Rough Trade

∆GO by Lilies on Mars is a hypnotic slice of synth driven electronica that will carry you away to a place where the skies are big and the stars are close…

What is the most magical thing about Sardinia?
Marina: The contrast between beautiful turquoise sea and the mountains skyline, the air you breathe, the light and the starry sky, even storms are incredibly beautiful and evocative. It’s an incredible place to create and record music.
Lisa: There is a straight contact with the universe from here, from the earth to above seems distant-less. Night time the sky gets wider, to make space for the stars, it might be because of the absence of the city lights in certain areas. You can really feel the universe just above or inside somehow.

Why did you move to London, and why have you stayed here?
Marina: Mainly for music, it was the most inspiring city in Europe for us at the time, we were attracted by the multiplicity of art and music circulating, and we stayed for the same reasons, we met a lot of musicians and were surrounded by the ideal environment for us to develop as musicians and composers.

How often do you travel between the two?
Marina: Every couple of months now, we’ve recorded ∆GO entirely in Sardinia but we kept in touch with the London scene that we will never abandon, it’s very important for us.

How does your latest record AGO compare with and differ to Dot to Dot?
Marina: ∆GO is the continuation of Dot To Dot in every sense. Dot To Dot was our first experiment as producers, our approach in making music changed, firstly because it was a work conceived by just the two of us. We wanted to explore new territories, new sounds, new instruments we’ve never played before. It was a rebirth for us, it was like starting something new from scratch without questioning ourselves where we wanted to go. We created a base that subconsciously prepared us for ∆GO, for which we worked exactly in the same way but with a strong and more mature idea.

∆GO by Lilies on Mars is available here.

What kind of atmosphere do you hope the album creates?
Marina: The album contains a variety of atmospheres, from psychedelic uplifting dance to more introspective moments, it’s a spacey journey, that is exactly how we felt while writing it, and I like when people come to the shows and tell us they tripped listening to our music, it’s a cosmic mental trip, where you can also dance!

Can you tell us a bit more about the album title and what it means to you?
Marina: ∆GO is an abstract word, it has not meaning on its own and we love that, it’s a symbol that for us symbolises the retro-futurist concept which is a strong element of our sound, it can be read as AGO as used in story telling of times ‘long ago’ or as A GO, as if giving a go at something new in the future. It also means needle in Italian, that metaphorically weaves the past with the future.

What were your biggest influences when you were making AGO?
Marina: We were inspired by early electronic music from the 50′s and the 60′s like Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram from The BBC Radiophonic Workshop. We absolutely loved their natural approach to creating and manipulating new sounds.

Who is the dancer in the Stealing video and what was the direction you gave her?
Lisa: The video was directed by a great friend of us, Luna Ariel, we’ve worked with her for other projects in the past and we trust her eye. The dancer is Francesca Re, she is very talented and has an incredible androgynous body. We gave the director the freedom to feel the music and the meaning of Stealing with her eyes. We didn’t want to appear much in this video as we thought the message should have had a stronger impact with the lyrics. The meaning of Stealing was perfectly captured by the director and the dancer. Her jerky movements refer to a physical and psychological block as someone is controlling her freedom, ‘stealing’ her ideas, her dreams and her rights. Only at the end she gets the message, she stops moving, she breaths deeply, she is free.

Where was the video shot, it’s a pretty amazing landscape?
Lisa: We shot the video in Sardinia, in the hinterland of Cagliari, a very peaceful, mystical and intriguing location.

Where can people see you play live in the coming months?
On 5th October in Nottingham at Rough Trade and on 6th October in London at Electrowerkz.

∆GO by Lilies on Mars is available here.

Written by Amelia Gregory on Sunday October 4th, 2015 10:23 am

Categories ,AGO, ,album, ,Cagliari, ,Daphne Oram, ,Delia Derbyshire, ,Dot to Dot, ,electrowerkz, ,Francesca Re, ,interview, ,Lisa Masia, ,Luna Ariel, ,Marina Cristofalo, ,Rough Trade, ,Sardinia, ,Stealing, ,The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, ,video, ,∆GO

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