The unobtrusive vanishing of nintendocore name givers and personified monuments of the genre Horse the Band (last release: Desperate Living in 2009) kicked off rumours about the termination of a whole music scene. Eventually it certainly declared the end of an era, but the inspiration taken from the sound systems of classic video game consoles and the soundtracks of their virtual worlds remained an extraordinary ingredient for modern rock and metal bands to step up their game. As usual dedicated underground artists took care of keeping the genre from decaying in the graves of their creators. To this day bands are trying to revive what seemed to be lost with their own interpretations of nintendocore. One of them are Ditto´s Blood from Mantova, Italy. They just released their seconed EP with the name The Lost Files. I´m very excited to welcome Player 1 Ferra and Player 2 Kaioh for a quick chat about the genre and their project.
Hi guys, thanks a lot for making time for this interview. How are you doing?
„It’s not time for an interview man, we’re playing CoD XD xD“
You are a two-piece band and I guess the computer is kind of your third member as you compose along bit sounds and effects in your songs. How do you split the production apart from that?
„We write our songs together during lunch breaks, Kaioh is the chief of production and Ferra writes lyrics. It all starts with the idea taken from a videogame that we played recently or in the past (not only videogames, they could be TV series, movies, snacks), we write parts of the track and then we assembly everything with the help of the holy computer.“
Electronica never seems to fall out of vogue, especially for bands that come from a post hardcore background. Moreover Nintendocore is kind of a niche that is part of niche itself. What inspired you both to create Ditto´s Blood?
„Back in 2011, we had a Deathcore band called ‚Anal Phobia‘. We were self-recording an EP in that period, a night the other members didn’t come to the studio, we were bored and recorded a cover of ‚Rainbow Road‘ (IAmError). That cover was just random, we even didn’t know lyrics (there are some part where you can hear Kaioh singing in Italian). After a while we have published, we noticed many people actually listened to that cover and we decide to start write original stuff, like our first song ‚Lavender Again‘ (first version was just awful, it was recorded in a bedroom). Later that we opened up our FaceBook page and some people started to follow us. After a couple of years of concentration on the other Deathcore project with the release of the album ‚Unarm‘, in 2013 we noticed our fanbase grew up and we had time to write and produce our first work ‚Enguarde‘. In the last years we were busy with other projects, but this year we had the chance and the time to meet again and to write stuff like in the old times.“
I´m always interested, when I notice that a band uses video game sounds. I have to admit that it is most of the time a gimmick to me, though, like: „Hey, these guys make video game rock. I like video games.“ When I gave your first EP Enguarde (nice cover by the way) a listen I thought: „Damn, these are actual songs with song structures and depth.“ Is it important to you to give people this kind of experience?
„The idea is to take people inside our mind travels in videogames and make them live in first person. This takes time to make either a song or an album.“
Your new EP The Lost Files is out since yesterday (16.05.2019) and I´m pretty stoked. While Enguard was longer and more ambient, TLF feels really tight and packed with harder beats. What kind of approach did you take, when you wrote the songs for it and was there something you wanted to make sure to be different this time?
„First of all, TLF is the uncompleted ‚Mothraya‘ album. We began to write and record our first songs for the album (back in 2015), but with time we lost all the files of the projects and then we decide to forget ‚Mothraya‘. After 4 years, when we restarted to write some stuff (like VIII), we decided to publish a collection called ‚The Lost Files‘ filled with old songs and a cover which was supposed to be in the album tracklist (Crystal Castles‘ XXZXCUZX ME).“
Big N, Playstation or Xbox?
Kaioh: Nintendo (“Pokémon are my life, I’ve got two of them tattoed on me. I’ve got the Pokédex book in the bathroom as well“).
Ferra: PlayStation (“I grew up with the Final Fantasy saga“).
In a battle royal, who would each of you choose as a partner? Sonic, Bowser, Pikachu, Link, Chrash Bandicoot or Master Chief?
Kaioh: Crash Bandicoot (“yes, I said Pokémon are my life, but I hate Pikachu. I mean, it’s everywhere. I’m sorry but I’m in love with Crash!“)
Ferra: “I would like to exit from this list, I wanna choose Gabe Logan from Syphon Filter“.
Obviousley video games play a role regarding the lyrics of your tracks, too. What where your major themes of reference on this release and are you inspired by other fiction, when you write music?
„As we said before, when we write stuff we take in consideration every videogame we saw/played when we were young. We have a lot in common about it, an RPG passion, Kaioh used to play a lot with old videogames while Ferra plays new stuff.“
Have you played live shows by now? If yes: Are you a rare band in Italy related to nintendocore and will there be more dates? If no: Are you planning to do some in the future?
„We only had one live experience with Ditto in a school party (a Christmas party) in 2011, but it was only for joke…they removed the music because it was too ‚metal’…damn. Big announcement here for you: this May 30th we will release our newest track, ‚Nowhere‘. After that, we wanna start with some dates, but we’re still in search of a booking at the moment.“
Ferra, Kaioh, you have successfully completed this level. Please let the readers know how Ditto´s Blood can be supported and if we are lucky, be able to play sets in Germany one day.
„If you wanna support us, please follow us on Spotify, Instagram & FaceBook (we’re everywhere)! Thank you very much for this interview, we hope to play soon in Germany! XOXO“
© featured image: Ditto´s Blood, bandcamp
