Black Snake Moan has today premiered the new video for the track titled ‘Goin’ Back’ from the upcoming album ‘Lost in Time’ dropping May 24th.
Black Snake Moan is one of the most original sounding music projects I have heard in a while. Their relentless soundscape brought forth has interpretations of blues, rock, psych-rock… I could go on and on. I hear a bit of everything. But, over everything and anything else, I hear sheer originality. Done in breathtaking form. This is the type of music that creates long lasting fans around the world. It has that certain something. The beginning of that evolution of revolution that makes music a career and Black Snake Moan memorable.
Exclusive Q&A
Tell us about the new video and the upcoming album coming, Lost In Time;, out May 24th.
I’m grateful for this space being dedicated to me! The new Goin’ Back’s video , is a dreamlike journey, in my homeland, in my places of memory, listening to the echo of past lives.
A reflection on the present projected into the future, immersed in the past. The video was shot in the ruins of an ancient medieval city, a few kilometers from my hometown, Tarquinia, an ancient Etruscan land, north of Rome, a region rich of history, mystery and spirituality.
It has constantly inspired my place of origin, stimulating me and becoming an integral part of my artistic vein.
The intent is to discover my vision of the world and my land, narrating it through my music. I have always been fascinated by the places and evocative landscapes that give me Tarquinia and the surrounding lands. The nature, the historical sites, have fascinated me and led me back to scenarios that I associate a lot to the journey, physical, spiritual and imaginative.
It was crucial to live these feelings to develop my creative path and I am really grateful for this link to the “places of my memory” because they fix a memorable event that recurs cyclically in my life, acquiring a meaning that goes far beyond space and time.
Every living place has a memory, internal and external, that can be discovered, rebuilt, and interpreted.
The memory of the place in which I live is punctually presented through memory and testimony, something that I have already lived or that I am proposing under a new key telling it with my artistic-musical language. Cultural roots develop the scenario of my intimate universe, transmitting experiences and giving the opportunity to share their feelings. This is the meaning of Goin’ Back and the album Lost in Time. The themes of loneliness and freedom, pain, love, are inside my music, honoring my origins through symbolism and metaphors.
I feel deeply connected to my origins and from here I get a strong creative potential. Lost in Time is redemption, liberation, the reflection of a new way of seeing things, getting lost in time and space, in darkness, in light, following the path between dream and destiny looking at everything with new eyes. The themes of personal transformation, adaptability and the continuous changes in your life suspended between dreams and visions, that take you to distant places that, perhaps, are not even of this earth, or want to reveal answers and new questions. They are projections and reflections of our mirror; I would always like to be elsewhere, to see beyond, and the vision of the new journey between the place that I have just left and the one where I am going, makes me happy, pushes me to find a new sense. The metaphor of the opportunity of growth and reunion with one’s being, a new path to different places, risk the unknown, embrace the uncertainty of this mysterious field, in which everything becomes accessible; the surprise of another revealer or a hypnotic sunset, the scent of the earth, the flowers, the fruits of nature.
The majestic beauty that lies at our feet, urging listeners to appreciate the wonders of life. Individual meditation, lost in time.
To someone who has not heard your music; how would you describe that and your live show?
The music of Black Snake Moan is a journey between psychedelia, blues and folk that aims to create sound atmospheres that bring back visions, projections in contrast between light and shadow, desert and universe, prayer and celebration, rock and sound evocation. The project was born solo act, one man band, simultaneously playing guitar, bass drum, foot tambourine and voice, to then evolve in the latest productions in duo, having integrated a second multi-instrumentalist, Matteo Lattanzi on guitar and keyboard.
My music is strongly rooted in 60/70 psychedelic rock and blues. The will is to propose under a new guise a constant stylistic cyclicity, playing more instruments, I decided to share live this new form, which gives new colors to the show.
I think my musical vision can be renewed every time. Music can be the ideal tool to emancipate yourself from the tendency to follow the current of a given moment and find your own dimension.
Back Snake Moan has that classic world music pop feel. Who are your musical influences and how did you get your start in music?
My love for music was born as a child; my mother was a classical dancer and teacher, I grew up listening to good music, the records of my parents. I was very lucky, I received constant artistic stimuli of various kinds in my family.
Interest for the instruments began relatively late, at the age of 16-17 years. After watching Joe Cocker live at Woodstock, discovered thanks to my uncle, (he is also an artist, ceramist and much more) and the consequent initiation to rock, was born the desire to sing and play, interest and curiosity that I was growing inwardly more and more. It was a real revelation and liberation.
So I started to cultivate my passion for music by playing more instruments, comparing myself in the rehearsal room with many guys and starting a new path and forming the first bands with my friends. Black Snake Moan, was born in 2017 from the need to take a solo path, that is the vision of a band enclosed in a single element. The choice to play as a solo was born from the desire to live a project that represented the mirror of my musical reality, creative and independent, my stylistic tastes and my attitude and passion for rock’n’roll.
From the upcoming album, what would you say is your favorite song and why?
The making of this new album has been a very delicate path in terms of the choice of songs and just as difficult to choose a song that I care about. All songs represents a specific photograph of sensations and events that have marked my life in recent years.
Lost in Time is the result of a daily two-year work in my home recording studio and concluded thanks to the fundamental help of Marco Degli Esposti who was able to focus my sound ideas, recorded at his Happenstance Studio Recording in Carbonarola in Mantova.
