Sonologyst: Planetarium – Album Evaluation & Interview

Even when they don’t explicitly embark on such a voyage nor predetermine the album at hand as being an album about…effectively area, the metaphor for the internally twisted mechanisms of humankind to excel their wildest goals, the extra menacing metaphor that the cosmos is able to crushing us to mud like a bug under the forefinger of a teenage big turns into ever extra poignant.

The identical cosmos that, again right here, at house, surrounded by bricks and mortar, a landmass of concrete fields and glass mountains of post-industrial waste,  can open it’s jaws and devour the minds of many, leaving them an obsessed relic of a creature curled up in a ball on their bed room ground, semi-naked, eyes frozen into marble, a string of saliva reaching from the nook of the mouth to the centre of the carpet – the finality of man-machine who dared to breach the occasion horizon of its unknown pleasures. The cosmos is right here.

Life on different planets? Not fairly. Too tacky. One fallacious flip in a topic as vastly unimaginable because the universe, and the chilling depth, the supposed impression of the idea is lowered to a child mobile-sized planetarium hovering above the planet, a jaded novelty, a metaphor for nothing besides an embarrassing scrapbook of corny paraphernalia.

Good job then, that on Planetarium, the brand new album from aural explorer launched through Chilly Spring and the following in a line of works that got down to ”convert cosmic phenomena into immersive auditory experiences,” the novelty is way from grasp. The cosmos speaks. It’s bilingual. It communicates in myriad methods.

The album consists of uncooked knowledge recordsdata from radio waves, electromagnetic fields and plasma fluctuations captured on recordings from NASA, European Area Company, and the previous Soviet Union’s area program. These non-audible indicators are what create the ”sounds” on the report and achieve this by means of a course of often called knowledge sonification. This method, together with others reminiscent of amplitude modulation and sampling, allows the recordsdata to be transformed into audio frequencies we mere people can hear, as many indicators reminiscent of photo voltaic winds, planetary magnetospheres or charged particles, are far past what our ear can detect. As soon as transformed, the sounds are sometimes enhanced by amplifying particular frequencies or introducing layers and make the info extra multi-dimensional, a method to increase the sensory attract of the album, with just about no inch of the past, at the very least so far as these 13 items go, left unchecked.

Sonologyst, understanding the cosmos itself because the songbook with quite a lot of mysterious musical items that carry on giving, visualising these recordsdata as possessing the identical intrigue as an instrument, not a lot deserted, forgotten, nor forsaken even, however simply in want of being tuned again into life and tempted into view, crafts the collation into form, extracting nuances within the recordsdata and enhancing them into recurrently breathtaking outcomes. ”Extra broadly,” he states, ”I’d say most of my works comply with a type of documentary technique the place sound turns into a medium for exploring particular phenomena, whether or not scientific, historic, or metaphysical.”

Born in Naples, Italy, on Might eighth, 1971, Raffaele Pezzella first forayed into the topic issues explored as Sonologyst when he was a younger boy drawn to all issues metaphysical, paranormal and scientific. Impressed by ”personal rituals” by watching late 70s/early 80s sci-fi and horror movies such because the Italian spy/sci-fi film Octhechi dalle Stelle (Eyes From the Stars, 1978), the lineage from the boy peeking out from behind a protecting cabin of blankets, to the Sonologyst earlier than us right now, may be traced to those formative experiences. ”Earlier than turning into sonic materials,” he says, ”these concepts had been a part of my private panorama of exploration, formed by books, theories, and the mysteries that linger on the perimeters of data, an unexplored nook of notion. I’m pushed by the urge to analyze, by means of sound, these issues which might be hidden, marginal, or past odd human expertise.”

After finding out arithmetic and physics on the College of Naples, Pezzella graduated as a sound technician in 1999. He started experimenting with digital media in 2000, leading to a four-track album, his debut, Memorie Elettroniche Sonore, launched on PeopleSound, a label sponsored by neurophonic system producer, TDK. After finding out guitar and growing his technical abilities in digital music, he returned to music manufacturing, bringing to life many concepts he had explored in earlier years. Certainly one of which is that this.

Blue Neptune blooms a vaporous broadcast of uncanny, ambient reverie. A distorted drill digging for a sought-after ore under the dense floor of a planet frozen in waves of white. A fragmented glitch- ballet of melodic motifs ultimately survives the spectrum earlier than being smouldered fully, they twinkle and themselves on an historical stringed instrument cast out of crystal and stone, plunged into the underside of the deepest abyss.
AANext up, Extremely Low Black Gap Frequencies wants no description. It merely seems. An isolationist ambient mist descends throughout a panorama of choke-smoked valleys. Such unsettling, doom-laden matches of ash-ingesting energy are solely intensified of their ominous nature by textural washes of noise and fluorescent voices gently flickering by means of it.
Heavy, presumably heavier, S-1981 S 13 Pan-Saturn’s Moon is a splintered surge of mangled bass grunt. The disembowelling growl ultimately dissipates to a nightmarish surgical theatre of caustic jazz chords, stacks of substrate scraping towards layers of plague-ridden dissonance.

