Biography

canaan 1996

1996-2001

CANAAN, consisting of Mauro (guitars, keyboards, samples and vocals), Luca (drums and keyboards) and Matteo (guitars and bass) was formed back in January 1996 after the split of RAS ALGETHI, universally known as the one of the forefathers of funeral doom and the one and only doom band ever born out of Italy. The new project's musical approach was directed towards a contamination of dark, wave and experimental music, something nobody tried before at that time. The extremely important role played by samplers and keyboards, mixed and intertwined with "traditional" instruments (guitars, drums and bass) led CANAAN to new frontiers, disclosing a personal and peculiar way of composing music.

The band's first album BLUE FIRE (recorded and mixed in various locations and in various periods between 1995/1996 and released in November 1996 through EIBON RECORDS) came out as a pretty innovative canvas, destined mainly to open-minded listeners. Without any kind of promotion, it received extremely positive reviews from virtually everywhere, and reached a satisfying worldwide spreading, selling a good amount of copies too. In May 1997, a bass player (Anthony Duman) was recruited in order to add depth to the band's rhythmic section and strengthen the songs' arrangements. With this new line-up CANAAN started (in May 1998) the recordings of the second full-length album (always under the wise supervision of sound engineer Paolo Sannazzaro), at Avatara studio in Milan. After two months of recordings, the new double cd WALK INTO MY OPEN WOMB: THE APATHY MANIFESTO was brought to completion; released by EIBON RECORDS in September 1998, this album progressed further into the fields open with BLUE FIRE, and turned out as a pretty successful release as well.

After a long break, in mid 1999 the band started new rehearsals and in March 2000, having signed a contract with the german label Prophecy Productions, CANAAN entered the studio again to record the third cd BRAND NEW BABYLON, always at Avatara Studios but this time with a new sound engineer - Max Moioli. BRAND NEW BABYLON was released in July 2000, in two different versions: a luxurious leather bookpack with 6 cards and booklet and a regular digisleeve + booklet. Once again the album was welcomed warmly - very warmly to say the truth. After a 6-months break, the band was ready to rehearse again, but had to replace on bass Tony who quit the band for lack of time and job issues. The newly acquired bass player Nico joined in February 2001 and CANAAN started composing new material for the fourth album. After a few more weeks spent with this 4-members line-up, Andrea joined on drums, Luca focused exclusively on keyboards and Mauro switched to second guitar.

canaan 2002

2001-2006

These line-up changes granted extreme flexibility and brought in a sensible improvement. With this new lineup CANAAN started the recordings of a new album in august 2002, this time at Sound Factory Studio (Melzo, MI) and again with Max Moioli as engineer, and completed them in mid September. The following weeks were dedicated to post-production and graphic design; the final result was the album A CALLING TO WEAKNESS, that rapidly turned into the band's best seller (more than 6.000 copies so far) and according to many listeners their best album to date. It was also the first CANAAN album to be released in vinyl format, thanks to a joint effort of EIBON RECORDS and AURAL MUSIC in 2018.

2003 was a quiet year for the band, though during the last part of the year, Mauro and Nico set up a small home-recording studio, with the perspective of a new album, whose recordings begun in early 2004. The recording process this time changed severely. Rather than rehearsing the tracks then going into the studio to record them in a rush, the band took a different way, never rehearsing with the complete line-up. Basic songs’ structures were improvised with reduced line-ups (usually drums, 1 guitar and bass or keyboards) during a few sessions in February/March 2004. these improvisations were recorded, then completely de-constructed and re-assembled in various periods, with each member acting separately on them, adding and changing things over time. This process took a long time (actually several months), and led to a monster-amount of "puzzle-like" sound fragments. In April and May 2005 Mauro and Nico took all of these fragments, put them together and shaped them into the form of "songs". Vocals were then recorded (including the two vocal lines sung by COLLOQUIO's vocalist Gianni, taken at the band's own recording studio in June 2005), and final arrangements were done. The songs were then masterfully mixed by Alessio Camagni at Noise Factory Studio (a top-notch recording studio with extremely powerful outboard modules and a warm and rich analog mixer) during 8 days in July 2005. Once again, mastering and graphic design completed the process, and led to THE UNSAID WORDS. Perhaps the band's darkest album so far, THE UNSAID WORDS retained the band’s very powerful sonic trademark of despair and desolation and crossed paths with some wave songs’ structures....

