The recording of Quasi Casa

Without Markus Mathis, Quasi Casa wouldn't exist. We spoke with him about how a fan became an archivist, two decades of following Giardini di Mirò across Europe, and the strange, fitting way a chapter of music history closed where it began.

(Note: the image above was not taken at a Giardini di Mirò show, but at another concert Markus recorded. It shows the same setup he used in Cavriago: an array of MBHO sub-cardioids together with Sennheiser MKH 8020s.)

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Hello Markus — to start, please tell us how you first came across Giardini di Mirò.

I discovered Giardini di Mirò around 2005, while I was working in London. My first album was Punk… Not Diet, and right after it I ordered the debut, Rise and Fall of Academic Drifting. As a big fan of Mogwai and Hood, I felt right at home in both records: Rise and Fall clearly carries on the Mogwai tradition, while the glitchy, electronic side of Punk… Not Diet sits closer to Hood, or The Notwist.

What I didn't know at the time was that Giardini di Mirò — Jukka especially — were huge Mogwai and Hood fans themselves. Their EP N.A.T.O. even includes a Hood remix, and in 2017 I watched Jukka and Emmanuele improvise on Hood's "You're Worth the Whole World" from Cold House during a soundcheck.

How many Giardini di Mirò shows did you record, and when did that start?

I saw my first Giardini di Mirò show in 2008 in Karlsruhe, just after Dividing Opinions. Alongside the new album, the band played two long previews of the coming Il Fuoco record — and that hooked me right away. Over the years I went on to see them live more than twenty times: first in Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium, later almost exclusively in Italy, since they toured north of the Alps less and less.

I only started recording the concerts seriously from the Alone Together tour and the Italian Rapsodia Satanica tour onwards. None of it would have been possible in this form without the support of Jukka, Corrado, their tour manager at the time, Michele Venturi, and the two FoH engineers Andrea Rovacchi and Bruno Germano.

What always set the Italian shows apart was the contrast: obscure indie clubs on one hand, and on the other historic settings like the Roman theatres of Ostia Antica and Verona, the Mole Antonelliana in Turin, opera houses, theatres, or the spot where Caesar is said to have crossed the Rubicon. To me, Giardini di Mirò were never "just" a post-rock band but always cultural ambassadors too — not least when they rescored old black-and-white silent films like Il Fuoco or Rapsodia Satanica. But it also came with a very Italian kind of improvisation: concerts moved at short notice to another hall across town, without the promoter making much of an announcement. Over the years I got used to that improvised madness.

Do you have a professional background in recording, or anything related? Or is it pure hobby?

I don't have a classic professional background in recording. By trade I'm a computer scientist, but I've been deeply interested for years in the technology and the psychoacoustics behind recording, mixing and mastering. It was really a long evolution from fan to serious archivist: a longtime friend of mine maintained Mogwai's gigography and live archive for years, and we kept recording bands like Mogwai, Part Chimp, Bardo Pond and other post-rock acts.

Alongside that, I recorded and filmed various local post-rock and shoegaze bands in the SaarLorLux region, as well as singer-songwriters like Matt Elliott. Over the years my equipment — microphones, multitrack recorders — and the options for post-production kept improving, to the point where even on a fairly modest budget you can make live recordings that hold their own against professional streams from promoters or TV broadcasters. Especially when you have the artists' and the venue's support.

Out of that steady work, friendships grew over time with musicians and their tech crews — as with Giardini di Mirò.

How did you end up at the show in Cavriago that night, given that you don't exactly live around the corner?

I'd already filmed the band the year before on the same Voiceless — senza voce tour, at the A Cielo Aperto festival in Savignano. Several other concerts on that tour had to be cancelled, some at short notice, and 2022 was a pretty draining year for me both personally and professionally. So this little three-show Emilia-Romagna mini-tour in March 2023 was a welcome chance to see Giardini di Mirò once more in a different setting. I was at the Ferrara and Cavriago shows and managed to record both with the band's support — even if in Ferrara, of all places, the gear didn't cooperate.

I knew beforehand that the Cavriago show would be "special": Corrado and Jukka are from there, and some of the pieces were written or first played live in that hall — the Circolo Calamità, now Circolo Kessel.

But that it would turn out to be Giardini di Mirò's last concert, nobody could have foreseen. As a longtime fan I took it with a heavy heart, but I respect the musicians' decision. In hindsight it feels almost fitting that this chapter ends exactly where so much of it began: at home, in front of friends, family and longtime companions — even if it was never planned that way.

A few of the band's other old companions had said they'd come that evening and then didn't show. Whether that was down to the football match on at the same time — as Jukka guessed in his address — or something else, I don't know. The only sure thing is that they missed an extraordinary concert and the end of a small piece of music history.

Well, thanks to you, those who missed it can at least listen to it!