Gelato will play tonight at Merlin !

Here is a short interview with the Gelato-girls: Cécile Togni, Misty Rabbit and Lisa Paclet

Where does the name Gelato comes from?

Cécile: It goes back when Mimi and I were mixing in Florence. We wanted to start a new experimental music and visual art project. We picked the name out of a menu in a restaurant that Lisa had recommended who’s originally from Florence. The idea of working with Lisa was born at the same moment.

For how long have you known each other and how did you meet?

Cécile: Mimi and I are friends for six years now and we have mixed together from time to time in the last two years. Mimi met Lisa while working as an art director for a film production company which Lisa was signed to. They did a music video together.

What is the main concept of Gelato?

Cécile, Lisa, Mimi: Creating a new type of electronic scenography from music and visuals. Gelato includes three acts: experimenting sounds and lights; minimal techno with visual effects; and let the party begin…

Why is it inspiring for the three of you to work together?

Cécile, Lisa, Mimi: We all have credentials from different art forms and thus inspire each other.

You travel all over the world. What was the strangest place where you ever played?

Mimi: Once I mixed with Cécile at some Turkish beach side resort. The resident DJ would not let us in the DJ booth and called his Russian mafia bodyguards to kick us out while we got paid a lot to play…Weird…

Lisa: So far Dubai. I was making an installation for the Dubai film festival. We were working every night until 3 or 4 am to have it ready for the opening day.
Sometimes after getting back to my hotel I couldn't sleep, so I would cross the hotel garden, 500 meters of desert and a big highway to get to a huge mall open all night, with a sky slope in it. No matter how late, while inside, in a sleep deprived daze, I could meet all sorts of weird characters.
Cécile: Like Mimi, my worst memory was to be chased out of DJ booth by Russian mafia in a club in the middle of the Turkish nowhere.

What is the thing you love the most about what you do?

Mimi: That it is creative, fun and challenging.

Lisa: Sometimes, when successful, mixing sounds and images together feels like stylizing time and space.

Cécile: Travelling, dancing, sharing my music and being with my love!

Where do your energies come from? How do you relax, if you do at all?

Mimi: I eat a lot. I never relax unless I am sleeping. Work keeps me going and I am obsessed with creating new projects.

Lisa: I work constantly on different projects and the desire to see them taking shape keep me focused. The people I meet are also great sources of inspiration and dynamism. Despite loving my work I enjoy taking some time off, going to remote places to see time moving at a different pace. Sometimes even spending a whole day rolling around, doing nothing at all. I think it's important to make the ideas crystallize in my head.

Cécile: I was born with natural energy. I always try to have several projects on the go, no matter if it is day time or night time.

When you were children what did you dream of as a profession?

Mimi: Exactly what I do now.

Lisa: First I wanted to fly hang gliders. When I was 9 years old I decided to become an animator, then around 17 I fell in love with experimental film and it stuck with me.

Cécile: A veterinarian. I cannot imagine my life without animals around, but today I’m very happy to be what I am, to do something creative, and I think finally I’d be bored in my animal hospital.

How do you see yourselves 30 years later?

Mimi: Still working! Maybe becoming a concrete music composer, and write a book.

Lisa: Hopefully I'll be a decent old lady, still making films. I feel that there will always be feelings and experiences iside me ready to be turned into films.

Cécile: Living in a big house in Italy, in front of the sea, with big windows. I want to hear my children playing around and cook amazing meals for my boyfriend.

How do you feel about playing in Budapest and at the Room party?

Cécile, Lisa, Mimi: We are so excited!!!