canaan 2o10

2006-2012

In 2006 CANAAN was put under ice. Luca relocated permanently to Torino, Matteo changed his day-job and started travelling around Italy and the band thus suffered a quite long and partially unexpected stop. Mauro's composing impulses were channeled towards a new project called NERONOIA. Two albums were recorded in Alessio's mighty Noise Factory studio and released via EIBON RECORDS: UN MONDO IN ME in late 2006 and IL RUMORE DELLE COSE in 2008. Both were sung in italian by Gianni Pedretti, and welcomed very very warmly, though sales weren't exactly stellar (please keep in mind the changing "downloading-versus-buying" attitude of the listeners). NERONOIA's line up basically consisted of Mauro, Andrea, Alberto (and Gianni working on the vocal side of things in his own home-studio in Crevalcore), with Nico and Matteo kicking in as appreciated jollies in UN MONDO IN ME, and Matteo alone lending his precious hands & guitar skills in IL RUMORE DELLE COSE. Nico, due to family and job troubles, in fact estranged himself from the band(s) for a few years (late 2006 to mid 2009).
After the release of IL RUMORE DELLE COSE, it was NERONOIA's time to be put to rest. Nico re-surfaced from the fogs of time, and took back his place in CANAAN; new songs were composed, recorded, assembled and disassembled at the band's home-studio, then brought to Noise Factory for mixdown and mastering. Here came CONTRO.LUCE: it lifted more than a few eyebrows, not only because it was entirely sung in italian, but also because it was hardly comparable to what the band had ever done before. The concept of "dark music" still - obviously - fitted, but it was way too narrow and restrictive to describe what CANAAN year 2010 were playing. Cold Wave ? Ambient ? Dark ? Ethnic music ? All of these and a lot more, making impossible to frame the band in a specific genre. During 2010 the band re-started playing like a "real band", with a few rehearsals taking place in the band's own small studio. Once a few new songs' structures were created, CANAAN decided to try adding a female vocalist - Arianna. A talented semi-pro soprano singer, she had her debut in the band's cover version of Zeromancer's "Houses of cards", a song done for the norwegian compilation tribute to Kim Ljung. The cooperation worked out very well, and it was a natural consequence adding Arianna's voice to the new songs too. Darker, deeper, doomier than anything CANAAN recorded since 1998 WALK INTO MY OPEN WOMB, OF PRISONERS, WANDERING SOULS AND CRUEL FEARS was mixed and mastered at Noise Factory in April 2012, and represents another peak in the band's musical production. That cd contains 22 tracks equally divided in the two cds: the first one contains "personas" (each song is dedicated to a peculiar character); in the second one Personas turn into prisoners, and the songs transmute accordingly into ambient/ethnic pieces. All in all over 100 minutes of pitch-black soundscapes, rough and filthy songs that took the word "DOOM" to new levels, desperate hymns of self-deception and rage. It was right around that time that an anonymous fan in a blog referred to CANAAN as to “doom-wave”, a descripton that fitted (and still fits, probably) the band's sound pretty well.

