Fast Animals and Slow Kids: “To look back without shame”

“It’s tomorrow already,” screams the record. And, to read that title, one would evoke a better world, in which tomorrow has everything that the present has seen denied. Possibility of sharing, joy, happiness, normality. A set of qualities which, however, does not find its celebration in music. “That tomorrow that would be expected to improve is not always as it was imagined”, explain the Fast Animals and Slow Kids, alias Aimone Romizi, Alessandro Gercini, Jacopo Gigliotti and Alessio Mingoli, boys from Perugia, friends first, then artists.

The image of the four, whose first work, Cavalli, dates back to 2011, stands out on the cover of the album, out on September 17. They have long faces, their gaze fixed on a distant point. “And enough of this obsession with smiling at the future,” she sings Stupid Song, the single that, on Friday, will accompany the debut of It is already tomorrow. But there is no negativity in the song. Only a vision of reality that recent events have made clearer.

It is already tomorrow comes two years after your last record, Nocturnal Animals. What’s inside?
“We are the cliché band, with the notebook in our pocket. We take notes on the moments of our life, to metabolize them later. In the album, there is everything we have experienced in the last twenty-four months. There is the pandemic, the life we ​​have lived, the human tragedies we have seen take place. There is a tour that hasn’t gone and there is a sense of hope, of something coming back ».

However, there also seems to be a lot of social criticism: anger, frustration.
“Surely, It is already tomorrow focuses on the future and the sense of time. We have tried, however, to give a double reading. We live in a present that is ever closer to the future: a temporal dimension that a thin, fragile plate separates from the next. We live in the light of what we will be then, in two minutes, weeks or months. We live in the hope of being able to be better versions of ourselves ”.

And is it bad?
“No, but this continuous projection of the self into the future alters the perception of the present self, and this generates anxiety. We live in eternal stress, a state of continuous planning. We have the anguish of a future that has not yet arrived ».

Is the awareness of this dualism the daughter of the pandemic or of thirty years?
“Perhaps, of both. Thirty years are not focusing on them, we are letting them go. What matters are the mental and human passages we are making, the questions we ask ourselves regardless of age “.

Therefore, the “what” before the “when”.
“Yup. We don’t believe it is necessary to do certain things because you are of a certain age. In our group of friends, a group of peers, we are not all focused on the same goals. We have different paths, and they are all fine. Because letting oneself be carried away by one’s own flow does not mean losing the ability to recognize and analyze what life, in its complexity, offers ».

Therefore, in What would he tell us, sing “If we have to tell our children what these years will taste like, will the wind of this ignorance pass on all our mistakes”?
«In the disc, some things have come together that are part of our perception today. There are aspects of this society that do not find us in line: the rampant ignorance, capable of exploding in the most blind social anger, the progressive disintegration of the community that we are witnessing ».

How can we fight all this?
“This time, we have no answers. This album, at least in our perception, asks itself many questions without offering any solution. It is a novelty for us. Usually, we thought of songs as closed paths in our heads. Today, however, we need comparison ».

And, in fact, the release of the disc will be accompanied by It’s already tomorrow – The talk, at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence at 4 pm on 13 September.
«The idea was born by chance. At thirty, we found ourselves confronting the men who were our fathers at our age. The result was a profound conversation, sharing a moment, and we thought of bringing together some friends to ask them to talk with us about the issues we brought to the disc, a dialogue disc ».

Because you have decided to open up, on the disc, to external collaborations, with Lodo Guenzi (Like an animal) e Willie Peyote (What would he tell us)?
«We have only now matured the answer, by self-psychoanalysis. In the last period, there has been a lot of distance between people and we have begun to feel alone. We felt the need to have friends around us to talk to. We know Lodo from the days when there were ten people in front of our boxes. We are friends, true friends. There is a sincere harmony between us ».

From a musical point of view, It’s Tomorrow Already is very different from past albums. Stylistic choice or chance?
“Physiological process. It can be difficult to know, from the outside, but we have been playing together for ten years: we have always been the same, we have always lived in the same city. We talk about the same issues every day, to the point of making it an obsession. The listener is able to perceive what is in the albums, but what is between the albums he does not hear, he does not see. In the end, we gave ourselves only one rule ».

Which?
“Consistency. Coherence with what we like, not with what we should be according to an external viewer. It is already very difficult like this: to find a synthesis between the four of us. Therefore, we want the definition of our sound to be up to us, and it is important that it be honest and pure so that we can listen to it over the years without ever having to be ashamed of what we have done ».

Honesty, consistency and purity are part of a difficult road. You have chosen not to marry fashion, so success is easy. How much have you suffered from it?
“Little. Every single one is expected to do better, but there is nothing to regret. We made the choices we made together, and they are always the result of a satisfactory synthesis between our four heads. Being well together and continuing to want to go to dinner in four, for our cocks, is the greatest victory. We don’t suffer for a single that could have been better, also because the music we make is what we would like to hear ».

No regrets, therefore.
“But no. Also because all this, at some point, will end. Like all musicians, we will one day find ourselves doing another job. Music is a random world: today you are there, tomorrow you disappear. What matters is to be able to look back with satisfaction, aware of having left stones, not bread crumbs ».

In April, you will start with a new tour. How much physicality will there be?
«Let’s hope the one that once was. the vaccination campaign is going well and industry experts speak of a return to normality. We have absolute confidence that in April you will be able to do a concert in the presence, standing close, sweaty. together”.