Out the debut album by the Italian collective, an “authorial” project of electronic and visual music formed and produced by Riccardo Mazza (well-known sound experimenter who has collaborated with important artists such as Chick Corea, Franco Battiato, Giorgio Gaber and Francesco Baccini, to name but a few), photographer and videomaker Laura Pol and keyboardist Carlo Bagini, already known for having played with the bands Statuto, Righeira and Rettore.
Genre: Elettronica, Big Beat, Techno, Dark/Ambient
Label: A21 Productions
Physical Distribution: Machiavelli Records
Digital Distribution: Machiavelli Records
Release Date: 29/09/2016
Streaming https://soundcloud.com/project-to/sets/the-white-side-the-black-side/s-LjArG
It is called The White Side, The Black Side and is the debut album by Project-TO. Recorded in the Interactive Sound studies in Turin, Italy, property of Riccardo Mazza, it was realized with the aim of live set, a real audio-visual experience where the songs of the white side, electronic/big beat-style, alternate with techno ambient/dark atmospheres of the black tracks. Within the work, the listener can find the influences of forerunners of this kind of sound like Chemical Brothers, DeadMau5, Crystal Method, Ancient Methods, Not Waving, Apparat and Andy Stott.
Powerful and unceasing rhythms characterize the white tunes, often layered and combined with electronic sounds and percussions/drumming recorded in studio. A very synthetic sound due to an important use of analog and digital synths. Black songs are the “photographic negatives”, more bitstream, of the white songs; every black is an interpretation of its corresponding white, where a more techno/dark arrangement changed deeply sounds and drafting, mantaining the same exact length.
Paths interweave symbolically with voices and sounds that sometimes recall universal symbols like in Sign of the Earth, where Tibetan monks songs appear, or Look Further, with a theme signed by Gregorian chants, or I-Hope, characterized by an opening speech of Indian Parliament by Indira Gandhi and followed by comment “I Hope” of Hillary Clinton; images are bounded to our territory to underline our roots and our culture.
Double LP was indeed produced together with the original visual project that is part of the whole plan. Six videostories representing the six white moments, or rather a dreamlike travel of the two protagonists, that live different experiences and meet only occasionally and fleetingly. During the live set the voyage evolves with darker and more abstract visual atmospheres, sustaining black tracks. A video project in part inspired by the record Further by Chemical Brothers (2010), composed by eight songs accompanied by as many corresponding clips. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuTQq0dXm-M)
The shots are original, made in the studio and on location. Animations, video clips, characters in silhouette and abstract geometric textures, generated with appropriate physical models simulation softwares, are the characteristics of the production. The show is performed entirely live with mapping projections on the surface of the place hosting the event: walls, ceilings, furnishings or exterior facades. An immersive experience that transforms the space, where electronic music becomes part of a contemporary artistic language more evolved and experimental, while retaining the characteristics of a dance and trendy event.
The White Side videostory https://vimeo.com/171486377
Although extremely new, Project-TO has already executed high profile performances like Opening Party of Artissima in Turin, Italy (November 2015), the opening night of Torino City of Design (December 2015) and Fuorisalone in apartment Lago in Brera for Milano Design Week (April 2016).
Live Sets https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmhPNPA6lBkOC9KtQfHubOw
Riccardo Mazza Composer, multimedia artist and professor at the School for Advanced Musical Studies in Saluzzo, since the end of the 1980s he has been working on multimedia installations and, in particular, with spatial sound. His research includes: Renaissance SFX Dolby Surround encoded library (https://db.tt/WMHTKzQl / https://db.tt/6LGQS67o), the first collection of sound effects in the world for films and television, created in Dolby Surround (2000); the discovery and creation of the psychoacoustic model of “sleep waves” (2003); SoundBuilder (https://db.tt/ZgWBSJnH), the first software for adding a soundtrack to videos to create surround effects, presented at the AES (Audio Engineering Society) in New York (2006). In 2001, Mazza founded the Interactive Sound Studio that deals with interactive and multimedia installations in museums. In 2016 it is due out the monographic collection/anthology Experimental Works 2000-2015: 9 CD (published by Machiavelli Music Publishing) containing all the works of experimental music and sound in 15 years appropriately revised, remixed and remastered. This includes sound environments made by Mazza for museums and exhibitions, acoustic works created in the field of contemporary art, noise generated by the sound synthesis algorithms, to the space footage captured around the world and then reworked into sound tracks. Each CD will have a specific theme.
Carlo Bagini Sideman musician in nationwide concerts, he was keyboardist and guitarist for the famous Italian ska band Statuto and he has moreover worked with Rettore, Righeira and Marco Carena.
Laura Pol Versatile and creative, after attending art school Fortman Studios in Florence, since the early 90s she is dedicated to photography professionally. After several years of working at a video production studio in Milan, her research evolves in the 2000s by combining various disciplines of the visual arts, lastly to live sets, musical projects, electronic and contemporary art.
The White Side
I Hope
Sign of the Earth
Look Further
Rebirth
Ya-Ho
Roger
The Black Side
Black I Hope
Black Sign of the Earth
Black Look Further
Black Rebirth
Black Ya-Ho
Black Roger
Contacts
www.project-to.com
https://www.facebook.com/projectto
www.machiavellimusic.com
