Italy hidden in its bowel a dark mouth that speaks privately to the world. Lupercalia is one of these mysterious dialogues that furrows the mountains taking the word of "Florilegium", its last album, released by the Portuguese label Equilibrium Music, and it has just seen the light of the world in May 2004.   

Hold on for a second. Listen very carefully. They will speak about their exquisite music, full of surprises, of translucent elves and invisible minstrels locked in the immemorial secrets. 

LF: The night, the darkness, the shade: does it have its own music?

L: We prefer giving to music lots of faces: we don't believe in single genres of music. Each track on our album has something different and aims to portray a particular vision. There are of course certain kinds of music related to different places and feelings, but we play music for those who are curious and who have a strong sensibility.

LF: Which's the origin of the name "Lupercalia"? Is it associated with the Roman festivity? And tell me more about the beginning of the band.

L: The Lupercalia was an annual Roman festival held on February 15 to honour Faunus, God of fertility and forests. The festival was celebrated near the cave of Lupercal on the Palatine, to expiate and purify new life in the Spring. The band was born in 1999 as an instrumental duo made of Riccardo Prencipe and Pierangelo Fevola. Our first instrumental album, “Soehrimnir”, was produced shortly after that, and then Claudia Florio joined the band and we started to create tracks also with soprano. Pierangelo Fevola left the band for musical divergences - we are still friends - and we started to collaborate with Gianluca Uccio. He is a great violinist and we recorded “Florilegium” with his violin contributions. For our concerts, we alternate between Giovanni Borrelli, another one of our collaborators, and, most recently, Edo, who should be performing with us often in the future. Gianluca has been a studio-member only, and hopefuly this collaboration will go on.

LF: How do you define your musical style? Neo-Classic, Gothic? A new one?  

L: We'd prefer the definition of neogothic, in the same way than the artistic movement developed during the late XIXth century. Also the words Neo-classic explain a side of our music, but not enough, since it is very different from song to song, also because of the different sound and instruments that we use. Moreover, some songs are very atmospheric, while other ones are very aggressive, fast and also oriental.

LF: In "Florilegium", there are many elements related with the alchemy and the hermetic sciences. An example of this is the song " Ouroboros ", the alchemical snake that eats its own tail, the infinite. Is your music very linked with the occultism?

L: Our name doesn’t relate to any sort of religious believe or fanatism, it was chosen just to underline the meaning of fertility, also in the field of music. We don't believe in occultism, just in the power of the fine-arts of the past and in chemistry. The alchemical side is just a face of our music that can be felt in songs like "Ouroboros", "Kundalini" and "Rebis", whereas songs such as "Formis..." are connected to ancient monuments.

LF: In general, " Florilegium " maintains an incredible atmosphere of mystery and vagueness. The listener is taken off from the reality. An nameless world grows around it. Is this intentional? Is there a search of making live different sensations to the listener in each song? 

L: This is a great observation, and yes, that is the point. I often listen to albums that seem to be all the same. Or albums where just the first two or three songs have a sense, but in those cases you could just do a mini-cd. “Florilegium” holds its meaning from the beginning till the end, even if it's a very long album (over one hour of music). Each part is quite different unique and bring the listeners into several states of mind. We hope to awake people's curiosity to various things in the past that one takes into consideration anymore. 

LF: What relationship does have the song " Kundalini " with the practice of yoga?  

RICCARDO: Yes, Kundalini is the name of a yoga position made to grow in ourself different sides of our soul. We have used both a profane and a religious voice speaking similar words, but with opposite meanings, and at the end it says: "And I’m lively... With no creed to understand them all, I shall be eternal, While everyone will be right before God." We would like to take the opportunity to thank also Lina Salvatore, who performed all spoken voices (including "Kundalini") on our album.

LF: Internationally, Do you believe that the humanity is recovering the old beliefs? In this last years is perceived a reborn of the magic, of the paganism. How " Lupercalia " is positioned in this resurgence?

L: We have our own simple religious beliefs, and we keep them for ourselves. However, as we told before, we don't like fanatic people or those who use religion for commerce. It's a bad thing! We are not that involved in paganism, or anything similar. Our researches are connected only to its aesthetics, not to a religion of the past.

To know more about Lupercalia go to:
http://www.lupercalia.it
http://www.equilibriummusic.com/