CAPTAIN MANTELL

PHOTO CREDIT: eeviac

1. Welcome to All the Cores and More! Would you please introduce yourself and what you do in Captain Mantell?

Hi, thanks for having us! I'm Tommaso Mantelli, aka Captain Mantell, and I'm the captain of the crew. I play guitar and sing.

2. Can you provide us a little context about Captain Mantell—where you’re from, how you met, when you formed, et cetera?

Captain Mantell is a project born in Bologna, Italy, in 2006 as my solo project. After a bad adventure with a major record company, I decided to make only the music I really love, without compromises. So in 2007, the first record was released.

A couple of gentlemen listened to it, learned all the songs from the album without telling me anything, and one day they called me into their rehearsal room and played my songs for me. From that moment on, the project became a band.

Now, in 2026, we are releasing our seventh album, and even if the crew has changed over the years, and I moved back to my hometown, Treviso, we are still here after 20 years!

The current crew is formed by three other invaluable artists:

Roberto Olivotto – aka Major BD – drums
Andrea Lombardini – aka Commodore Lo – bass
Sergio Orso – aka Starship Officer Ursus – violin

3. What is the significance of the band’s name and how does that tie into your sound?

I’m really into weird stuff, so one day I was reading (I have to say, while taking a shit) one of my books about incredible facts that truly happened, and I came across a chapter called The Last Flight of Captain Thomas Mantell. My name is Tommaso Mantelli, so it immediately got my full attention...

I learned that the first pilot who died chasing a UFO (Kentucky, USA, 1948) was named almost exactly like the possible English translation of my name. I immediately decided to give that name to the solo project I was working on.

And it happened that the name gave direction to everything. My attraction to weird facts and the history of the real Captain became the common thread of the discography, translating into music as well, where the exploration of the boundary between rock and electronic music through sci-fi imagery became the representation of two sides of what I see and imagine around me: real and unreal...

(Ah! I also had the pleasure of digitally meeting the nephew of the real Captain Mantell via the web, and we are still in contact. He invited me to the US to touch some pieces of the airplane that he collected during a survey at the crash site with a television crew working on a broadcast about his grandfather. In fact, for UFO enthusiasts, that is a huge story that involved a lot of people and authorities…)

4. Do you think there could ever truly be a post-genre artist/band or will there always be some kind of genre home base, however tenuous the sonic connection?

I think that genres are definitions that can be useful for journalists and maybe for buyers, but they are not good for musicians or artists. For me, it’s always hard to define my music and close it inside a small box... so, sorry, but I don’t really know how to answer your question.

5. Your seventh album Human or Not came out June 23rd, and it directly engages with artificial intelligence. I have a few questions related to this, as I continue to wrestle with both the practical and philosophical questions pertaining to its use and, indeed, existence. First, would you please describe your use of artificial intelligence on the record, and then would you please explain why you chose to employ it in this manner, and what conversations you were hoping to invite in doing so.

One of the reasons I created Human Or Not is precisely because these questions don't have simple answers. The project isn't a celebration of AI, nor a condemnation of it.

We felt that, as artists, we had a kind of duty to experiment with this new form of technology. Also because the project has always been a mix of sweaty punk and cold electronic music, in a continuous relationship between what’s human and what’s alien. Isn't AI something closer to aliens than humans right now?

This dual perspective is at the core of the new album, which, as you said, is called HUMAN OR NOT. So we decided to use AI to create alternative versions of the songs we recorded in the studio as a band and to create a HUMAN Side A with seven human songs and an OR NOT Side B with alternative versions of those same songs.

The compositions and lyrics are the same, but we challenged ourselves in this unexplored field and wanted to see what could happen by pushing the machine to its limits.

In any case, we think it will be a milestone in our discography, something to look back on in a few years and remember as the moment when all that AI stuff began.

Obviously, we understand why many musicians are concerned. AI wouldn't exist without the work of countless artists. That's why we believe transparency, proper regulation, and fair compensation are essential.

Our interest in AI is not about exploiting other artists' work, but about exploring how new technology can expand creative possibilities while respecting the people who created the culture it learns from.

We decided to do it because we think this is the biggest issue humanity will face in the coming years, and we feel it is still not discussed enough—or deeply enough.

