PLZ
“We come in peace, take me dancing,” said emerging musical anomaly P L Z (read ‘please’) as it arrived. Foreign to the planet on which they walk, uncertain yet determined, it is clear they travel at a speed different from the rest of us. They are a gentle ghost, wandering the world in a serene state – centuries old but still coming of age. They must remain far away from the internet and social media in case “the distortions of the web cause a short circuit to the synapses” – infinitely dancing alone. The duo hides their faces beneath latex masks, protected by a veil so as not to melt into distorted creatures. Faithfully unfaithful, they come when you call, always. With hatred blooming from the cages of collective hysteria – love simultaneously grows from affairs, cracks, the dark spots in between streetlights, and crossing the street without looking.
From the diverse, cultural depths of Milan P L Z materializes – their alien project lingering in the independent Italian music scene. Their debut single, ‘Milano d'agosto’, is a cry for help to be saved from oneself, from one’s own paranoia – translated into a techno pop hit, split between a vocoder and a beat machine. This paranoia exists because, “outside, the city we live in, during summer becomes an empty suffocating greenhouse of collective discomfort. Inside, the virtual relationships bubble without air conditioning, the desire emerging furious on the lips.” The only escape is to be taken far away, regardless of by what means they do so – a holiday, a rave, an ambulance – just far, far away...
Can you introduce yourselves to our readers? Describe who you are and what you do in your own words.
P L Z is an idea, a project, a creature, a little two-headed monster created in a studio-lab somewhere along the Milanese southern ring road. They’re basically making music by laying thick 4/4 beats, spreading vibes through layers of loops of things recorded in another life, and finally glazing the dough, trying to make sense of it with catchy melodies and magic words, to cure them from their anxious thirst for a life to come. In other words, they’re just trying to cope and have a lot of fun.
So why do you choose to keep your faces and identities hidden?
The idea in the beginning was to just let the music speak for us, which is basically wishful thinking at a time when artists are mostly acknowledged for their visual individualities. Then it became ever clearer we should try and find a way to be ‘openly’ invisible, like blank canvases in an art gallery, traces of a removed picture, ghosts in a crowd. P L Z wear work overalls because they love working hard on production; they wear latex masks not only because they’re into fetish garments, but because latex helps them holding their own features together, a bit like cling film. They see masks as an opportunity to be better versions of themselves, superheroes or something, while also letting their original ‘assholey’ nature run wild. Wearing a mask is a way to start from scratch and rewrite the script. It’s not about being genuine or true to oneself – it’s actually quite the opposite.
Your motto is ‘live and let die’, or ‘sleep and let it do you’, what does this mean to you and how does it translate into your music?
So much music – and art in general – is about values, big truths and how people should live and think about their lives, which ideals they should hold on to. P L Z is more about living the moment, even if that means making the wrong choices: there’s basically no such thing as a wrong choice. We think life is more fun when you let yourself be done by things, experiences, people: being done by people can actually be real fun, especially while sleeping. Again, blank canvas, wet moulding clay. Musically speaking, this means we rarely start out with a structured idea, a specific song-form to be produced: tracks, sounds, beats and words collide very fluidly, until a song unexpectedly takes form. It is also about not clinging too much to an idea, and instead being able to turn clichés up-side down, rework an idea from scratch or get rid of it completely.
Can you tell us about your song ‘Milano d'agosto’? What is it about and how was it inspired?
Despite its title, the song isn’t really about either Milan or the summer. It all started with a goofy, cheeky loop-structure that resembled some electro-clash track from the early 00’s, something like Vive La Fête’s Tokyo. It was kind of screaming for some slicky’ tune about fancy fashion venues. The word Milan must have come out of that. August followed smoothly in the stream of consciousness: it’s a commonly acknowledged cliché that Milan is a horrible place to be stuck in around mid-summer, everyone wants to get away from the city to cooler places, maybe go back to their hometowns. In the past two years, though, this has proven anything but true. Then why ‘Milano d’agosto’? It could act as a metaphor of sorts, like when you think you know yourself deeply, and by clinging to that version of yourself you end up identifying with it, with your clichéd self, because it’s so comfortable and reassuring: like when you write your profile on Tinder or Grindr, making a list of do’s and don’ts, the likes and dislikes you think define you as a person, or when you get very angry on Twitter or Facebook about things you feel very opinionated about. All these kinds of things that bring you down, when all you really crave is for someone to show up and take you away from that claustrophobic version of yourself.
Who did you listen to growing up and how have they influenced your sound?
There is literally so much music, so many sounds that P L Z are built upon. Being an electronic project, P L Z owe to everything from 90’s dance music to the latest Friday releases on Spotify. Björk’s Debut and Postalbums were gateways to exploring early UK house and drum and bass; Portishead’s self-titled sophomore pushed them down the eerie path to trip-hop. On good days they tried to cheer themselves up to Daft Punk and French Touch disco. Then came clubbing in the 00’s, going to Berlin a lot, techno music, rediscovering Detroit roots, as well as Gigolo Records’ electro-clash stuff, DFA, Warp darkest productions like Clark, and then folktronica, Caribou. Today it’s all about electronics displaying gender fluidity: Arca, Planningtorock, Sophie, Shygirl, Sega Bodega. The hardest part is to merge this whole spectrum with the Italian music legacy, which is what allows this act to keep in touch with reality and context.
Describe your sound in just a sentence.
Eros and Thanatos squeezing odes to past and future lovers out of Ableton.
Why have you chosen to emerge now – amidst such an unprecedented time?
What is more thrilling and inspiring than unprecedented times? P L Z feel unprecedented too, somehow, at least in their lifetime. The world is stuck, music is stuck – that feels like a major opportunity to take time and think about what to do next, to let production advance at a slow, enjoyable pace and keep the flame burning low in order to mould the clay gently, waiting for things to come. It surely is a privilege, not feeling like you have to do things, to come up and emerge to the surface, like you say, all at once. P L Z are enjoying the moment, indulging while they can.
So then what’s next for P L Z?
The plan is to conquer the nation by spawning one little hit’n’run track after the other. It will be a steady stream of contagious sounds, involving more and more creative people in the process of transforming and redefining this informal unformed thing called P L Z.
interview EMILY PHILLIPS
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