PORCELAIN RAFT

REDEFINING ART AS ENTERTAINMENT

While on the phone with Mauro Remiddi of Porcelain Raft in New York, the Italian composer, musician and songwriter is relaxed and articulate; everything his soft, melodic music would suggest. His long history in music includes composing scores for film, theatre and video art, having played or experimented with practically every instrument along the way. Remiddi is insightful and abstract as he realizes and expresses his thoughts regarding the importance of entertainment.

“In my case I have the maturity to understand that what I do is not art, it’s true entertainment. To me entertainment has a very important meaning, entertainment is nature and nature doesn’t need art. The birds, the way they sing and flirt – this is entertainment.”  He continues, “It’s a force, it’s not art, it’s not the end of the world, it doesn’t actually matter. This is not art honestly,” he laughs, “It’s not art it’s pure entertainment.”

With a new album that came out on August 20^th, Remiddi shares his excitement on receiving feedback from someone other than a manager or music industry mogul, “It feels so good to get real opinions about it, doesn’t really matter what it is in the end, you know it just feels more real!”

Permanent Signal released via Secretly Canadian is the follow-up to 2012’s Strange Weekend, also through Secretly Canadian. Known for its gauzy, dreamlike and textural sound, the two albums from Porcelain Raft each represent significant moments suspended in time.

“This album is a snapshot more of a few months, I had just stopped touring and was coping with getting back to real life and really discovering New York and starting to really explore and make friends.” The album he says created itself for the most part. “It just seemed to come out while writing and recording, I don’t plan ahead in this way, I just notice the more you plan things, the more they don’t happen and they also seem less fun, so to be honest I never plan too much.”

Getting ready for his first headlining tour of North America, Remiddi expresses how crucial it is to for him to perform the music as opposed to simply playing the songs. “Live, I don’t like to do exactly the same as the album, the album develops as you play it. I would never go live and play the album as a CD. I like the idea of bringing something different, different versions of the songs, it’s an extension of the album, it’s not the album.” He continues, “I want that margin of mistake, you can really miss the point of a live concert when everything is compressed and perfectly EQ’d, like when you go to a gig and you didn’t like it or maybe you did but you don’t know why maybe the solo was too long or whatever but it affected you and you’re still talking about it.”

All things aside, for Remiddi it’s the newness, the fact that the modular synth he’s chosen for his sets needs to be tuned every time he plays it, it’s the continued evolution of his sound and the fun he has doing it. “To be honest with you, at the end of the day, what I do is to entertain myself first, it’s the best entertainment I have in this world, so I’m doing it because it’s fun for me, so it has to be fun for me. I’m glad if you come to a gig and like it, I’m glad if you like the album but I really would do it anyway.”

Catch Porcelain Raft at the Electric Owl on Sept. 20.

By Chrystal MacLeod