A dark, intoxicating, oxygen hungry monster comprised of thundering guitars, sub bass lines, slow relentless beats and sampled vocals from obscure esoteric traditions, Blackwood is the solo doom dub project of Eraldo Bernocchi.
Uniquely, Blackwood also gives voice to musical instruments made from the bones of the dead.
Blackwood is the place where all childhood dreams end, devoured by those who fail to understand the wishes of a brighter future. It’s the ice pick wielded by a cold God and guaranteed to strike even the most innocent: “Believe in Me and you’ll be blind”.
Blackwood is the place where all Bernocchi’s nightmares have relocated, a place where the smell of burning wood is omnipresent, and where scythes and ropes yield sparse comfort for any inhabitants.
The debut album from Blackwood “As the world rots away” is already set on Subsound Records.
Comprising of 6 tracks (with CD bonus tracks) on both CD and vinyl formats, release date TBA.
Bone trumpets will summon the ritual live Blackwood experience where doom crushing riffs meet walls of deep down tuned drones and earth shaking bass lines. For maximum impact, Bernocchi (Sigillum S , Metallic Taste Of Blood, Obake, Osso, Bill Laswell, Raiz, Mick Harris, Giovanni Lindo Ferretti and many others) will be joined on stage by Jacopo Pierazzuoli (Obake, Morkobot) on drums.
Why Dark Times?
Because this is what we are living right now Miguel. I never been a super positive person, this is a matter of fact. But what people tend to label as pessimism to me
is just being realistic. Open your window and tell me what you see, the planet in down falling.
Blackwood is a place where every person has been at least once in his/her life. It’s deep in the forest where things start to twist and become creepy, sinister, monstrous.
What kind of inner atmosphere feed the core of this album?
The air you breathe when you discover that your child dreams have been eaten, alive. How many hopes and dreams did we loose since childhood? I constantly loose them, like paving a road of broken promises.
How many time have we been betrayed? The atmosphere of delusion, of melancholy, betrayal from one point of view…on the other side the power of sound and vibrations of a primordial force. I learned to accept the Light and the Darkness.
Do you have two profiles, at least? Do they quarrel or dialogue?
They all dialogue and quarrel at the very same time. In reality it’s always me, it’s just THAT particular side you face when shadows are thicker than the usual…if you know what I mean. Next album will be lighter… promise.
Guitar and drums are a basic platform, what kind of structures did they construct?
The whole album is just me. I played and programmed everything. Jacopo Pierazzuoli (Morkobot, Obake) will join me live on selected gigs/festivals, other gigs I’ll be alone on stage.
I started from the riffs. they are simple, nothing incredible, but to be effective you must be simple, you must reach the core of feelings in a snap. It took me quite a lot to come up with those riffs as every time I was overcomplicating things.
Drums are all programmed, but I practically destroyed them trough hardware and software until they were sounding rough and “rotting”.
Bass could only be sub as these are the frequencies that reach the nucleus of your brain and at the same time shake your bowels, plus the guitars are so downtuned that a “regular” bass was at risk of creating a real frequency disaster.
So, these were the foundations and once they were working and moving the machine I started to work on the rest. There are vocals, sampled stuff mainly from occult traditions, weird Indian rituals, mexican prayers to the Santisima Muerte, everything is treated, barely understandable. Last but not least, percussions and “incidentals” both coming from bones of any kind. Stuff I collected during the years, tibetan trumpets made of human bones, small bird wings.
Everything recorded, sampled and treated.
What's your secret desire at this point of your musicians work?
To never stop exploring, being nervous before going on stage, knowing and interacting with great artists/human being. It's a fire that burns inside and until the flame will be there I'll follow this path. There's quite a lot coming up this year!
Eraldo Bernocchi is an Italian composer, arranger, producer and guitarist with a solid reputation as an all round sonic sculptor. Starting his career in the late 70’s as a guitarist in independent punk bands, in the mid ’80’s Eraldo co-founded the conceptual audio project Sigillum-S (with Paolo Bandera and Luca di Giorgio), which grew into a highly acclaimed international cult act.
In the 90’s, together with his wife Petulia Mattioli, Eraldo established Verba Corrige Productions, which became the base for a raft of notable audio visual projects and co-operations. A relentless sound explorer, Eraldo Bernocchi has collaborated with numerous artists including Mick Harris (SIMM, Black Engine), Bill Laswell (Somma, Charged, Ashes and numerous others), Nils Petter Molvaer, Harold Budd , Russell Mills, Toshinori Kondo (Charged), Raiz, Almamegretta, Spectre, Sensational, DJ Disk, Professor Shebab, Thomas Fehlmann, Zu (as Black Engine), DJ Olive, Markus Stockhausen, Giovanni Lindo Ferretti (as producer and author), Robin Guthrie, Colin Edwin and Balazs Pandi among many others.
In addition to regular work scoring music for adverts and other multimedia projects, Eraldo has composed film music for Academy Award winner Gabriele Salvatores and produced numerous art installations with Petulia Mattioli, as well as other artists including Russell Mills and Harold Budd.
Uniquely, Eraldo is also known for being invited to play and organize several special events for H.H. The Dalai Lama in Italy.
In 2008 Eraldo founded RareNoise Records, a new London based label, which aims to showcase a wide range of cutting edge music. The label has since become an important conduit championing several forward thinking and original artists, as well as releasing a number of Eraldo’s own recordings, including ambient guitar duo Parched (with Davide Tiso from Ephel Duath fame), Somma (with Nils Petter Molvaer, Bill Laswell, Raiz and Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari), Owls (again with Fornasari and Tony Wakeford), Metallic Taste Of Blood (with Colin Edwin from Porcupine Tree, Balazs Pandi and Jamie Saft) and Obake, a doomtronic quartet with Colin Edwin/Porcupine Tree on bass , Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari and Balazs Pandi.
In 2014 “Mutations” , the second Obake album, came out harvesting incredible reviews and appearances in major festivals. As well Osso, his new band with Morkobot.
Eraldo is currently completing production work for the 30 years anniversary outputs from Sigillum S, promoting the new Metallic Taste of Blood with Colin Edwin and Ted Parsons on drums, working on a secret solo project, finalizing the power noise duo Mangiati Vivi first output, starting a new duo with Prakash Sontakke, one of the most amazing slide guitar players from India and starting to plan a project with renowned Japanese ambient artist Chihei Hatakeyama.
