Gothica
Biography
View Lyrics by Gothica
"The name GOTHICA describes well our music, it shows our love for many forms of art because in different periods of time and in different ways, the Gothic style involved different kinds of art such as painting, sculpture, architecture and literature. Gothic Revival opens the way to Romanticism with its devices such as the sublime of an abandoned country churchyard, of a Gothic cathedral, of a tempest, of an impracticable savage landscape, of a horror tale. We use the term sublime in the same way as Edmund Burke (1729-1797) who, inspiring himself by the treatise by Pseudo-Longin, defined this strong feeling in "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful" (1756). The Gothic castle par excellence is not an ancient one but is Strawberry Hill, which is a small pot pourri of strange and eccentric objects coming from all around the world. It was built as his residence by Horace Walpole, who wrote the manifesto of Gothic literature and the first recognized Gothic novel "The Castle of Otranto" in 1764. Our music, like this Gothic castle, is a mixture of various kind of arts, sonorities. It is like the joyful, moving fascination of a landscape; the tormenting sentiment springing from premature death: beauty that changes into horror for the imperturbable mysterious mechanism of the benign and severe nature; the sound of existence."
GOTHICA are Roberto Del Vecchio (programming, keyboards, voice) and Alessandra Santovito (voice, keyboards). All the music has been composed by Alessandra Santovito and Roberto Del Vecchio and played with the collaboration of some musicians like Flavia Prosperi (flute), Claudio Di Bucchianico (oboe), Domenico Mancini (violin), Alberto Biondi (percussions). The lyrics are poems written by Alessandra Santovito but there are also poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Delgado José Espronceda, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Christina Georgina Rossetti. GOTHICA formed toward the end of 1994, but the line-up became stable at the start of 1995. In September 1995, GOTHICA recorded their debut demo tape "Gothica". The demo was positivily reviewed by several magazines and fanzines and it was distributed in Italy and abroad by Beyond…Prod. In November 1996, the band recorded a new song entitled "Nothingness" which was included in the CD compilation "Screams From Italy" vol. 3 by Dawn Of Sadness.
In June 1998, GOTHICA realized their second demo entitled "Proserpina" (demo of the month – METAL HAMMER Nr. 11 / November 1998). Thanks to this demo, GOTHICA signed the contract with the Swedish Cold Meat Industry label. In April 2000, GOTHICA appeared in the CD compilation "Intimations Of Immortality" vol. 5 by Energeia with the song "The Land Under The Waves" (demo version).
In October 2000, GOTHICA’s first CD entitled "Night Thoughts" came out for Cruel Moon/Cold Meat Industry.
