Bile Bear | Interview | Denis Cassiere | New Album, ‘Cage Mates’
Bile Bare is a project by Denis Cassiere, taking its influences from Vivaldi to Blind Willie Johnson, filtered by the inner landscape of Calabria.
His latest album, ‘Cage Mates’ is a journey to Cassiere world, from Calabria to Blind Willie Johnson.
“I love artists that master the art of bleeding on records”
Was there a certain moment in your life when everything clicked and you decided to start with the guitar?
Denis Cassiere: I think it was when I was eleven, there was this friend and we were on the beach, he had just started learning the guitar. I remember this moment during sunset when he picked up his battered up piece and started singing a song, improvising words and chords. It was a silly tune about whatever, but it was transfixing and it made me smile. I guess I saw the guitar as the perfect partner in crime for my love-bombing business. Many years later I decided to confirm this choice by quitting my nth 9-5 job. But that is another story, some of which is told here in this mini feature by Slow Fi Records.
And in a way also in the videoclip of Bile Bear’s, ‘Alma H’.
How would you describe your early influences? Do you still follow a certain musician that is a continuous inspiration for you?
I love artists that master the art of bleeding on records. More than their music is probably their courage to open up that inspires me. I mean, there is a very thin line between an obscene display of your feelings and a great love song. I could say Nick Cave or Morricone, but to mention only few would probably play out to the merits of other artists which are less known but that deserve just as much attention. For example, last summer in Nuremberg I was at a gig of James P Honey at the Bruckner Festival. His work is incredible. And yesterday, a Slovenian Radio Student presented my ‘Cage Mates’ along with works by Joseph Allred. I didn’t know him, this morning I listened to his last album and it blew me away. Also a few months ago I discovered the work of French artist Sophia Djebel Rose. I mean, Benjamin Clementine was playing the Paris subway for years and people walked by him everyday. We need less celebration of the dead or established artists and more support for the alive, barely known great ones, including myself of course!
“I like to hear as many sounds as possible”
How do you usually approach music making? What can you tell us about your guitar technique?
I try to go by what Picasso once said, that inspiration has to find you at work. More than talent I believe that the word that better describes what I do is obsession. Bukowski used to call it the trap. You get hooked at things you love doing. Then you realize that, even though this is an organic process and it can’t be rushed, if you don’t sit down and are ready to work at it, it simply won’t happen. So my approach is that I try to show up everyday and tune in, even if this means sitting for 4 hours in front of an empty page or strum gutless catatonic crap. I do it because I believe it clears the way for the good stuff to come.
About my guitar technique, I am self taught, I can’t read music either. I have a very physical relationship with the instrument, that’s probably why I love Paco De Lucia and Camaron De La Isla, or Bukka White, I go quite percussive on most acoustic instruments. Generally speaking I don’t like guitarists. More with the years I approach the guitar as one would with an exotic instrument, an iranian Setar, a North African Lute or like a Calabrian Chitarra Battente. I like to strum it weirdly, to detune it, I like to hear as many sounds as possible. For example I love João Gilberto but I also love Blixa Bargeld and Marc Ribot. I love artists who approach the guitar like an orchestra or like a droning device. I’m trying to combine that in my music and find a balance between the two.
You have two albums out, ‘Bear Bile – Bile Bear’ and ‘Cage Mates’ which have some similarities, differences and where did inspirations for the tracks come from?
Bile Bear wasn’t on my agenda. It was April 2022 and I was actually recording my new songwriting album, songs written on the road which still I haven’t got the time to release. During the same days I had restored old VHS-C that contained family memories. One tape in particular was an old 8mm video of my grandmother. The video was showing everyday life in the tyrrhenian village of Fuscaldo, Calabria. My grandfather was a fisherman, all those people’s lives were basically at the mercy of the sea. I had these 8mm images in mind when, during a break between a song and another, I started to play an arpeggio. That night I couldn’t sleep, and I projected the old video of my grandmother. It was a silent film and as it played, I listened to the arpeggio recorded in the same afternoon. That became the first Bile Bear track, ‘Marù’.
The other tracks followed in the matter of a couple of weeks, all brought by vivid memories of places, people and ideas. ‘Cage Mates’ is a son of this bout of creativity. In July as Bear Bile was released, I knew that there were more tracks where the music for Bear Bile had come from. Writing for the Bear Bile project was like finding a little precious stream of water and I kept digging without letting other things get in the way.
What about your older material? Tell us about it?
Well there is ‘Multipolar Vol I,’ which is my first official album. I think ‘Cage Mates’ somehow reconnects to it in the way that it develops an evocative, cinematic feel. There is this songwriter vein combined with instrumental exploration. Few years later, L’Urlo di un Uccello was mainly conceived as an album of acoustic songs. I worked a lot on the lyrics, typing all night at an old Olivetti Lettera 25, and it’s the favourite of many who dig a certain way of writing and a feel of warm, quiet atmosphere. With the years I experimented a lot with songwriting and electric sounds. ‘Supernova’ and the weekly project ‘Fat Jesus’ are a part of that. I still play many of these songs and few aficionados love them as much as Bile Bear stuff. Plus there is the experience with the band Aghia Sophia [see here].
What’s next for you?
I would like to record that famous album interrupted by the emergence of Bile Bear! But I am also itching to get back on tour. Few months ago I played the Tropea Blues Festival here in the South of Italy, and it felt good to be howling the blues for the people. But the last tour went on for two years and it spanned over 20 countries. It wasn’t planned, I was hitchhiking, sleeping in hostels, crashing on friends couches, playing everywhere, streets, little clubs, festivals and so on… It was extraordinary and beautiful but also exhausting. I would like to plan the next one a bit more carefully, in a way that is all around sustainable. The new show contains some of all the aforementioned albums plus new material. There is looping, drones, blues and instrumental combined. There are moments in which one could literally dance and others more psychedelic, spacey and soundtrack-like. We will see, who knows, maybe the next tour could start in Slovenia!
Klemen Breznikar
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