I Hate My Village

About

" The Italian super group taking afrobeat rhythms to the next level "

In 2018, Adriano Viterbini and Fabio Rondanini, two of the most talented musicians from Italy’s independent rock scene, decided to lock themselves in a rehearsal room and start improvising, unconstrained by genre barriers and music industry pressure. The goal of Bud Spencer Blues Explosion‘s guitar player and Calibro35 and Afterhours‘ multi-instrumentalist, both also touring musicians for Nigerien artist Bombino and Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traorè, was to create something completely new, starting from their common love for African music.

This was a mission they accomplished brilliantly in less than a year, after Jennifer Gentle‘s Marco Fasolo joined the duo to take care of the production, recording and mixing of their debut album, to which another heavyweight, the frontman of indie-cult band Verdena Alberto Ferrari, was later called to add his trademark vocals and improvised lyrics. This was how I Hate My Village, named after a Nigerian cannibal movie, came to be. They’re a hard to pigeonhole combo which brings indeed to the table an absolutely unique and technically flawless music proposal, representing a step forward in the evolution of afrobeat.

Just don’t call it ‘world music’, as the guys would definitely be annoyed by this definition. Indeed, this supergroup like to refer to what they do as “ungrammatical music”, a sound born from the deconstruction and reassembling of elements of afrobeat, Ghanese highlife, gnawa, desert blues, but also psychedelia and math and prog rock. And this multifaceted music pastiche emerging from the personalities and the interests of the four members of the band is definitely a winning recipe as I Hate My Village’s eponymous debut released by La Tempesta International in 2019 was reprinted five times and followed by an incredibly successful tour all around Italy.

After publishing ‘Gibbone’ (2021), an ethno-psychedelic EP recorded on a four-track cassette recorder, IHMV are coming back on this 17th of May 2024 with an explosive new album titled ‘Nevermind the Tempo’, once again recorded live on tape but this time released by Locomotiv Records. Launched by the powerful singles ‘Water Tanks’, ‘Artiminime’ and ‘Jim’, the band’s new album will soon be promoted live through an extensive Italian tour.