The O.R.k. are a progressive and alternative group composed by the singer and keyboardist Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari (known as Lef and for various projects and collaborations), by the guitarist Carmelo Pipitone (Marta sui tubi), by the drummer Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson, Stick men) and the bass by Colin Edwin (ex Porcupine Tree). After a first single Jellyfish in 2015, the group has released four albums between 2015 and 2022.
The O.R.k.’s Ramagehead album / released on 22nd February 2019 / featured a superstar collaboration in the form of Grammy Award-winner Serj Tankian of System of a Down, who is undoubtedly one of metal’s greatest and most renowned vocalists.
SCREAMNASIUM is the last album from ex-Porcupine Tree bassist Colin Edwin, award-winning composer/vocalist LEF, King Crimson’s Pat Mastelotto, and Marta Sui Tubi’s Carmelo Pipitone.
The expansive and emotive, Screamnasium is O.R.k’s most essential album to date. Spontaneous yet intricately crafted, and perhaps the most concise statement of the band’s sonic aims yet. With the quartet having formed a strong creative bond over the course of three previous studio albums and with countless miles clocked up on tour, the highly anticipated follow up to 2019’s acclaimed Ramagehead has finally arrived. The pent up, derailed energies of O.R.k. have found a release with their gutsy, cathartic and striking new album Screamnasium.
SCREAMNASIUM
Setting the pace, lead single/album opener As I Leave delivers a distilled form of the O.R.k. spirit directly to the listener. Lef’s powerful vocals, Carmelo Pipitone’s energetic riffing, Pat Mastelotto’s inventive rhythmic accompaniment and Colin Edwin’s distinctive bass tones all infuse Screamnasium with a refreshed intensity and a new luminosity. Energy levels are maintained throughout the 42-minute runtime as O.R.k. state the case for optimism, tolerance and empathy – these are hopeful anthems for an increasingly uncertain world. One particular highlight is “Consequence”, where Lef spars with Grammy winning vocal phenom Elisa, best known outside her native Italy for her collaboration with the legendary Ennio Morricone on Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained soundtrack. Album closer “Someone Waits” features virtuoso cellist Jo Quail who provides seductive, intertwining melodies to bring Screamnasium to a dramatic and unexpected finale.
The creative duo of Grammy winning art director Adam Jones (of Tool) and Marvel/DC Comics illustrator Denis Rodier have handled the artwork and layout to create an iconic album artwork with remarkable visual imagery, while mixing and mastering duties have been undertaken by Machine (Lamb of God, King Crimson, Clutch). Encompassing a wide breadth of emotional landscapes, Screamnasium is the consummate relief for our troubled times. Screamnasium is out now on CD / ltd ed green coloured vinyl LP/ black vinyl LP and digitally with orders available here.
IN CONVERSATION WITH COLIN EDWIN + LEF / LORENZO ESPOSITO FORNASARI /
Hello O.R.k.. Welcome to 33 Magazine, different backgrounds in music and now traveling worldwide on tour. How do you perceive the difference between different cultures and people’s approach to your music?
Colin: There’s a few regional variations, perhaps unsurprisingly, in general the Northern European audiences tend to be a bit more reserved, at least to begin with, while the Southern audiences are more openly enthusiastic from the start, but truthfully, afterwards the reaction is always very positive. We’re at the stage where a large part of the audience is seeing us for the first or second time, and it’s very gratifying to find people discovering us as something new and also to find some people attending multiple shows.
How has your cultural background had an impact on the reality that you are today as O.R.k. music band?
Colin: O.R.k. is a unique intersection of personalities and divergent views and all the better for it. Musical chemistry is a mysterious thing and I am reluctant to analyse it, suffice to say, it manages to be simultaneously challenging and artistically satisfying.
How did you choose the band name?
Colin: It was an attempt to create a universal, instantly recognisable symbol to convey a positive message – “O.K.” being perhaps the most understood term on the planet and we are, when all is said and done, are a “rock” band therefore “R.O.K.” was somehow put in place and rearranged…..for better or worse we have ended up with a search engine unfriendly name…but at least it’s possible to have fun with the acronym, so for now I can say we are “Observing Relentless kleptomaniacs” or members of the “Oyster Reincarnation kult”. All the above may be untrue.
How has your vision on music developed over time, especially now with O.R.k. and what significant discoveries have you made on this tour?
Colin: I listened to our first album “Inflamed Rides” a lot recently because of the new remix and reissue, I am still very proud of that first record, but it does sound like we were “finding our feet” which of course we were at the time and there are a few moments where we made choices that we wouldn’t make now. Making records is a process of growing up in public in a sense so that’s all fine. As we’ve toured and grown together more since 2015, we’ve solidified our musical framework and working methods so certainly “Screamnasium” is a much more focussed set of songs than anything we’ve done before. It’s also much more emotionally direct and I think it communicates something necessary and cathartic. There’s a wide emotional spectrum in the music but it’s clear to me that some people have clearly felt moved a lot more at our more recent concerts than before. “Screamnasium” was meant as an emotional release so we seem to have succeeded with that.
How do you envision the future of music and freedom of expression?
Colin: The music business is changing rapidly all the time, and I am not sure I can predict what shape things might take in the future. One thing is certain, there is a fundamental human need to connect with music and especially music which expresses things that are difficult to articulate.
