Kabuki Dream, born from the union between Jacopo Gabanini and Francesco Bartoli, utilizes electronic music in the most visual way possible. The Italian duo's background includes influences from masters such as Franco Battiato and John Carpenter and more recent influences such as Aphex Twin and Kavinsky. Kabuki Dream return together on their newest full album release Sense of Natural Confusion which has a more disco oriented sound than their prior 2022 album Abstract.

Today, Kabuki Dream talked to SIX AM about Sense of Natural Confusion which is set to release today, October 12th, 2023, via Veidt Records.

Hi Kabuki Dream! Thanks for talking to SIX AM how are you?

We’re fine. Thank you for the opportunity.

You’re described as a Synthwave electro duo. How did you both come to working together to form Kabuki Dream? 

The term "synthwave" is perhaps a bit reductive if referred to the music we produce today, but it is certainly a very important musical genre for us:  it was thanks to the common passion for "synthwave" and its reference artists that, after years of militancy in the same rock band (Jacopo on electric guitar and Francesco on drums), we began to approach the world of synthesizers and then founded Kabuki Dream.

Can you elaborate on how you incorporate electronic music in a "visual way"? How does this unique approach manifest in your music and performances?

From the beginning we have tried to combine the world of sound with the visual one, both because we were interested in telling stories as happens in cinema - in which images and soundtrack constitute a whole, a totally immersive experience for the spectator - and because we strongly believe in the connection that exists between all the arts and therefore in the possibility that by involving multiple disciplines in the same artistic act, we can convey a message more effectively. For example, we are strongly convinced that a painting can be the inspiration for a song and vice versa. For these reasons our performances are always accompanied by the projection of moving images.

 

Your musical evolution is said to draw inspiration from various sources, including dystopian science fiction and iconic artists like Giorgio Moroder and Aphex Twin. How do these diverse influences come together to shape your sound and themes?

It's true, there are many artists who inspire us. If those you have mentioned may appear so distant from each other is only because we listen to music from the most disparate genres: basically it's the use of synthesizers that act as a glue. The connection with science fiction, in addition to the graphics accompanying our works, also reverberates in our music. This goes to show that, for us, the various arts are not separated from each other: science fiction offers us a key to understand the present, and this also applies to literature, cinema and even music.

You have an album coming up on Veidt Records, “Sense of Natural Confusion”. What was the creation process like for this album? Was it similar to your prior releases or completely different? Why did you both decide to do a full album vs. a set of small releases?

We conceived the first songs of the album immediately after finishing the recordings of the previous "Abstract", for which we had chosen a more emotional and intimate approach compared to the past. We felt the need to continue along this path to see where it would lead us this time; we noticed that the new songs had acquired an apparently more defined and therefore less "abstract" shape than before - they seemed bleaker and at times disturbing. For us, it is essential to develop a concept, a basic theme that acts as a pivot for our songs - for this reason we prefer to release entire albums (which certainly allows us to better develop our themes) rather than proceed with small releases. Releasing individual songs is certainly more in step with the times, but it risks impoverishing the artistic needs that we feel each time. However, if it is compatible with our project, we will also take this possibility into consideration for the future.

 

The album is supposed to focus on “the sense of lost”. Why was this the main theme of the album? How did you hope to express this concept through the tracks?

More than a "sense of loss", the album focuses on the restlessness which is common to every human being, and which is further exacerbated by the continuous and deafening "noise" that pervades our times. Like pieces of a single puzzle, all the songs of the album are dedicated to the various facets that characterize this theme. From our point of view, this theme is the result of that more intimate approach to musical production mentioned before. Unexpectedly, our sounds have become far more disco compared to those in our previous album: in "Sense of natural confusion", the search for movement and fast pace are seen as one of the possible remedies available to man to calm his ancestral frustration and chase away his ghosts.

 

Thanks to the both of you, is there anything else you’d like to share?

Thank you. The only thing we can add is that during our performances we like to modify the songs on the album: through effects and loops, we obtain new sounds and new musical constructions that enrich our songs and bring out the best from them.

 

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