Bloody-Beetroots

These two masked villains have been blowing up stereos and festivals across the world, murdering everything in their site and absolutely murdered it at our KILL HALLOWEEN party in Oct.  With Christmas vendetta having just dropped along and a new trippy video for Romborama out now, The Bloody Beetroots are only picking up steam.

Somewhere amidst the apocalyptic carnage of that show we talked to Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo , frontman of the biggest thing in stadium electro right now, about everything from classical music to comic books, anarchy to revolution, and in the words of Zeppelin “Power, Mystery, and the Hammer of the Gods.”

We also get A FIRST LOOK INTO THEIR NEW LIVE PERFORMANCE! Check it out below:

LTB: You were born in the Italian hamlet of Bassano del Grappa, and trained from a young age in classical guitar and solfège method sight-reading. What was the long dark road that led you from Chopin to Warp 1.9?

Bob Rifo: I studied classical music as a young kid and it’s always been with me. It’s a huge influence on how I compose. Music is music. The technology changes, societies change… but human emotions remain the same. Anxiety and chaos are universal. The forms of expression evolve.
LTB: What made you shut down Bob Rifo’s gang and move onto the Bloody Beetroots?

Bob Rifo: The challenge to bring punk rock aesthetics into clubland and the electronic medium.

LTB: Is Electro the new punk rock?

Bob Rifo: Bloody Beetroots play punk electro. But we’re evolving into a new live format with more real instruments on stage. So it’s getting more hybrid. Evolution, my friend…

LTB: There are many electronic artists who talk about “live” performances but few really do it. You have talked about BBR making the jump in 2010 and discussed working with the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti to conceive of this project. Can you give any hints as to what this will entail?

Bob Rifo: Next year we’ll be touring live. I’ll be playing guitar, bass and keyboards. There’ll be a drummer and Tommy on stage too. In the end we’ve opted for a live show without the input of the Nuova accademia…. to keep it dirtier, more electric.

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LTB: I saw you tweeted you had just found the third member of the BBR…joke? Can you reveal his identity?

Bob Rifo: Still top Secret

LTB: In Italy’s La Commedia Dell’arte the characters themselves are often referred to as “masks”, which cannot be separated from the character. In other words the characteristics of the character and the characteristics of the mask are the same. However these masks were later appropriated for the Carnivale in Venice and the mask began to transform into a device for hiding the wearer’s identity and social status. The mask would permit the wearer to act more freely in cases where he or she wanted to interact with other members of the society outside the bounds of normality. So what is it for you? Are you the mask? Or does it hide your true identity? What is the relation between you and the mask?

Bob Rifo: It’s up to you to decide. I can give you some clues, though. Masks create larger than life characters. They become iconic and ironic at the same time. It’s a fantasy and people need fantasy to get a lot of shit out of their system.

LTB: Your professed viewpoint is anarchic but the Bloody beetroots are one of the only Electro acts with a consistent image, signature sound, and vision of electro music and so have become one of the major lightning rods of the whole movement… In effect helping to mobilize the electro scene. How do you see this dichotomy between being both immobilizers and anarchists. Setting trends and breaking them down?

Bob Rifo: I’m consistently anarchic. What’s the problem?

LTB: If your house was on fire what record would you save?

Bob Rifo: Every now and then I burn all my records without setting fire to the rest of the house.

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LTB: You are obviously heavily influenced by comics and have cited Italian comics author and illustrator author Tanino Liberatore as your major influence. How has his bizarre ultraviolent work shaped you as a group?

Bob Rifo: It’s made a major contribution to the aesthetic. Tanin’s comic art creates a parallel universe that is hard, disenchanted and deep. Mankind has been telling stories since the beginning of civilization. Homer and Virgil had some pretty hard stuff in their stories too. We’re human beings and we’re all do what we can to cope with the mess.

LTB: You have said in the past that you can’t have a revolution without unity,” and that “Let’s start with the music, and we’ll do the world later.”
Where do you see this Bloody Beetroots revolution and electro music as whole going?

Bob Rifo: I am a musician, not a politician. But all social revolutions have their soundtrack….