The Italian author on her light-years job and utilizing music to broaden affective horizons.
This function was initially released in Fact’s S/S 2022 concern, which is offered to purchase here.
Caterina Barbieri’s music has constantly checkedout transcendental states. From the release of her veryfirst album, Vertical, in 2014, to 2017’s Patterns of Consciousness and 2019’s Ecstatic Computation, Barbieri hasactually madeup electronic music that sits outside the stream of direct time, utilizing pattern and repeating in combination with subtle permutations in tone and pace to conjureup a fugue state in the listener. Her music sits in the custom of minimalists such as Steve Reich and La Monte Young, yet likewise has a baroque signature, an echo of her time at Conservatorio di Musica Giovan Battista Martini in Bologna, where she studied classical guitar and listened to the lute music of Johann Sebastian Bach. However, Barbieri’s main instrument is the modular synth, which she veryfirst cameacross while studying at Stockholm’s wellknown Elektronmusikstudion.
With each succeeding album, Caterina Barbieri hasactually improved her practice with the modular synth, whose format permits the artist to construct a distinct system of modules customized to their requirements. On Ecstatic Computation, which developed on the generative series of Patterns of Consciousnesswith an included sense of scale, it was currently possible to hear Barbieri desiring to break out and checkout brand-new possibilities. ‘After Ecstatic Computation, I understood that I had come to a dead point with my setup since I had checkedout all the possible and all the possibilities provided by my musical instrument’, Barbieri states. ‘I felt the requirement and the seriousness to broaden my musical palette, both in terms of tone and colour, and in terms of the intricacy of various layers and instruments.’
Having lived in Berlin for anumberof years, Barbieri chose to return to her home city of Milan in2019 ‘At some point I understood that I didn’t desire to live there completely’, she states. ‘It felt a bit short-term as a city, since individuals are continuously coming in and out, so it was a bit tough to establish long-lasting human relationships.’ Just after Barbieri returned to Milan nevertheless, Covid-19 swept its method to Italy, and she discovered herself in one of Europe’s veryfirst pandemic hotspots. ‘It was a really extreme time’, she keepsinmind. ‘I was locked in my flat for 2 months. People were even scared of going outside on their terraces. It was a really surreal time, however I took it as a extreme chance for me to focus on music.’
However, writing music in a bubble was an alien experience for Barbieri, whose work has generally been improved through a connection with her audience. ‘In the past I’ve constantly madeup music and carriedout it right after’, she states. ‘Patterns of Consciousness and Ecstatic Computation were records that I madeup from efficiency to efficiency while visiting – I was shows patterns and then carryingout them live, seeing what product was working muchbetter and screening it in genuine life, getting feedback from the audience.’
The album that came out of this time, Spirit Exit, is the veryfirst that Barbieri hasactually madeup in the studio, without being able to carryout the music live. The outcome is Barbieri’s most individual album, one that draws on the transcendental structures of her earlier work while acting as an imprint of her own psychological state at the time. ‘Because I madeup this music throughout an severe time of self-confinement this music truly comes from a state of deprivation and sensorial negation. Music was the just method to escape this truth of confinement. Music acted as a kind of affective enhancer, a website. Music has constantly been a medium for me to broaden affective horizons.’
Although the procedure of composing Spirit Exit was a challenging and unknown one, Barbieri was able to usage it to break out of her creative straitjacket, including brand-new aspects around the modular synth, which stays at the core of Spirit Exit. Different layers and plans sit togetherwith vocals, strings and electrical guitar. It’s ‘less minimalist, more maximalist’, as she explains it, even however her procedure still includes working with patterns and recursive components. In one of the album’s standout tracks, ‘Broken Melody’, Barbieri’s voice and lyrics sit centre phase, cutting through an overdriven synth line that sounds more like hypnotictrance than the meditative tones of her previous work.
