to which the phenomenon of immigration belongs (which on this record I dealt with two distinct songs – one of the two, opening of the album – it is titled "the laws of the world" rather than that of consumerist acceleration (which I treated in "Kyoko's house" – my musical synthesis of a very current page by Yukio Mishima) or of the overcoming of boundaries and identity national (the last song is a short dedication to Nazario Sauro but precisely from a current perspective, as an antibody, as a medicine: "a fixed point / in the new world / in this coming and going"). Despite everything, however, "Neo Geo" is not strictly a concept album. There are, for example, even songs that fall into what you've called the "private". One of these, "An act of witchcraft", is certainly among the most original things I have written and arranged in these years.

In the new album you have chosen to inspire two songs to two particular characters, which are Ettore Arduino and Michael Schumacher. What do they represent for you? Why really them?

Nobody ever told the story of Ettore Arduino. In "Neo Geo" inspires one of the most significant pieces of the album. In the booklet I have called Arduino "hero of the arctic flight". He was one of the men of the "Italy" airship tragedy. After that, someone went down in history (among other things, making subsequent life choices that are quite questionable), he didn't. And yet it was Arduino – while "out-of-control" Italy led to the death of several men (he was one of them) – to save the most fortunate who had been thrown on the polar surface: although aware of his own end, he launched the equipment that would have been essential to survive the cold. Those men were saved thanks to him.

Michael Schumacher's story is very different. I could be wrong but I believe that, apart from an electronic thing published years ago, nobody had yet made a song of it. Schumacher was a unique motorist, unattainable in some respects, and is a man who has always led an exemplary life. Over the years, since the first victories, I had nurtured a sort of antipathy towards a champion who seemed cold, aloof, invincible. One day, almost suddenly, I realized how much I had understood nothing. I was completely wrong. Schumacher was the opposite of what I had superficially thought. As he continued to win, I was starting to be a true fan of his. Extraordinary, sensitive, very human sample. And so, many years later, this song of mine was born … "do one more turn of the track and I will turn, as then, the head".

Is it difficult to make your way into the world of music, having such a particular style and very different ideas from those in vogue?

It is very difficult to break the wall of silence that is built around "different" songs. Curious, isn't it? Silence against music. After all, however, the last sign of a world remains – of one status – who is afraid of collapsing, of not being able to effectively convey illusory atmospheres from the Belle Epoque. Let's imagine pop culture as a megaphone: the cone is wide where the ears are stretched, but at the origin of the sound the space is narrow, occupied by those who have made music an ideological monopoly. No spontaneous dynamics, this is clear. Trends are imposed, demand is always induced. I started writing music over twenty years ago. I never imagined I could come up with a record like "Neo Geo" (in my discography it represents an unprecedented production for hours of studio work) and let me listen to thousands of people. I follow a road, without having the obsession that it must be crowded. My music is there, for the few or the many who want to hear something different. Without having to stretch the ear towards the megaphone.

Federica Ciampa