Torre di Fine is a really unique act on the scene, who have just released an epic new album titled Girl On The Shore. The band make post-rock music that should be of interest to anyone into the genre, as they’re very talented. If you’ve not checked them out yet, you can find a full stream at the bottom of this interview.

By Jane Howkins

You recently released an album titled Girl On The Shore. What can you tell us about the album?

Thanks for having us and for the kind words in the review.

Where to start with Girl On The Shore? It’s a 50-minute car crash, featuring 10 songs that flow seamlessly between each other about pain, absence and hypocrisy. It paints a picture of solitude and doesn’t give answers, but rather focuses on instants and glimpses of existence. It took us more than a year to write, record and produce it, way too many beers, delusions, late night messages and weekends of rain, but it turned out exactly how we hoped.

How has the reception to the album been so far, and where can the record be purchased?

Honestly, we were not expecting this warm reception. I was quite sure nobody would have listened to it but I was proved wrong; I’m aware that it gets objectively abrasive in some parts and doesn’t really take any compromise in production or themes, but everyone told us that they could get attached to it way more thanks to this approach. It’s always a double-edged sword when people tell you that albums like these represent them, especially those close to you, but I’m glad our noise could soothe their time a bit more than regular life. You can find the album pretty much everywhere, but the best place is surely Ghost City’s Bandcamp, where I think there are still a couple of CDs laying around.

Do you plan to release any singles in the near future?

Not really, I don’t think there’s any particular song out of Girl On The Shore that could work estranged from the context; we did produce a video for Kenopsia and had some great feedback on it, so maybe I’m wrong on this point as well. Aside from that, we still have several tracks in the archive that never made the final cut but could be quite interesting as lonesome outputs. We’ll see what the future holds… probably nothing in the best case.

Have you started writing for your next album/EP, or is it too soon?

That’s a scary thought, I’m still heavily burned from GOTS so the idea of getting pen and paper out isn’t the most comforting at the moment. The last year of writing and production was very tough on my mental health and I’m sure that rushing back onto writing would only amount to similarly sounding and structured tracks; I’d never make two albums that are exact copies of each other and I definitely need some space and time to put all the screws back in their place.

Do you have anything else exciting coming up this year?

Retirement, hopefully. More work, probably.

Your music has a post-rock sound.. What/who influences you most as artists? What have you been listening to recently?

Way too many to count: we all listen to so much music that I’m sure it all permeates our way of playing and writing. It’s pretty clear we were listening to quite a lot of Ben Frost, Low, Tim Hecker and other related post rock/ambient artists while producing, but we also came in the studio with the precise idea of ‘all played by hand, all going through amps’ a la Steve Albini. I’m also really fond of Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu, Former Ghosts, etc) and David Sylvian’s songwriting, so those influences are always in my mind, regardless of what I’m working on. I just had a look on Spotify and lately, I’ve been listening to the latest Depeche Mode, Lana Del Rey and Skrillex LPs, all three incredible albums.

What is the writing and recording process like for you?

I’d say very disjointed, but it’s basically all my fault.

I usually disappear for a couple of months and cry over dozens of pages of demos, ideas and drafts; when I’m tired of them, I pack everything and bring it to Matteo where he has the daunting task to interpret all this madness. From there we play together all the parts, work on arrangements, experiment with sounds and try to find some sort of form to lay other instruments on top. It’s always interesting how all our tracks start as guitar/bass/vocal archetypes and then get processed beyond recognition; we don’t stick to sonic boundaries and really let our feeling flow onto every note we play. I wanted Girl On The Shore to be bleak and sincere, and I’m happy we got to it.

You’re from Italy. How is the local music scene faring at the moment?

I think the independent Italian music culture is creatively great, pretty much all genres have some great outputs and there are tons of astounding projects being released every day. There’s a general sense of DIYness that’s finally fully taking form, as we were stuck for too much time on the boring “demo-rehearsal-studio” formula that gave birth to so many boring records. The scene itself is on life support though, it’s very tough to organise live events, festivals and other means of getting the music out there; the market is small, but internet is luckily helping everyone to be heard outside of national boundaries.

Do you have any tour dates lined up for the UK?

We don’t like to play live, it’s very tough to bring our style outside of the computer realm and we’d probably need 6 musicians on stage. I most definitely don’t want to be one of those bands that stare at their computers while playing. The good news is that we will play a one-time-only live set at the end of May here in the north of Italy, but that will be it.

Any last words for the fans?

What fans?