(excerpt from an interview published in the 3rd issue of SPECTRUM MAGAZINE - author: Richard Stevenson. © Spectrum Magazine 1999. )

1. HELLO GABRIELE, TO START WITH CAN YOU PLEASE INTRODUCE THE PROJECT I-BURN, THE MEMBERS BEHIND THE MONIKER AND THE BASIC PHILOSOPHY OF WHICH IT ENTAILS? 1. Hello to you, Richard, and thanx for having this interview with me/IB. I BURN is an italian project to be filed in an hypothetical postindustrial/ambient global directory, me and a guy called Maurizio Landini are part of the project. Basic philosophy? Being a musical project, nothing less & nothing more than an attempt to portray via audio-metaphors the way our minds relate to the "everything" outside + to exorcise our obsessions/fetishisms.

2. I HAVE BEEN LED TO BELIEVE THAT THE PROJECT I-BURN CAME ABOUT UNINTENTIONALLY VIA COLLABORATIVE STUDIO EXPERIMENTATIONS, WHICH HAS SINCE BECOME A FULLY FLEDGED PROJECT. CAN YOU DETAIL HOW I-BURN CAME INTO BEING, AND HOW DO YOU VIEW ITS IMPORTANCE TODAY, OR IS IT STILL VIEWED AS A SIDE PROJECT TO YOUR OTHER ACTIVITIES? 2. I BURN began "accidentally", or I'd rather say luckily by chance: me and Maurizio, after having had years of musical experiences in more "band/guitar oriented" projects (in a way or another, we both tried to infect our previous "bands" with germs of industrial music, however, and anyone willing to disclose the secret - willing to investigate who these projects were - can easily understand), on early 98 by chance we've been suddenly lucky enough to have access to good digital sound editing softwares + good samplers - this situation led to the situation of being addicted to a monitor for a long long time and being completely addicted to several unconscious late night PC sessions where almost unintenionally (since at that stage it was just a "learning process" thing, learning how to use and abuse HD recordings and digital stuff, after years of analogic life!) we where laying the foundations for a 100% satysfing/involving musical project. After about a month of hard work we finally realized that more or less an entire IB CD was created, and it was good enough to be released semi-officially: so, we released the first I BURN record as 100 copies limited CDR with our own label, and then everything started - Eibon/Amplexus reissued the CDR in a more complete way, and so on... IB has become since then our MAIN project, and all the other musical project we still are involved in have been faded into background, mainly because the music we have the chance to develop with I BURN is the real thing for us, the real thing we like to play and the real thing we direct our attention to, listening-wise.

3. COMPARISONS WITH YOUR FIRST CD WERE MADE TO BRIGHTER DEATH NOW, BUT WITH I-BURN BEING ON A MORE LO-FI AND SIMPLISTIC TANGENT. WAS YOUR INTENSION FROM THE START TO EMULATE A CERTAIN ‘STYLE' (IE: DEATH INDUSTRIAL) WITH ADHERENCE TO ASSOCIATED SOUND PRODUCTION AND CONCEPTS? 3. Well, without doubt Brighter Death Now and a good part of the early swedish death industrial (Archon Satani, NFOL, Negru Voda above all) have strongly contributed to our "musical moulding" - but on the other hand I have to say that during the first CD's compositive phase no kind of sound has been predominant to another, inspiration-wise: all the songs have been written in a "random" way, that's to say, we built all definitive songs starting from shapeless masses of sounds/samples - and all the work has been done in a quite "unconscious" way, or better, the initial part of the creation has been absolutely unconscious and randomized, while the final assembly phases (when all the definitive sounds have been glued togheter in actual songs) were 100% logic in terms of rejects or selections. It would have been really hard trying to start from an already shaped kind of sound and from there beginning an attempt to recreate the same thing with instruments we were handling for the first time ever - so, if ever there's been a BDN influence, it's been a totally unconscious influence. 4. WHAT SOUNDS (IF ANY) HAVE INFLUENCE YOU IN THE CREATION OF YOUR BRAND OF INDUSTRIAL AMBIENCE, AND ALTERNATIVELY WHAT TYPES OF MUSIC INSPIRES YOU BUT NOT NECESSARILY IN CREATING YOUR OWN MUSIC? 4. We listen to such a wide variety of bands/musical styles that it would be hard to make a complete list of what kind of sounds influence us (even non-directly)...I'm a very very dogged listener of early 80's hardcore punk music (bands such as Black Flag, Minor Threat, SSD..) but would you even dare thinking of it only judging by the music I make?? However, we swim into an ultrawide range of listenings: my personal faves/tastes ranges from Caul, Thomas Koner, Coil, Francisco Lopez, Meira Asher, Pan Sonic, Surge, Cazzodio, Craig Armstrong, Hazard, Final, SPK, Genocide Organ, Morthound, to bands as Pixies (probably one of my 5 favourite bands ever!), Celtic Frost, Don Caballero, Flyng Saucer Attack, Sonic Youth, June of 44, Husker Du, and lots more... While Maurizio is absolutely more martial, under this point of view, and he's an addicted to the Ant Zen & Hymen rythmical/distorted stuff, and I must say some of his influences coming from these fields have showed up in at least one track of our 10", the rythmical remix of "Prophesyng Non Motion" (off the first CD) is definitely and declaredly in the vein of this very kind of sound!

