Ruins
Ruins
One Wednesday in September of 1978, a new band was born in Mestre (Venice, Italy). It was named “Ruins” after a Fred Firth composition featured on Henry Cow’s highly influential LP “Unrest” from 1974.
The first line-up was formed by Alessandro Pizzin (keyboards) accompanied by Franco Moruzzi (drums) and Girogio Salvedego (bass guitar), and featured a young innovative guitarist and composer named Alex Masi. Occasionally joined by a young multi-talented performer and musical comrade named Alessandro Monti, the band was way ahead of its time in what would soon become the Italian independent music scene.
In the Spring of 1979, Alex Masi left the project and Piergiuseppe Ciranna came on board. Then in the early 1980s, Ciranna & Pizzin re-organized Ruins as an experimental combo. The group focused on electronic devices and mixed media, drawing energy from powerfully fresh paintings and photos by Gianni Volpato and Alessandro Rigato, while forging a new musical path towards original no-dance music and dark electronic ‘post prog’ pop songs.
In May of 1981, Ruins recorded a few brand new tunes including “Elegant Shout”, “Short Wave”, and “You’re Like A Cigarette”. These were to become the cornerstone of the project that would follow.
In early June of 1981, the band put a lot of energy into shooting a short film inside the “Restless House”. This piece would have been the video for “Short Wave”. Shot entirely on 16mm film, everyone claimed that it was a gem in the making. But without professional management, all the raw footage was lost before it would be edited. As far as we know, the footage doesn’t exist nor does any photographic evidence survive to tell the tale.
On September 4th of 1980, Art Retro Ideas released one of the very first Italian, independent, New Wave LP compilations entitled “Samples Only” featuring three Ruins songs: “Short Wave”, “Restless House” (recorded in July 1981), and “Elegant Shout”. On November 21, they released the first Ruins 45rpm single entitled “Short Wave” (along with the b side, “You’re like a cigarette”). The LP and the single got great reviews in the press and were well received by both independent and major record labels alike.
Several new songs were recorded over the course of 1981, but the band needed to grow and to start auditions for a possible new line up which would begin in early June of 1982. By the end of the month, Franco Moruzzi was asked to take the drum stool once again while Massimo Bertatto (bass) and Moreno Barbazza (percussion and backing vocals) joined the new quintet combo.
The new line-up rehearsed for a few weeks before re-recording almost all the original songs that Ciranna & Pizzin had recorded as a duo. Other new, beautiful, powerful compositions were born and carefully recorded with the Anna Rich mobile studio. Some were released on a limited edition tape entitled “Art Dance”, and others were filed in the Ruins archives for future release.
During the late autumn of 1982, five experimental “conceptual videos” were filmed and presented in Mestre. The 5-piece-combo continued to perform live, as it had throughout the year, with enthusiastic reviews.
In early 1983, one of the songs recorded in 1982 (“I Don’t Know”) was released and featured on the “Rockgarage Compilation Vol.1” sampler organized by the independent magazine Rockgarage.
In 1983, the band signed with a major label to release the new single “Fit of Nerves”, a song from the Ruins/duo repertoire that had been completely rearranged and recorded in January that year. The band itself provided the 4-track recording of “Stroll of Girls” as the b-side, chosen simply for what it was: a bizarre instrumental.
While setting up promotion for the new single, Ciranna & Pizzin (along with Volpato, Rigato, and the brilliant young photographer Stefano Padovan) worked on a new multimedia performance based on some of William Burroughs’ works.
It was a highly creative time. Pizzin & Ciranna had started working on a really weird side project: the complete cover version of the entire album Ad Gloriam by the internationally acclaimed Italian prog band Le Orme. The songs (originally dated 1967) were completely reinterpreted by the use of mainly electronic sounds (with lots of “first generation” old drum machines and strange sound modules, such as the Pizzynth, for instance, a rude handmade tone generator built by Alessandro himself for this purpose). Unfortunately, the project never got the attention it deserved from the men-in-charge of the recording company and the demo quickly lost momentum. Meanwhile, the 5-piece line-up suddenly disbanded.
