Little Earthquakes?

Confident, almost being full of himself. It’s a fact and he knows it. Is he another run of the mill self-appointed last-of-the-rockstars pumped with hot air? Not really, no.

That Niki Gravino is a good musician is undisputable, and that’s something he’s aware of. ‘Good musician’ is an understatement, of course, for Niki’s transformation into an all rounder – producer, singer, guitarist and arranger to mention a few – places him onto one rare pedestal in the Maltese music scene. He has worked hard for this completeness, spending long nights up in his own digging away at mids in Foreface Studios, or in his bedroom reading philosophy, sometimes even forgetting to dine. And, almost suddenly, it was time to launch the new Niki Gravino, and the CD single Vitamins and Eyecream. I thought the guy was taking it too far – doing the launch at MITP in Valletta following a couple of glam/art rock photoshoots and more promo material on the same lines. I was, in the most honest sense, really sceptical of whether this blessed launch party could work out as everyone wanted.

Having worked with Niki for a good three years during my management of SKyN, I knew the guy was ambitious, and ambition can work both ways. SKyN was something else – technically superb yet less colourful, sometimes turning itself into a conflict of hardheads which would nonetheless resolve itself in one way or another without aftershocks. It was a unique band; in its resolve, its grind, its power when things went right, its abrasiveness, and its friendship.

How it all changed in these six months, I thought to myself as I walked into the squalor of an ever-desert 9pm Valletta. From me hugging the band goodbye to Niki about to embrace his brave new world, a leap into the dark which I believed he was doing all too quickly in pure, unmitigated Gravino-style.

But as I entered the main hall at MITP my doubts vanished among the dense dark cloud of incense accompanying the around three hundred of audience – most of them paying for the launch party of someone they had barely heard of before.

Forget the name launch party, please. First, the surroundings were elegantly gruesome, fitting perfectly to the new concept Gravino was launching. It looked like those goth bars which police serials or B-movies often stereotype (invariably, in both Nash Bridges and CSI: Miami the good ones descend into this underworld to make polite questions and collect clues or else to clean it from evil). It was an elegantly planned atmospheric, as were the Aleateia actors dressed and painted in semi-demonical, accompanying the music through their dancing or mingling with the audience (resulting in a few frights too).

Intro with violins, crystal-clear sound (Joe Genovese, who if not?) suggestive low-key lighting and well placed spots and scanners swirling around, the show kicked off causing a hush to descend among the audience. Gravino himself appeared onstage for the first track, Fingers, sending the audience wild. It looked as if he was launching his third album.

I had often likened Niki to Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction, particularly for his posture on the guitar and his hairdo. But today he came across as a living reincarnation of Prince, dressed emphatically and donning makeup. So he strutted along the stage during his five-track performance, wriggling and swaying around with half the mike stand in a manner akin to JA’s singer, Perry Farrell.

Musically he was very far away from Messrs Farrell and Navarro. Owing Niki a window of knowledge on the masters of electronica in the eighties, I could easily detect the sounds of darker Depeche Mode, the lightweight chording typical of Duran Duran, with the spectre of Nine Inch Nails creeping slowly into the music.

The live performance was sublime, everything smoothly in place without a single twitch by any of the performers. Following Fingers and Like Feathers, the show went on with an extended version of NIN’s Hurt and an electronised yet watered down version of Cult’s Rain. And then, of course, came the title-track of his CD single, Vitamins and Eyecream, before the all too deserved encore. It only took around one hour, a theatrical that concluded itself with bows, applauses, thanks, hugs, and Madame Marie’s conclusion in perfect French (which very few people understood, and even less worried about).

Less than a week after the launch it’s me and Niki sitting at a table again. But while usually it would be the two of us kidding each other after the Monday 5-a-side footie (mostly about bad dribbles or a couple of shots which ended in the parking) in front of a beer, today it’s question time and a coffee.

My first question is whether he is concerned about writing music for the masses or art for himself. “I try to strike a balance basically. After all, I believe strongly that art is not the artist’s stage; art starts to exist in an interaction between the artist and the appreciator. Art isn’t my music, or the appreciator’s feeling, but an interaction between the two. And I believe that this strange art that no-one can understand is stronger than that other art which exists only through a recipe where the audience’s psychology is studied so that the artist gives them what they want…” Translate the last sentence into his distaste for Nickelback or Papa Roach.

