I bump into Bill Kouligas and Gabber Eleganza behind the Stone Island stage at C2C Festival in Turin. Yaeji is spinning records, mixing techno and hyperpop in a set that’s electrifying the crowd below. Bill and Gabber Eleganza’s back-to-back set is scheduled in two hours, so the two DJs have time to relax and chat amid the giant sound system in Lingotto’s cavernous space.
The first thing I ask Alberto (aka Gabber Eleganza) — aside from the usual “How are you?” — is what records they’ll play in their upcoming four-handed DJ set. “We don’t know yet; I think we’ll improvise,” he says. “I mean, we met one night at Bill’s house in Berlin to play some tracks together. But the tracklist will come spontaneously. The only thing we know is the final song.” This hint only heightens my curiosity about their choice of closer. “Nah, it doesn’t count if I tell you,” the Bergamo-born DJ chuckles back. “I can only hint that, since I am Italian and Bill is Greek, we chose a Greek-Italian singer. The most famous one.”
Clearly, he is referring to Demetrio Stratos. But which phase of Stratos’s short yet intense life will feature in this mysterious finale? Fueled by a few too many Moscow mules, I push a bit further: “But are we talking about Demetrio Stratos from I Ribelli or from Area?” This distinction is essential; with the first group, Stratos participated in the fervent beat scene of the 1960s while distinguishing himself with his innate, frightening vocal extension skills; with Area, on the other hand, the 1960s became the 1970s, the beat became prog, and the themes became experimentation and social struggle. Those Area performances at Parco Lambro in Milan are legendary, with keyboardist Paolo Tofani involving the audience in an interactive electronic experience by using two exposed cables connected to his synth. Whoever picked up the two cables would close the device’s circuit, triggering a semi-random arpeggiator that rose in pitch as the resistance between the two cables increased. In essence, slowly a giant chain of people would form among the audience holding hands, generating sci-fi bleeps in a true collective performance art piece.
We’re going to play I Ribelli.” Not expecting such specific questions, Alberto gives in, also curious to see how one can be such a music nerd. At that point, I go all in. “You and Bill are going to play Pugni Chiusi!” He laughs and rushes off to tell Bill I guessed it. This is when the story takes a surreal twist.
Did you know I once lived in Stratos’s widow’s house?” Bill tells me, nearly making me spill my drink in disbelief. “Years ago, I was looking for a place to rent in a specific neighborhood in Athens and a perfect listing. I found myself one afternoon drinking tea with this elderly lady, the owner of the place, who wanted to meet me before letting me rent her house.” When asked, “What do you do for a living?” the founder of PAN Records generically replied that he deals with music. “Ah, I love music, but especially the more experimental kind,” the lady replied. I can only imagine Bill’s expression at that moment. From his cell phone, while Kode9 onstage is summing up twenty glorious years of his Hyperdub in seventy-five minutes, Bill shows me photos of the house: shelves packed with vinyl, boxes full of Stratos’s handwritten lyrics, and a circular painting signed by the avant-garde giants Stratos collaborated with, like John Cage and Andy Warhol.
Fittingly, the theme of this year’s C2C Festival is “Living With the Gods,” a topos borrowed from Neil MacGregor’s work about “the stories which give shape to our lives, and the different ways in which societies imagine their place in the world.” If gods are the creation of human civilizations, every individual has the potential to become one. In a way, Bill himself “lived with the gods” for six years; two years ago, Stratos’s widow sold the house and donated the entire archive to the Malagola Vocal School in Ravenna. And these cultural deities, as always, give rise to new generations of gods, who — at least once a year, for over two decades — gather at the same temple at C2C.
The gods of today were all well represented: Kode9 playing The Bug’s apocalyptic “Skeng” with Flowdan, testing the power of Funktion-One Loudspeakers; Kali Malone’s sublime organ drones; Nala Sinephro’s delicate harp notes; and the shimmering spectacle of Arca, now transformed into an ecstatic goddess of hedonism, a familiar face at Lingotto since her first live show here nearly a decade ago. Highlights also include Mace’s site-specific psychedelic project Voodoo People, the most amphetaminic hyperpop ever by A.G. Cook and the Snow Strippers, and the symbolist jazz of Shabaka. But one unforgettable moment was Dean Blunt playing One by Metallica, as the crowd raised lighters in the darkness. He even played Korn, whose xenomorphic and hyper-sexualized microphone stand sculpture I later saw at the H. R. Giger exhibition at the Mastio della Cittadella fortress – a curious coincidence.
Old gods have been succeeded by new ones, yet they are shadowed by darker forces. It’s impossible to ignore the hyper-controlling police state, which increasingly invades public gatherings with a threatening and often abusive presence disguised by the usual alarmist rhetoric, gaslighting about much-needed security that, in fact, is not needed.
It’s hard for me not to associate the kites used in this year’s festival imagery with those I saw in a video shot in Gaza a few months ago: children playing with kites on the beach, one of the few places free of bombed ruins, until missiles rain down from the sky, like vengeful thunderbolts from merciless gods. Living with the gods, I think, must include contemplating rebellion, even against those genocidal gods who appear omnipotent, omnipresent, unreachable in their fortresses. Foretelling as ever, Area called their last album (released a year before Stratos’s sudden death at age thirty-four) 1978 gli dei se ne vanno, gli arrabbiati restano! Which translates roughly to “1978 the gods leave, the angry ones stay!” Well, here we are, I guess.
