Future Romanticism
In his personal take on synth music, Capiuz explores a language made of liquid notes and pointillistic counterpoints, all stemming from a single machine. This album has been composed using the MIDI language and then recorded in one take with a single synthesizer, investigating non-human ways of playing the instrument. The computer is treated as the intermediate that connects the composer’s intentions with the machine, allowing for complexities and velocities that go beyond the keyboard.
The inspiration for this record comes from the romantic music movement that flared up in Europe during the 19th century and its innovations in regards to using difficult technical excerpts to produce and create new types of sonic palettes and emotions, without indulging in aimless instrumental virtuosity. In Future Romanticism this concept takes various shapes, going from fast and intricate cascade of notes, reminiscent of Black Midi music, to an evolving sound design that morphs the tracks into new textures and timbers passing through intricate and layered polyphonies.
https://mizuhamizuha.bandcamp.com/album/future-romanticism-2
Ecosystem_03 – Leave A Trace
The interactive sound installation “Leave a Trace” was created as part of the ARE (Artist Residencies Enschede) project, for which Luca Favaro was awarded a grant for an artistic residency during the months of June, July, and August 2024. The installation consists of a dense network of cables connecting microphones and speakers to a central processor that handles the emission and recording of sounds. This ecosystem produces a small amount of its own sounds, in the form of sine waves tuned to the major scale, and periodically records what happens in the space where it is set up, then plays it back after various forms of digital manipulation. The sounds of the audience and the installation itself thus blend in an act of re-sampling, continuously overdubbing of sound material. This work therefore takes on the form of a space dedicated to oral tradition, creating a collective, spatial and temporal memory that can connect, even in the future, the people and places where the ecosystem is exhibited.
The Proof Of The Pudding Is In The Eating
The third installation of this project, which gives a Netherlands’ and an international artist the task of organising a dinner experience in an art space, took place in Deventer hosted by Luca Favaro and Guusje Slagter. The event was centred on the intimate aspect of eating, asking attendants to gather and eat their dishes in silence. Through the use of foam earplugs, the sounds happening inside the mouth where amplified to focus the attention on the things that we put in our body and that become part of it. Three different musical moments where composed to accompany the public during the experience, along with some micro-installations to animate the food table.
Fiori Notturni
Capiuz returns on Over My Body with a new club-ready album that slashes through a nocturnal forest landscape with fluorescents and violent bursts of color. Taking its name from a series of paintings called “Bande di Fiori Notturni” by Italian artist Alice Visentin, the project goes through a wide array of influences and bpms. Terra Nuda (naked earth) acts as an opener fusing a foggy drone with drum breaks and dance hall syncopations. Hectic follows up with a more bass oriented attitude incarnated in a heavy pounding kick pattern and driven by metallic drums with a restless spirit. The sounds and textures of Fiori Notturni are heavily inspired by the works of John Cage and his use of percussive instruments for both rhythmic and textural purposes. These influences become pretty clear in slower cuts like Black Needle and the title track, where jingles, rattles and other high-pitched instruments create a moving bed for the rhythmic section. Other works such as 0400 and the collaboration with label head B E N N, Lunar Eclipse, bring a faster pace to the project with a higher focus on rhythmic layering. Before giving its way to the Ancestral Vision remix, the “night” is closed off by Hallucinogen, a longer track driven by a steady kick that plays with different odd timed patterns to create an exciting and enveloping trip.
Ecosystem_01 – Dialogue
Two machines reflecting on a John Cage’s quote. Opinions, especially during a dialogue, are in a continuous state of mutation. Other perspectives on the subject and the evolution of our environment constantly influence everything we think and speak as humans. The two audio speakers are the physical representation of two algorithms communicating. Each one of them is listening and recording what the other is saying to then elaborate it and communicate it back. Through the addition of a microphone, the listeners are also welcomed to take part in the discussion; their opinion on the subject will be perceived and elaborated by the speakers.
L’Agonia del Ghiacciaio
To the subdued and lost lament coming from the glacier’s body, Daniela Evangelisti replies by spreading a blanket, an impromptu remedy to its imminent dissolution. Beginning with photographic images of the terminal part of the Gran Etret, she creates a tactile and video sound installation that materialises its current state of suffering. Listening to the groaning of nature and protecting its fragility, the artist thus becomes the interpreter of that maternal gesture which, addressed to every creature in a caring relationship, is transformed into an expression of shared ecological awareness.
Sound Objects (devices)
Sound Objects is a double work that reimagines music production, comprehending a set of three percussive max for live instruments and a full album composed with them. The digital devices’ concept exceeds the traditional boundaries to create single instruments that can morph into a wider variety of percussive sounds. Departing from the ordinary concept of isolated instruments with fixed functions (such as kick, snare, and hi-hat) the three sound objects take the form of hybrid drums that fully take advantage of their digital capabilities, seamlessly blending the various roles. Splinter, Komet and Flubber have unique engines, merging FM synthesis, sampling, subtractive synthesis and audio effects. Their timbers, textures and fundamental frequencies change all across the 127 midi notes while maintaining a cohesive sound. Following the development of these three m4l devices, the album is a showcase of their capabilities and unique sonic palette.
