Mater Dea: Satyricon

With Mater Dea’s second full album release, “Satyricon”, the band has dynamically expanded upon their unique sound and visual imagery that brought us the powerful and stirring debut “Below the Mists, Above the Brambles”. By keeping their music and lyrics faithfully in tune with their great gypsy spirit and forest-folk style of storytelling, Satyricon not only rocks us, Satyricon spiritually entertains and uplifts us by masterfully carrying further the epic journey of Mater Dea and magically harmonizing all in their path as only they can.

Simon Papa and Marco Strega were kind enough to answer our questions for this California to Italy Interview:

WHITEDOG: How does the lyrical process flow for you?

SIMON PAPA: I first work on the vocal melody, sometimes alone and sometimes, when I come to a standstill, I ask for Marco’s help, in this album many of the chorus were created together with Marco.

WHITEDOG: Do you have a special place where you go off and write lyrics? How does this all come together for you?

SIMON: After the melody is completed I use to sit in from of my pc with my blank virtual sheet and after the first moment of writing nonsense the ideas and images starts to flow of their own accord and I simply follow them, merge up with them, letting the emotions stream until the story takes over my initial intentions and leads me where it wants to..

WHITEDOG: Marco, do you write songs on acoustic guitar first?

MARCO STREGA: I start with recording the electric guitar riff that will become the harmonic and rythmic structure of the song, after that I proceed building the arrangement starting from drum and bass, then I put all the melodic structure of the orchestration.

WHITEDOG: Do you work on several songs at once, little by little, or do you focus on one song until it’s completely written?

MARCO: We use to write and record each song one at a time, but this depends also from the time it takes Simon to create the melody and lyrics of the song after I give her the harmonic structure to work on. I normally work on the final arrangement after the recording of Simon’s voice.

WHITEDOG: How did you come to choose the SG as your signature guitar sound? (rather than a strat or les paul)

MARCO: I use Gibson guitars since I started to play, sometimes also Les Paul, but I think the dark sound of the SG model fits better MaterDea’s compositions. Fender doesn’t work good with me: the neck is too thin for my large hands and the sound too bright. And don’t forget a Faun like me cannot use nothing less that a horned guitar!

WHITEDOG: You don’t seem to rely heavily on a lot of effects, is this because you prefer a more organic sound?

MARCO: The live set I use during our performances is the same I use during the recording sessions: a Vox valve pre-amp, Gibson Sg guitars and two valve heads marshall 100 w. I don’t like too much sophisticated sounds , I prefer the minimalist one of the 70/80s, that kind of sound coming directly from your hands and amplifier!

WHITEDOG: What was it like having John Whelan as a guest musician and co-writer on Below The Mists, Above The Brambles and how did you hook up with him?

SIMON: This one of our most happy experiences.. after falling in love with “Trip to Skye” one of John’s most beautiful compositions, I decided to write lyrics for it and Marco started to work on the arrangement, that, you know, is really amazing! Then, after finishing the recordings, we found John’s email on the net and wrote him. We didn’t received any response for more then two weeks and were starting to worrying about it, but then I wrote him again and gave him my telephone number: one day in the middle of “An Elder flute”s recordings my cell phone rang and it was him! He is really a kind person, he enjoyed our version of his tune and agreed to play his accordion for the intro, then he sent the recording to us. And it was all so natural! We also choose together with him a new title for our version, “Another trip to Skye” and then he was so kind to write the liner notes for “Below the mists, above the brambles”. We were very honoured to have him playing as a special guest, and we are still in contact with him, he is really a nice person and a very good friend to us and to MaterDea

WHITEDOG: Your band mates all bring something unique to your songs and the camaraderie of the band is a joy to watch, what’s it like when your all together?

MARCO: Yes, our band mates are very smart people and we shared many adventures together with them during our touring this year, also if some of them changed in the last months.. the energy of every one brings new colours to the sound of our songs and also if sometime is not easy to harmonize everything, the band is beginning to be something like a happy clan and we are always in contact with everyone One of the funniest story is about the night after the show we had in Trieste, for the Triskell Festival, last June..

SIMON: We went to the hotel, very tired after the long travel from home and the show, I myself on that day had the worst cold I took in the last 20 years! We went to bed,. me Betta and Tiziana were sleeping in the same room and fell at once asleep. I woke up early, and when I turned on my cell phone I found a text message from Marco asking if we had one bed more in our room, Max, the drummer, was snoring so loud he and Morgan couldn’t sleep at all! When I went out of the hotel I found him lying inside his car, with such a tired face.. you had to see him then! After that day the nickname of Max became “the Ogre” and we decided always to ask for a single room for him, even better if it was far from ours!

WHITEDOG:  Where can we buy your new album?

MARCO: The album at present can be bought on cdbaby and it is also available by download in the online shops including iTunes. It is also possible to order it writing an email to orders@materdea.com