5. THE FIRST CD SHOWED I-BURN DEALING WITH REASONABLY MINIMALIST NOISE AND DRONE MANIPULATIONS WHILE YOUR SECOND RELEASE (THE IPERTMIA 10") TOOK THESE EXPERIMENTS INTO MORE SOLID MOVING TERRITORIES, WITH A SLIGHTLY HARSHER EDGE. IS THIS SHOWING A CLEAR PROGRESSION IN THE PROJECT'S SOUND, OR ARE THE TYPES OF TRACKS YOU PRODUCE LIKELY TO ALTER DRASTICALLY FROM RELEASE TO RELEASE? 5. It is progression, definitely. As you can listen in the 10", the harsher edges of our sounds have become even more harsh, while the "minimal" elements of the sound shall become more.."shining", thick-sounding and clean - we're trying to leave the more "droning-for-the-sake-of-being-droning" initial approach on the back and try to build a kind of ambient sound seen from more angles - something less constantly droning and more varied. The material of the new forthcoming CD on OEC are definitely a step further in our musical achievement, due a finally reached awareness and confidence with the machines - just a couple of tracks will still remain on the path of the older material while the 80% of the new tracks will display a marked renewed approach and, why not?, quality.

6. I DO BELIEVE THAT YOU THROUGH YOUR MUSIC YOU ATTEMPT TO CONVEY CERTAIN IDEAS, IN PARTICULAR RELATED TO ILLUSTRATING SEARING TEMPERATURES VIA SOUND. WHILE MANY TRACKS GIVE OFF THE FEELING OF GRADUALLY BOILING AND VAPOURERS TEMPERATURES, OTHERS (TO MY EAR ANYWAY) ENCOMPASS A MORE COLD, GLACIAL FEEL. WHAT IS THE BASIC PREMISE FOR SOUND PRESENTATION AND WHAT ARE YOU ATTEMPTING TRYING TO ILLUSTRATE TO THE LISTENER'S EAR? 6. Yes, more or less the background of all the records is based on the combustion, the fire, the high temperatures...Well, it all started from me turning my attention to some books focused on fortean phenomena as self-combustion and at the same time reading articles regarding the application of infraharmonies as weapons in books as "The Amok Journal", that lead us to the idea of trying to conceive a sort of laboratory simulation of an hypotetical series of field recordings captured during a body's process of (self)combustion, so we tried to create a fake combustion-field recordings work, simulating the process of amplyfing the sounds flowing from the body while burned...all started there. From there we developed the concept and focused on several kind of phenomena related to fire - the track "HCE" off the "Ipertermia" 10" is a sort of sonic description of the Cerebral Hyper Electrosis phenomena, more or less a brain-focused self combustion that makes your head explodes if your head and brain are too electrically active! However, I think that the main purpose of the music we play is of having no-purpose and let anyone take out of it whatever he feels to, and the fact that you see a glacial side of I Burn its 100% legitimate, obviously the way the way you experience the sound is extremely variable and depending from your own mental wavelenghts and your own ways of approaching it - there's no sharp point of separation between the several kinds, even opposite kinds, of sound reception - as for I Burn, I think the point of separation is only clearly esatblished by the visual and "lyrical" elements we surround the records with (colors used, song titles) - the new CD will be visually focused on ultracold colors (unlike the old records based only on the yellow and red colors) such as the blue or the azure, so it will be quite interesting to see how a record actually focused on fire-related arguments could be seen (and listened) under a totally different point of view only because it's wrapped on a visual interference.