The most significant song, is the one that closes the album, Cross The Border, written straight away after the loss of some people very dear to me; it has a very important meaning for me because it contains the gratitude I have for life, it is a prayer, overcoming pain, appreciating what surrounds me and living every moment of this present. It means for me the spontaneity of the child that is in us; the sense of belonging and to give value, respect, a sense of gratitude to those who have gone before us, to those who have taught us something, to the earth that hosts us, to the universe that listens to us; and to share the vibration of love and compassion, to find balance, justice and truth; a divine push towards the realization of my life, the one and great purpose of my vision and presence on this planet.
My life and feelings constantly feed my creativity and the sharing of my artistic language. I tend not to worry about time, but how to live it and how to use my energy. This work allowed me to observe this dualism, the time and space, the importance of losing, of receiving and of giving. It was a quiet and creative time and I started to wonder about my ability to engage.
What do you have coming up after Lost In Time; drops on May 24th? Any tour plans?
The Lost in Time’s tour will start in May, a first summer tour in Italy and then planning for the European tour in autumn and other next year.
We are finalizing the rehearsals for the new live that will have many news and we develop the writing of new songs, alternative versions, that constantly feed the fire that will burn only in the most exciting dimension, play live and share with the audience this new adventure.
About Black Snake Moan & ‘Lost in Time’
“Lost in Time”, the third studio album by Black Snake Moan, the psych folk blues project of the Italian singer, guitarist and composer Marco Contestabile, is slated for release on vinyl, CD and digital formats on May 24, 2024 via the Italian label Area Pirata Records and the American label Echodelick Records, with two different editions and artworks.
Born under the sign of reverb, Black Snake Moan takes the listener on an inner trip, punctuated by ancestral, intense and evocative echoes. With his name taken from the song by the American musician of early blues Blind Lemon Jefferson, Black Snake Moan melts the eternal echo of his homeland, the land of the ancient Etruscans – canyons carved into the tufa rocks, labyrinth and burial complexes permeated with mystery, the cult of death and beliefs in otherworldly life – to the spirituality of the scenery of the Southwestern United States, to the deserts of Native Americans, seemingly static but floating like mirages. A journey in both time and space, influenced by Delta Blues, Pysch-Rock and Folk-Western, composed of mini mantras, ritual performances that live explode in their shamanic dimension.
The new album comes after the excellent feedback received with the desert and dreamy debut “Spiritual Awakening” in 2017 and the spiritual and lysergic visions of “Phantasmagoria” in 2019, followed by the two double singles “Revelation & Vision” (2022) and “Fire & What You See” (2023). Supporting them, an inexhaustible live activity, acclaimed by critics and audiences, with hundreds of concerts all over Italy, Europe, and the participation in European festivals such as ESNS Groningen, MIL Lisbon, MAMA Paris, Sziget Festival Budapest, the Italian Siren Festival, Rome Psych Fest, Mojo Station Blues, Indiegeno, Apolide and overseas in the USA, at IBC Memphis (International Blues Challenge 2020), with a tour along the Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans. Since 2023 Black Snake Moan has been performing live no longer solo as the original one-man-band (with guitars, vocals, bass drum, and tambourine), but as a duo with multi-instrumentalist Matteo Lattanzi on guitar and keyboard. Alongside his own project, in 2023 Contestabile was bass player for Italian psychedelic rock band New Candys on European and UK tours, supporting also the Texan psychedelic band The Black Angels.
In “Lost in Time” Black Snake Moan projects his journey into the vastness of the desert, marked by the dry, sunny day and the dark, cold night. On the glassy curve of the hourglass that encloses the grains of dreams, glides the snake that dictates the rhythm of time perception. The cyclic evolution of the stars, between light and dark, sun and moon, creates a fleeting contact between reality and imagination, the flow of new visions.
The psychedelic dimension of Black Snake Moan, brings back in the first part of the album a hypnotic imagery, narrator of nocturnal visions, desert dunes burning on the horizon, enveloped by the glowing sonic magma, amalgamating blues, folk and psychedelic rock.
The long folk rides, inlaid with oriental embroidery, are swirls of illusions that cloud the mind, awakening the night of lost senses.
The second part, as the sun rises, brings light and serenity and opens the door to the untamed wilderness of dreams, where everything is born and where everything dies, reconnecting the past to the present.
The cyclical nature that directs the path of the songs, the alternation of morning light and sunset, rebirth and transformation; all gently revealing memories of happiness and reunion, giving gratitude to those who have gone before us, to the truth and answers of our lives. Night, leaves a bond, a relationship not yet fulfilled.
It will be in the daylight, when the lines of thoughts become visible again, that the magic of togetherness and revelation will be felt.
The album involves the special guest appearance of Italian musician Roberto Dell’Era, bass and vocals on the track “Sunrise,” known with the projects Afterhours and The Winstons, a psychedelic prog rock trio, as well as numerous collaborations including Calibro35.
Anticipating “Lost in Time”, the release of the first single, “Light the Incense” with a video directed by the musician. A psychedelic dream that vanishes in the transient nature of the aspirations encased in one night. The smoke of incense reveals a new vision, celebrating the timelessness of the dream world and emanating the essence of desires that dissolve under the sign of the crescent moon.
The second single taken from the album is “Goin’ Back”, always directed by the musician. Through dreams, he explores his own memory places of his homeland in the sunlight of a new day, opening the door to the rebirth of his own spirit.
Featured image by Stefano Dili.