Share with us a few highlights about SCREAMNASIUM. What’s the story behind it? Working remotely, how challenging was the work on this album and how all different cultural backgrounds in music merged and made it a successful project?
LEF: Working remotely has been something normal for all of us for many years now. What prevents us from perceiving it as cold as a means is the great feeling between us, the friendship, the empathy gained km after km in the many tours done together. As Colin says, it’s as if a 5 element had been added over time to make our music even more personal and instinctive… obviously it’s not a session worker, but something intangible made of personal relationships and mutual knowledge. The downside is that in bands like ours where friendship plays such an important role, the personal would collapse and the professional would not hold up and I don’t think we would feel more eager to continue.
Screamnasium was produced during the pandemic and ironically in that period we spoke almost every day, even if only to share photos of the “drink of the day”. And working together on the record was like taking refuge in a common universe that was able to give us a lot of strength and positivity despite the globally shitty situation. And this light emerges in the music. Obviously, we are rock, we hit hard, a certain dark vein is an intrinsic part of us. But there is light in this record and we are happy with it.
Interesting collaborations with Elisa and Jo Quail were born. Tell us more about working with both artists and how important are today’s collaborations in music?
LEF: I have worked very often with Jo in recent years, often calling her to participate in my film soundtracks. She has written a record for cello and my voice which will be released shortly… we love each other in short, and her touch on “Someone waits” is exactly what we wanted to close the disk.
Elisa is actually a great fan of Tool and other groups similar to us or friends (SOAD etc), a director who knows both put us in touch and it was immediately magic and mutual esteem. Recording together was then a lot of fun, a lot of laughter… I won’t even enter into the merit of professionalism because I certainly won’t find out. But she is an incredible person, with an unsurpassed passion for music. She thinks that at one point after 5 hours of recordings she brought over the sound engineer and turned into an editing ninja. She wanted to develop an idea and she did it with absurd speed and precision. What a wonderful person she is!
How would you describe your approach to research when it comes to creating new music? What’s the best show on tour you’ve ever played and why was it so special to you?
LEF: There is no desk research or choices on our part of sounds or genres or anything else in particular. It is rather obsessive attention to the emotions we want to convey, we want to do it in the most direct and honest way possible. A thousand thousand records are made a year now, the recording of the album has lost that “epic” meaning of “once upon a time”. The discs are polaroids that portray you in a precise moment. The following year maybe you are completely different and you take a new polaroid to fix the new moment. And so on. This is why we worry about being faithful to our emotions.
Are you working on any new music or planning anything exciting that we can look forward to?
Colin: Nearly a year on from Screamnasium’s release, it is really time for us to start thinking about new music. We do have a large amount of unreleased and work in progress material so I am looking forward to revisiting it and starting the process of development again. At the start of every album, I tend to feel it’s going to be hard to better the previous one, but I hope we can. We have some more dates coming up in Europe before the end of the year. I’d like to invite people to connect with our socials to keep up to date, since not all dates are published yet: https://linktr.ee/orkband.
Do you follow a process or ritual before a performance on tour with O.R.k.?
Colin: We have a short and specific pre stage ritual we carry out to cement our shared intent and focus our energies before we perform. It helps to remind us that we are all parts of the whole picture and O.R.k. is bigger than the sum of its parts, it’s an entity we create together.
How do you see the future of O.R.k. in a few words?
Colin: “Ever Increasing Articulacy” – I’ll qualify that by saying how much better I feel each album has been as we’ve carried on, and how much stronger we’ve got as a team.
Recently, the O.R.k. presented recently their new video, “Deadly Bite”. The song become one of the band’s favorite songs during their concerts, always getting a great response from the audience. The song talks about the role of the subconscious and its function in containing dreams and memories, and how it can shape daily waking life. The text touches on the theme of “theory of dreams and wakefulness” reflecting on destiny and fate. For their concerts and tours, O.R.k. have already juggled logistics, conflicting schedules and geographical distances between the four band members in the past. This time, however, due to commitments with TU-NER, Pat Mastelotto will not be able to take his usual place on drums in the band. The O.R.k. instead they are very lucky to be able to have the talented Michaela Naydenova (Nervosa) with them, who in addition to appearing in the video, will replace Mastelotto in the concert on September 1st at the 2Days Prog + 1 Festival.
These are the other O.R.k. live dates, with Pat Mastelotto on drums :
December
December 2nd Blue Note – Nove Mesto Nad Vahom SK
December 3 Bounty Rock Cafe – Oloumouc CZ
December 5 Proxima, Warsaw, Poland
December 6 Hype Park, Krakow, Poland
December 9 Maschinenhaus, Berlin, Germany
Buy tickets here:
https://www.bandsintown.com/a/12115353
The O.R.k. are:
Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari a.k.a LEF – voice
Pat Mastelotto – drums
Colin Edwin – bass
Carmelo Pipitone – guitar
Follow here O.R.k.
FB: https://www.facebook.com/O.R.k.band/
TW: https://twitter.com/ORKBAND
IG: www.instagram.com/orkband
Website: http://www.orkband.com/
Kscope: https://kscopemusic.com/artists/ork/
33 MAGAZINE 