‘Most of the work went into establishing a craft that might combine the brand-new aspects that I was bringing into my sonic universe with my practice on the modular, and attempting to discover an intriguing balance that might produce a discussion inbetween this more human and psychological quality and this cold, machinic sort of method’, she states.
If Spirit Exit is a picture of an artist cut adrift from human contact and lookingfor escape through music, then Barbieri’s brand-new job is the opposite, a return to concrete connection. ‘I began sensation the requirement to checkout a more cumulative format, duetothefactthat the past 2 years of the pandemic haveactually been extreme for the music neighborhood’, she describes. ‘We were utilized to sharing so much and then all of a abrupt we were so far away from each other, and I believe it was really hard for a lot of individuals to adjust to this brand-new circumstance. It was rather terrible for me too. I believe it will take time to recover this wound, this injury. light-years is a method of recovery this injury and attempting to bring various individuals together.’
As Barbieri discusses, light-years is a ‘multimedia job’ that will function as lotsof things: a label, through which she will mostly release her own product togetherwith music from and partners in the verysame musical orbit; a live program where she will carryout alongwith a altering lineup of similar artists, with visual components customized for each place; and a platform to establish setups and other jobs.
light-years was veryfirst premiered as a live program at the 2021 edition of Italy’s Nextones celebration, where Barbieri carriedout with saxophonist Bendik Giske and electronic artist Nkisi, with visuals established by MFO. ‘I desired to welcome various constellations of artists and partners to signupwith me on phase and present this brand-new live principle: not a completely collective program however a hybrid environment or sonic continuum inbetween various minutes – some of them are solo minutes, some of them are duos and cooperations. The audience is welcomed to checkout this community with no particular expectation or preparation, a bit as if it was a secret, captivated garden.’
The concept for light-years came out of Barbieri’s desire not simply for human connection throughout the pandemic, however from years of solo touring. ‘Electronic music can be extremely singular’, she states. ‘You constantly travel alone and carryout, and it’s excellent, however I likewise desired to discover an reason to fulfill with individuals and carryout in cooperations, which is brand-new area for me duetothefactthat I have a extremely particular solo practice on my instrument. I’ve established a method of carryingout it that is rather maximalist in the sense that it practically endsupbeing a symphonic technique to an basically monophonic instrument.’
Barbieri is drawn to artists who share this typical method of taking a monophonic instrument and extending it to the limitation through electronicdevices. Bendik Giske, for example, has established a strategy to develop consistency from his saxophone, much like Lyra Pramuk (who workedtogether on the ‘Knot of Spirit’ single with Barbieri in 2021), who digitally controls her voice to transcendent impact. ‘It was rather bothersome to play together because the 3 of us have the verysame kind of musical technique, where we fill all the offered area with sound’, Barbieri states. ‘So it was rather a developmental and difficult experience to combine our voices together and findout how to sculpt area for each other.’
Spirit Exit also showsup alongwith a brand-new multimedia piece from Barbieri, an setup established alongwith visual partner Ruben Spini that is now on screen in 180 Studios’ virtual Future Shock exhibit. ‘The concept is to produce an immersive, overall environment that brings together musical, visual and sculptural components. Musically, the architecture of the piece will play with various scales of time to checkout ideas of memory, understanding and relativity’, Barbieri states. The piece links to Barbieri’s concept of music being a entrance to transcend time and area, and will function a portal at its centre. ‘We will play with the co-existence of 2 various conceptual poles’, she states. ‘One pole is about humankind, fragility and intimacy. And the other is about this transcendent, remarkable, unattainable and magical world.’
‘Music is a method for me to channel energy and cultivate the cosmic vastness of the inner world’, Barbieri describes. ‘This contrast inbetween the negation of the outside world and the openness of the inner world is really interesting for me, and is a bit of an archetype of the woman presence and the custom of woman poets, mystics and artists. In the previous, a lot of woman thinkers lived extremely segregated and quelched lives: they wer