6. As someone who writes, teaches writing, and is deeply immersed in the arts I have numerous philosophical objections to the encroachment of AI in what are fundamentally expressions of what it is to be human—and frankly some deep concerns about humans outsourcing their brainpower to it—however I’ve also softened my stance in other ways. I don’t know that I have many clear answers, and I think that’s healthy. Clearly you’re not trying to make some clear-cut pronouncement about AI but rather to consider different implications and raise questions for the listener to contemplate. I would like to ask what insights you gained into AI during this process and in what ways your thinking about it might have changed.

I share your perplexities completely.

I don’t want you to get me wrong. I don’t want you to think I’m a tech guy living in a loft in a big city with supercomputers and the fastest connection available.

I’m not that young anymore. I’m 48, I’m a father, a husband and we live in the countryside by a river in a 100 years old house with a lot of animals rescued from very sad situations.

My internet connection is the hotspot from my smartphone (which is a cheap one!), and right now I’m writing this answer (without AI help!) from my recording studio next to my house, which is a wooden house full of vintage stuff.

I would say that I’m quite an old-fashioned boy. (Ah! My van is from 1989!)

So maybe at least I deserve some credit for my effort to understand the rise of new technologies.

At the same time, I don’t want to be the kind of artist who puts his head in the sand and says, “No, no, no, it’s not for me.”

So... Artificial Intelligence both scares me and attracts me.

I think the duality of the album fits perfectly with the AI topic. AI can be the greatest opportunity for humankind, and it can also be the end of it.

There are so many layers to discuss that I could write a book: society, environment, health, laws, war, education, creativity, freedom, safety...

Unfortunately, I’m not really able to choose which side to support.

I would simply like this issue to become more central in the thoughts of people and governments so that we can find a safe way to make it work for both humanity and the environment.

I hope humankind will not reveal itself, once again, as the greedy bastard it has always been.

As an artist, I must say that I haven’t used AI since I finished working on the album.

When I subscribed to the AI music platform, I thought I might use it in my work as a producer in my recording studio. But it didn’t happen.

Maybe it will in the future, but for now I’m still working with bands exactly as I have for the last thirty years.

Having said that, I think it can be useful if it is used as a tool to create something very specific that exists in your imagination but cannot be achieved, even with a professional recording studio—perhaps because you don't have access to a particular instrument or performer, or simply because what you're imagining doesn't exist at all.

You can see it as an ultra-evolved drum machine or synthesizer plug-in.

If you use it to generate fake songs by stealing the style of unsuspecting artists - whether for fun, because it’s easier, or simply to make money - then I don’t agree with that very much.

I also have to say that it wasn't easy to get good AI versions of the songs.

For several tracks, we had to generate more than sixty versions and then import them into our DAW and work extensively on them before reaching something close to what we had in mind.

An interesting aspect was collaborating with something that isn't human but somehow performs a form of reasoning.

AI doesn't simply execute instructions; it generates possibilities, creating a new kind of creative environment that can lead artists to see things from a different perspective.

7. Talk to us about the physical layout of the record and how that ties into the philosophical and topical focus of the album.

The artwork was created by the artist eeviac, who is a long-time collaborator of Captain Mantell.

The dualism of the project is fully reflected in its visual identity.

Two colors represent the human and artificial sides respectively.

The images overlap but can only be read separately through red/blue 3D glasses (included inside the vinyl package) by closing one eye at a time, or they can be viewed with both eyes open, revealing a double reality in which the two dimensions coexist without ever fully merging.

8. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions! Any last words for the readers?

As long as things remain in the hands of big tech companies and governments that are afraid their rivals will develop a more powerful AI before they do, things will probably not go very well.

For this reason, we must always stay alert and fight to ensure that these technologies develop in the most ethical way possible.

Please keep an eye on what happens around you, especially regarding AI. Try to form your own opinion about it and fight for what you believe is right.

...and if you can, choose not to use it for bullshit, but save it for things that really matter.

Your children and your environment will thank you.

If you want to know what we are messing around with, visit tommasomantelli.com/projects/captain-mantell/, where you can also discover something about my other projects and productions... or check out the websites of our beloved labels Overdrive Records and Go Down Records.

Many thanks to All the Cores And More for having us!