Then in 1983, Fricchetti Production released a special limited tape & booklet issue entitled “Side Roads”, which featured both of the band’s directions. The ‘experimental’ stuff included some of the early audio/visual performance material and some previously unreleased solo recordings while the more ‘pop’ side featured songs from the early duo’s recordings sessions such as “New Record”, “Tricks To Survive”, “I Don’t Know” and the wonderfully gorgeous, jazzy tune “Skeleton In Love”. There were also two instrumentals performed live as a trio in January of 1981 (“The Try”) and with the quintet combo in early 1982 (“Brain Flakes”). Another 4-track studio recording was featured in this rare release, a brand new Ciranna song called “Red lips”. This “Side Roads” cassette also featured a few original line drawings from Roberto Roseano (who at the same time began to work on the Ruins multimedia dimension).
Two other side projects began during this time, and were both bizarre and unpredictable, as always. The first was a Devo / Residents medley as a tribute to these two influential bands. This very soon led to the idea of an entire original songs compilation composed in pure (or strictly related) Devo / Residents style. Roberto Roseano also provided the cover design and the recordings were complete but the lack of money at the time forced Ruins to abandon the idea.
The other weird project was a selection of classic Latin American songs that were interpreted in a brand new electro-context. Unfortunately, only a proto-demo version of this experiment survived.
In the meantime, a new band was set up, with the young and talented bass player Pippo Monaro but this line-up soon broke as well, due to the lack of real support from the label and the management. Ciranna & Pizzin went back to working as a duo.
Ruins continued to push artistic boundaries mainly towards an electronic and dark-oriented sound. New drum machines and sequencers made a massive appearance in Ruins’ sound and with very interesting results. Drum loops were used (samplers weren’t yet available to the band) to obtain a more natural feel in the rhythm section and to complement the heavy bass lines of the Korg MS20 synth. The band was contacted by a new independent management company (BSR) who offered to take care of Ruins work and, thanks to the help of a local record shop owner, Ruins was able to release their first 12” EP of 4 songs which featured their hit “Fire!”. This song got so much attention from the press and from the audience that it drove the band directly to a major record label deal to release a 12” single (b-sided with the brand new tune “Crime”).
While working on new songs for the expected follow up, the duo also had the chance to release a completely instrumental, experimental LP in connection with the works of Venetian painter Luigi Viola. This release was entitled “Marea/Tide”.
In November of 1984, BSR asked the American video director Paul Allman to set-up a promotional video for the song “Fire!”. The video was shot in nearby Venice the night before Pizzin was forced to leave for the military service. On November 24, 1984 BSR showcased the “Marea/Tide” LP release with a special party held inside the wonderful Venetian villa “Villa Sagredo”.
Once available, both the EP and the Ruins video “Fire” received great reviews. They were immediately featured on major national radio and television programs, and included as the “band of the month video” on one of the major musical independent Italian TV programs (Deejay Television). There were multiple daily broadcasts on the all-music television channel Videomusic, and the song went to the top of musical charts from some of the era’s most important FM radio stations (Rai, Radio Studio 105, and Radio DeeJay).
At the same time, Ciranna & Pizzin composed and demoed a few more songs to improve their new electronic sound.
At the request of some international promoter, BSR arranged with Allman to produce another promotional video clip for the “Fire!”. With the help of the owner of the Cavallino Art Gallery video archive in Venice, Paul Allman and Ruins had the opportunity to work combining new images and old rare archive video footage while filming the new video on February 6th, 1985.
After the last promotional appearance in Turin (in late September of 1985) as part of the celebration for the 25th annual congress of United Nations “O.I.L. Foundation”, things began worsening, and due to unavoidable management problems the band split up on October 26th without having released some of its best musical efforts to date. Thus the Ruins experience and musical legacy was put on hold.
Alessandro Pizzin went on making music professionally with bands like Hakkah and Hex. He resurfaced a brand new Ruins line up during the late eighties, and continued as an independent publisher, label manager, producer and solo artist releasing and producing various records and projects until now. Meanwhile, Piergiuseppe Ciranna took a different professional route.