THE ELECTRONIC CORNER

ODRZ is an Italian post industrial project featuring Massimo Mascheroni and Antonio Maione.

This is an interview with Massimo, a music enthusiast with an eclectic taste who draws inspiration for his music from a wide pool of influences.

Sir Joe: Massimo, you are one half of ODRZ, which stands for…?

Massimo Mascheroni: Actually, it means nothing.
The story is the following: for 8 years Antonio and I played in a cyberpunk industrial power trio, called ‘Onde Rozze’, or ‘Rough Waves’ in English. When the third member of the band quit, we squeezed the name to ODRZ.

SJ: I see. We can say ODRZ music is actually closer to noise experimentation than to music as we know it, with verse, chorus, maybe a bridge and so on.
Also, I know you are actually in love with many different kinds of music, from very romantic ballads to heavy metal.
So, I was wondering: how come that from such a broad spectrum of music that you like and you could choose from, you ended up making something which is not really music? Is there a connection or is it pure coincidence?

MM: I really don’t know.
It is true that I’m not a conventional music listener, because I pass from japanoise, post industrial, industrial, post punk, new wave to easily listening, Italian pop music, progressive, italodisco, disco music and so on.
I think that such a broad range of music opened my mind as a listener, and it made me propose music which is a mix of all the things I listen to.
Even though ODRZ is mainly focused on industrial music and noise music, we are interested in adding something more musical to the noise, like psychedelic, for example.

SJ: Earlier, when I introduced you, I said you are one half of the band, and you mentioned Antonio, your musical partner.
What is your role and what is Antonio’s role in the band?

MM: ODRZ is just an entity.
Each of us is one half of this entity and we don’t have a specific role in the band.
We play different kinds of instruments, but we are just one half to the other.

SJ: How do you create your songs for ODRZ? In my case (I mostly do synth-pop) I kind of dream the skeleton of the song, and I only have to ‘dress’ it when I am in the studio. With the kind of music you make, though, I think such an approach is not feasable. So, how do you actually start and then develop a song?

MM: The first step is to have a project. We start from a project, and then we create some rules for it.
Then we open our sound library, we select some sounds and we start to play.
As we play, we improvise and when we come out with something we like (you may call it the skeleton of the song), we add more stuff.
We don’t have rules about the length of the song, as it depends of the project. We had some project that were 30 seconds long and others that lasted one hour.

(You are now invited to watch the video below, starting at 07:23.
Believe me, it’s something you don’t want to miss )

ODRZ official website