Troglosound (Italy (at the time of the interview)/others)

Troglosound (Italy (at the time of the interview) /others)

With an email in ".it" and a site in ".tk", I have to say I was a little bit confused when it came to decide where I had to classify Troglosound. Finally, the answer was quite simple as they told me: "well we live in italy, france, portugal, US...". Definitly, those guys were from a psychedelic, hard to define country, in fact, their own one! And believe me, there is no map of such a place, except if you take a close attention on every detail of their posters…

Hello, of course as every Crewk interview, first question: what are we listening to when we come to visit you?

Grupo Um.

Can you tell us more about yourself, who are you, where are you from, what do you do?

Troglosound is a two-members' crew expressing its creative energy both as a record label and a music-related artworks inprint.

When did you start drawing?

We both started drawing very early, let's say in primary school or even earlier, and then started working on walls, canvases, and anything else when still teenagers, when we also started doing our first screen-printing experiments. In our early twenties, we began with first works for records' covers, posters and any other artwork related to underground music.

Did you follow any course or did you improve by drawing in the margins of your schoolbooks?

All our drawings' knowledge and experience has come out just from our personal work and research. No school!

Today are you living from your art, or do you do something else for a living ?

Living in the jungle mostly from our art and our music, and from selling fried chicken, yes.

Are you collaborating with magazines/fanzines, regularly?

Not really. But maybe soon, we'd like to!

Nowadays we mostly work for bands, record labels, and concerts' promoters.

Where does your influence come from? Is there any artists/graphists you particularly like, what are your influences?

We are big fans of all psychedelic art (from ancient Asiatic, Egyptian and Greek art, to Mati Klarwein, and beyond!).

Our influences are in everything we see and absorb, both in daily life and in dreams and visions.

We also really love '60s, '70s and '80s psychedelic animation movies (James Whitney, Vince Collins, Marcell Jankovics, Bruno Bozzetto...), and often while drawing we try to get the same idea of trippy movements, but on a still image.

What are the principal steps in your work ?

First, have the overall idea of what we need to do. If it's a band's logo or a cover artwork, we try to capture on the artwork the atmosphere that the music will give. Second, we start deciding if we want to use only lettering or if we wanna have drawings too, and if so, if they are going to be astract shapes or "real" subjects. Afterwards, we start drawing the ideas, sometimes the first one is the one we will use, sometimes we will do other twenty tries before getting the result we want.

At last, we decide if we wanna use also colours, but lately we mostly prefer black & white, which is always very powerful.

We also must say that we daily do a few free drawings (of any kind of subjects, mostly fantastic, cosmic, or animal-related, fruit of imagination or dreams or ideas), so we also have a huge archive of drawings to dig when we need.

Do you do everything by hand or on computer?

We do most of the work by hand, and use the computer only to get the digital format and to fix few things and details. Or sometimes we use the computer to try different assembling options and then we draw the thing again according to the option we chose.

How long does it take you to do a poster?

Sometimes 1 hour, sometimes 1 month. It depends!

You have a very distinctive style, are you doing only what you feel like or if tomorrow somebody asks you an oil painting with horses running out of water with a sunset backdrop, is it a problem or are you up for it ?

I think we would also try doing that oil painting with horses, water and sunset eh eh! Every idea could be a good starting point, and the result will come out for sure as something different, for we would try to use that subject only as a start, and then anything else would be changed by our own imagination in that peculiar moment.

For which band have you already worked for?

Some bands and musicians we did artworks for: Black Sabbath, Albert Ayler, Ginger Baker, Santana, Sun Ra, Jooklo, Makoto Kawabata, Kluster, Zurich against Zurich, Loosers, Peaking Lights, Burnt Hills, G.I.Joe, Movie Star Junkies, Rodney Forest, Ravi Padmanabha, and many others...

We do all the records' artworks for our own label, plus we worked for Qbico, Holidays Records, Conspiracy Records, ESP' Disk, Northern-Spy.

For which band would you love to work?

For any band who plays consciousness-expanding music.

Do you choose the artists yourself?

Sometimes.

What is the most difficult part in designing a poster ?

Deciding when it's finished!

Do you think you are part of a "Graphic Scene", if so who else ?

Yes, we are part of our own scene, we believe.

A bit of self-promotion, take advantage of it, it's free, where can we see your work , on the web or in real life?

You can see our artwork getting hold of some of the several limited edition vinyls, cds', posters, t-shirts that we designed (and silk-screened sometimes).

We did a few exhibitions, one pretty big and complete at the Fine Arts School of St. Etienne, France, in 2009, so if you hear that we are doing some exhibit somewhere, that's also a good way.

And, you are always welcome on http://www.troglosound.tk/ (poster artworks are posted on the "About" page, while records' artworks are on the "Releases" page).

The best praise you received lately?
!!!!!!!!!

What can we wish you for the future?

Peace and endless fantasy!