Sound Objects (album)
Sound Objects is a double work that reimagines music production, comprehending a set of three percussive max for live instruments and a full album composed with them. The digital devices’ concept exceeds the traditional boundaries to create single instruments that can morph into a wider variety of percussive sounds. Departing from the ordinary concept of isolated instruments with fixed functions (such as kick, snare, and hi-hat) the three sound objects take the form of hybrid drums that fully take advantage of their digital capabilities, seamlessly blending the various roles. Splinter, Komet and Flubber have unique engines, merging FM synthesis, sampling, subtractive synthesis and audio effects. Their timbers, textures and fundamental frequencies change all across the 127 midi notes while maintaining a cohesive sound. Following the development of these three m4l devices, the album is a showcase of their capabilities and unique sonic palette.
The New Show
A relentless crave for something new lays as an emotional foundation for this work and has directed the attitude while making it towards a personal journey through repetition and legitimization. The core sound comes from a melange of mangled samples, drum breaks and deep kick lines, where rhythmic patterns are hammered down in an obsessive manner before being hastily truncated and re-worked into new entities. In a frantic research with no fixed objective, every track takes the form of a fast pace pursuit that keeps blindly deviating from its course and shattering its own boundaries.
SAAM
“Embrace your primal nature and let the frenzied beat lead you back to your ancestral roots”. Leese and Capiuz join forces for a new split EP on Over My Body. Along with two mutual remixes of previous recordings and a brand new track from the experimental oriented duo.
Hpeggiator
Hpeggiator is designed to expand the limits of a classic arpeggiator.
It doesn’t have a speed limit and it features three modes: normal, range and slow. The arpeggio direction can be modified. while the gate parameter adjusts the length of the outgoing notes. Hpeggiator features both increments by steps and in chord mode, it does feature a sequencer. The variable length anche can be randomize both manually and with the autodice function.
Demo – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp66ayUNcsE
Krynn
Krynn is a multiband stereo distortion developed by Luca Favaro (T.U.) based on a concept design by SY/IN. It is distributed by HIDE Productions | H-4.
Demo – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t7v3gi_Dzo
Pleiades
A new percussive club work from Italian producer Capiuz, exploring a vast range of tempos while keeping a centre around rhythmic workouts and ethnic influences. The ep spaces from slow driving dubs to faster dance breaks, paying homage to composer Iannis Xenakis and his rhythmically obsessive approach to composition. Tracks like Bancal or Le Style rely on slow yet relentless bass kicks and hypnotic atmospheres, while other cuts, such as Tam Tam or Peaux, present themselves as syncopated movements ready for the dancefloor.
Pulverized
Pulverized encapsulates a sombre and hectic atmosphere. On Bling Ring, a simple reggaeton beat is turned into a slow and heavy pulsation topped with thematic rhythms and a little faster in its tempo. Pulverized enters a more ritualistic soundscape with a steady, unrelenting pulse, distant drums and granulized samples.
Moving Grounds
Moving Grounds delves into tribal ostinatos and ritualistic gestures. Using big drums and a vast array of percussive elements, the ep creates an enveloping aura of danceable movements and ancestral sounds. The opening track, Pantera, sets the mood of the ep with a nolanesque atmosphere and a heavy hitting beat, to be later reprised in the closer Ambush with a faster pace and a groovier feeling. Jump On It fills the gap with a driving syncopated ostinato bouncing all over the track.
Vela
Vela is a granular sampler taking inspiration from Curtis Roads’ pulsar synthesis program. Its key features are the masking capabilities, allowing for rhytmic and stochastic muting of individual grains, and the envelope modulation section, which provides the user with two easy-to-use envelopes to modulate different parameters inside the device, creating movement and directions in each stream without having to draw automations or to manually turn dials.
Compulsion Fissure
Compulsion Fissure by T.U. is a meticulously layered sonic expression built on repetition and rhythmical approaches to sound design. The sound of the whole EP has a very distinctive noisy and growling texture coming from a long feedback chain where the project’s samples get compressed, altered and amplified to enhance their nature before being arranged and intertwined with one another. Reiteration is at the center of this EP as a way to constantly reinvent material without losing its original substance and as a mean to construct sonic narratives that do not require visual elements to tell a story to the listener.
Confined Space
Confined Space stems from the idea of repurposing audio material from YouTube, in an artistic process that values quantity over quality. Random videos are selected using different key words and their audio is chopped and compressed into the DAW to be used as compositional elements. Often scrolling down to get the uploads with the least views, this process is both a reflection on the enormous quantity of material that can be found online and an invitation to use and repurpose digital content in new artistic ways. What is inside the database is not important, its size already makes for an infinite output of ideas.
URL_1
URL_1 is an interactive sound installation. The program is organized as a point and click game containing videos, images and 10 audio tracks that can be played, stopped and mixed by the user. The esoteric layout of URL_1 takes inspirations from ARGs and found footage movies, using audio and video material derived from random YouTube searches to create a new explorable reality. The aim of this installation is to provide a sound experience that involves directly the listener in the creation of an audio composition, without requiring any musical knowledge.
Shifting
With its minimal and rhythm focused atmospheres, Shifting takes on a clinical and experimental approach to the techniques of rhythmic phasing and shifting. On a foundation of straight forward techno-ish grooves, identical patterns are superimposed and displaced to create self-similar versions of themselves and new, ever changing rhythmic combinations. A hypnotic, dance-focused release that uses rhythm as a ritualistic instrument.
Desktop Music
The show is a personal take on Erik Satie’s “Musique d’ameublement” and aims at providing some quality ambience music, revolving around sound design and evolving textures. Each month will feature an original, 1-hour long generative composition that stems from simple melodic ideas and loops to generate ever changing soundscapes.