Over five thousand flyers have been distributed around Malta bearing Niki’s face and his intention to launch Vitamins & Eyecream. And most of those who received them probably asked their pal “who is Niki Gravino?”

I am asking him the same question, but although the wording is similar, I am probing something deeper, completely different from the music.

“Niki Gravino is someone who avoids knowing how to answer that question,” he says.

“Do you see two different Niki Gravino’s?”

“I don’t see two Niki Gravino’s. I see a lot of people – or rather characters in a play. Not a character as a personality but a character as an actor. For example, if I’m dining out I don’t feel like destroying the guitar like I would like to do onstage… If I’m on a stage it’s different than dining out.”

“Vitamins and Eyecream is a metaphor towards something real. But I prefer not to speak about that in a direct manner, I’d rather people interpret my lyrics the way they would like to, and understand or hurt them in their own way. To give a little hint I could say that it’s a song where I intend to make fun of myself through sarcasm.”

“Normally I don’t decide to write something and start writing it. It comes by itself, and since I’m writing my music directly in the studio, it is oriented around the sounds I’m writing. Generally the meaning of the words comes out of something, somewhere I don’t know; and it always makes sense. But I never know the meaning before the project is finished. The sound of the lyrics is ultimately more important to me than their meaning.”

Looking at his whole persona, Niki could easily be added to the list of eighties revival aficionados that are currently filling the airwaves. Yet the word eighties is too encompassing to define a genre, particularly his genre; the eighties we are talking about, for clarity’s sake, is neither Van Halen nor Alice Cooper nor Bananarama nor Toc Toc; we are talking about Depeche Mode’s dramatisation process and the similar yet failed Duran Duran attempt at the above. Not the cheese counter, if you know what I mean.

“I am actually capitalising on the return of the eighties that is, in a way, already past it. However, at the same time as capitalising on it I try to escape from being another product. Musically, I’m bred in the eighties, but funnily enough I didn’t get the influences of my music from there. I used to listen to, say, bands like Whitesnake, Europe… Bon Jovi… however those bands are the only thing from the eighties that I don’t use,” he says with a laugh. “I have never listened to a whole album – save for Depeche Mode – of any electronica project.”

His mobile phone momentarily interrupts the discussion. I complement him on a coffee that, at half eight in the evening tasted like manna, and we continue with the discussion.

“As I was saying, the electronic influences that people can discern from my music are due to the fact that that music has been at heart without me actually being a big follower.”

Mr Narcissus Gravino would be a name for him, perhaps? “Niki Gravino as a project is all about one particular artist, first and foremost. It’s a man who writes music on his own and has everything under his control so, yes, you can take that as narcissism. It is also a question of the listener meeting not with a chance factor in a band, but with the exact expression as intended by the artist. He is meeting the artist not in flesh but through the mediation of music.”

On SKyN: “I would like the band to continue, but ultimately I’m the person who is holding it back. My time is completely concentrated on this project and I can’t even hold a job if I wanted to. But I think that SKyN was – and can still be – a school for me. I have played with great musicians and they’re fantastic friends too. However, I don’t think I can give what I gave in the past, nor do I think that any of the others can. But I still wish this project could keep rolling.”

Vitamins and Eyecream may be a not-so-mainstream project, but the radios are giving it due attention. Two reasons work in favour of Niki here: first, the music’s production is superb (save a little low volume on the vocals) and, secondly, the polished rashness of Like Feathers and Fingers steer well into the mainstream territory whose borders are increasingly looking blurred.

And, remembering my positive surprise at the launch party, I allowed myself a wry smile when Niki Gravino told me he’s never really watched Perry Farrell. A showman like that who is neither Robert Plant nor Axl Rose, nor Iggy Pop nor Perry Farrell has a good ton of guts to work with. Stage presence in front of the mirror? It works miracles, try it.

Do place your bets on him, though don’t get too carried away. If he gets the opportunity to pack up and leave, Niki won’t be waiting twice for that (“nothing will stand in its way”) and he’s already rolled up his sleeves.

He did do more than just a few ripples, this good old in-Niki. Times change of course, and the next step could be him doing a few more little earthquakes. Keep the faith.