7. IT WOULD SEEM THAT MUCH OF I-BURN'S MATERIAL IS DERIVED FOR PC MANIPULATED AND SYNTH TREATED GUITARS. WHILE THERE IS A TONAL QUALITY THAT CAN BE ASSOCIATED WITH A GUITAR THE ACTUAL SOUNDS ARE FAR REMOVED FORM THE ORIGINAL SOURCE. HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT THE PROCESS OF FORMULATING THE BASIS AND BASIC STRUCTURE FOR A TRACK AND IS IT LIKELY THAT YOU WILL WIDEN THE ‘PALETTE' OF SOUND WITH OTHER INSTRUMENTATION MANIPULATION? 7. All the I Burn's music is entirely assembled using PCs and sound editing softwares, we just plug samplers and guitars in the audio card and record all kinds of stuff and sound source, my guitar, any kind of environmental sound that could result interesting, other CDs, and any kind of thing - and we start working on the single sound with effects, if the sound is good enough to be left as it is we just clean it up a little bit, apply reverbs and nothing more, while with other samples we start processing the sounds for hours or days 'til we reach a good point where the sound is completely transformed in something else ( and consequently from there we actually begin to put togheter several samples in a logical consequence until we finally have built something with the shape of a song), or until we reach the point where the sound is literally destroyed and we cannot use it anymore, so we throw it away. The guitar recording process is more or less the same, but at the end it always leads to more "harmonic" song structures, because of the instrument, of course. At the end, everything (and I mean EVERYTHING - we have an archive of tons of samples and unfinished songs, from excellent to absolutley cheesy stuff, that probably won't ever be used anywhere!) is burned into CDRs. As you can see, nothing too alchemic!. Widen the palette of sound? Yes, of course, any kind of sound source will be reviewed, but if you mean, widen the palette of sound in a more traditional way, with a keyboard or something more "classy"...no, definitely. I think the prerogative of using only PCs give us a certain kind of sound that we probably could not have whenever decide to use a normal keyboard or synth.

8. IT WOULD SEEM THAT YOU HAVE COME TO YOUR CURRENT MUSICAL DIRECTION VIA A PATH FROM THE EARLY 90'S DEATH METAL SCENE. WHILE I DON'T WHAT TO TAINT THE OPINION OF THOSE READERS WHO HAVE YET TO HEAR YOUR MUSIC INTO SOME SORT OF VIEW THAT I-BURN IS SIMPLY A METAL CROSSOVER PROJECT(AND NOT THAT I WOULD WANT TO INSINUATE THAT EITHER), HOWEVER DO YOU SEE YOUR MUSICAL PAST AS A POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE IN VIEW OF YOUR CURRENT WORKINGS? 8. Well, even if, at this stage, I have almost no connections at all with that kind of musical scene (if not the still intact love and admiration for some metal bands), I just look back at it and see a necessary step for me to slowly understand and gradually approach a musical conception 100% open to any kind of extremism, and probably if now I can have shivers while listening to a power electronics band is because I've once had no fear in listening Carcass in the early 90s...do you know what I mean?? The death metal was a lap, not the point of arrive...maybe a "childish" lap, however, necessary to understand better what does (and what doesn't) the definition "musical extremism" mean.