Canaan 2018

2013-2016

With the new “sparse” composing method being constantly refined and expanded, CANAAN’s members started recording new music. Some huge NERONOIA’S “mental fumes” were still in the air, and were thus coagulated into two new albums: “SAPORE DI LUCE E DI PIETRA” (2013) and “MI PIACEVA UNA VITA” (2015). Heavily deconstructed, noisier, less digestible than the previous albums, they were in fact NERONOIA’s swansongs. The band was put under ice indefinitely shortly after those releases. While recording material for these albums, Mauro, Alberto and Nico also continued harvesting a huge amount of “free fragments”, to be used in the upcoming CANAAN albums. Mauro's deteriorating health condition acted (again) as a powerful fuel, and led (over a period of two years) to the band's darkest and heaviest album in 2016. “Il giorno dei campanelli” was brought to life with the precious help of Federico Calvara, main resident engineer at Noise Factory at that time. The album once again derailed the band's listeners. “Musical” songs were all gone. “Regular” instruments were all gone. “Listenable” melodies were all gone. The album contains desperate, noisy, unpleasant noise fragments shaped into somehow melodic structures, with very heavy lyrical thematics (all sung in Italian) dealing mainly with depression and mental illness. This album is the only one (thus far) that none of the band members can listen to in its entirety. A real psychic black hole that still does damages. Not many of the residual band’s listeners got this album in its nature either, which is comprehensible. Up until now, all CANAAN members agree in seeing this album as the “darkest of them all” and definitely the “less appealing of them all”. No wonder the album went a bit unnoticed.

It was right about that time that the band’s rehearsals stopped completely and turned into absolutely “random” meetings of Mauro and Nico (Alberto at times). Canonic structures and instruments for new songs were disregarded completely; a new song would usually start from a noise (or a field recording), a rhythmic loop or a drone, only later on morphed into something that could be identified as a song. With this well-tested composing method taking further place, CANAAN brought to life their ninth album “Images from a broken self” in 2018. Once again touched by Alessio Camagni’s magical hands, the album is strength-draining and oppressive, yet in a subtle way. Wounds do heal somehow, and scars can sometimes be beautiful. Matteo’s guitar touches (recorded in a single 4-hour session in early 2017) enrich the album, whose songs can be seen as a natural progression into the “melodic noisy world” of CANAAN of that era.

Canaan 2024

2018-2024

2019 and 2020 were quiet years. Nothing particular happened (nothing happened at all, one might say), and the band’s members lost track of each other for a little while. Life, jobs, families, routine. Things we’re all familiar with, aren’t we ? Yet embers were burning strong under the ashes, and in 2021 Mauro and Nico started playing again. Compositive impulses were still pretty heavy, and took two different and separate ways. Along the noisier, ambient pieces, some actual songs were skeletonized, using brand new keyboards’ lines recorded by Luca in a couple of enthusing sessions in early 2021, coupled & expanded by a plethora of other fragments played by Mauro and Nico. After a few months of refining, Mauro and Nico decided to split the material into two separate cds.

The first one took the form of “AI MARGINI” (once again completely sung in Italian), mixed and mastered by Federico Calvara at his home recording studio since Noise Factory had ceased its existence shortly after the 2021 lockdown. AI MARGINI is a deceivingly “thin” CD, whose songs never “explode” but rather implode into twisting, sick melodies coming out of menacing dark ambiences. On top of these, some spoken word passages turn the album into a kind of “rotten songwriting/theatrical effort” that encountered a pretty warm welcome from the band’s audience.

The other album was a different story. It had songs, REAL songs one might say, with recognisable strophes, refrains, bridges. Something the band hadn’t used in well over a decade. Over time acoustic instruments were added, as well as some amazing guitar parts played by the Swedish crystalline talent JARI LINDHOLM. Lyrics were sung in english, and when all the songs were finalised, mixing time came. Alberto and Mauro then decided to cherish a very old dream: going to Greg Chandler’s (ESOTERIC mastermind) Priory Recording Studios in the U.K. to wrap up the mixing and mastering. A week in August 2024 was booked, and the final result is SOME LAST ECHO. The album contains the sum of all CANAAN’s souls: dark ambiences, wavish-themes, doom portions, epic melodies, singable refrains, heavy rhythmic noises. A compendium of almost 30 years in 12 tracks that will leave no soul untouched.

NOTHING. NEVER. NOWHERE.

biography

1996-2001

2001-2006

2006-2012

2013-2016

2018-2024