After 2015’s Silencers, a report ”impressed by the testimonies of those that have had contact with the so-called ‘Silencers’ or ‘Males in Black’, Historical Dying Cults And Beliefs from 2020, and Interdimensional from 2022, a report fascinated by exploring the ”paraphysical dimension of cosmic music”, Planetarium is the following launch in a collection of Chilly Spring albums after that preliminary trilogy established Sonologyst as an artist within the publicity of the fantastical intersections the place one kind of science ends and one other begins, these boundaries not simply between, however past the attain of science start to blur, an area the place details and rationale are scorched on the edges, the pages partially lacking, textual content redacted, the inky phrases fading into some irritating obscurity the place no quantity of squinting can extract any important, wondrous cipher.

And though we will recognize the scientific consistency between every a kind of information, they have to be understood as particular person investigations about uniquely particular person topics. Sonic documentaries, with sound as an alternative of movie, the place every report displays an aural quench of compulsive curiosity, a meticulously assembled striving to not merely present solutions to age-old questions (aliens, conspiracies, ritualistic cannibalism, hyperspace, the cosmos), however relatively to reinforce the argument by what has been found and imbue us with the joys to satiate extra sophisticated questions as a matter of existential urgency. In relation to the work of Sonologyst, regardless of the science, it’s that which glues all these theories collectively by means of myriad extremes and levels, it’s that which is constant. The cosmos metaphorically mirrors our personal inner demons, scavengers and savants crouched atop this charred smash.

”For me,” Pezzella states, ”every launch stands by itself, sparked by completely different sources of inspiration that evolve over time, relatively than following a strict conceptual development. I’ve by no means consciously deliberate my albums as trilogies or tetralogies, despite the fact that some listeners have interpreted them that means. That mentioned, Planetarium and Shortwave Spectrumdo share a specific kinship. Shortwave Spectrum, additionally launched in 2023 on Chilly Spring Data, was primarily based on shortwave radio transmissions and Chilly Battle-era sign phenomena. Planetarium, however, attracts from the uncooked sonification of radio waves. These two albums may be seen as a type of diptych, as each are constructed round actual archival recordings and scientific supply materials.
AA”In distinction, Silencers, Historical Dying Cults and Beliefs, and Interdimensional are usually not grounded in precise archives. They discover their themes, secret applied sciences, esoteric perception techniques, and hypothetical dimensions, by means of a extra imaginative and interpretative sound design strategy.”

For instance of what Pezzella phrases ”sonic phenomenology,” a technique that goals to not merely to signify one thing, however relatively, to interrogate it, Planetarium is a fierce, usually ominous and looming journey. A grinding manifestation of musique concrète and pitch black ambient instrumental hexes that devastate something of their path, the extra their newly found selves are sonically revealed. We usually really feel adrift, dwarfed, touched, torn aside, misplaced, and located within the maelstrom of the incomprehensible past. We’re mercilessly engulfed by its brooding waves.

This past the past takes us to Venera 4V-1 No.310 the place we’re sucked into and swept up by the mountain-shattering photo voltaic winds with the stubbornness of a bulldozer crashing by means of partitions of breezeblocks. It unleashes an unholy noise replicating the compressed rush of sound absorbed when travelling on the Northern line on the London Underground. We hear a chant however can’t ensure why or what with any type of readability, these demons converse of once they peek at us from between dangling items of chain.
This past the past plunges into the plutonium tidal wave of Plutonian Transmissions, the place we kneel earlier than the foot of an amplified surge of deathly bass noise, secreting ambient excrement in its chamber of psychic solitude. Just like the sands of time spilling from world-weary clocks. It’s an indomitable mass of plasma wave bursts in a post-industrial netherworld. We’re thrown into an analogous state of bass-leaden energy with Kuiper Belt. A star-sucking dub mutation stolen from the Bug’s Killing Sound album.

From the expansive churn of Jupiter’s Moons to the agitated clicks and ethereal, inside metropolis chorale of Microphones on Mars, the album exhales and wheezes a rhythmic noise that’s exhausting to flee like Thomas Köner collaborating with KK Null. The previous cracks and creaks forwards while a serenade of trains rattle within the distance, hallucinatory silhouettes of every carriage create a sense, regardless of the extreme chilly, of acquainted heat, like being within the womb once more, muffled conversations within the exterior world, interrupts peace on the opposite. The latter presents a extra plaintive vibration not not like specks of mud floating in entrance of the tv or a ray of sunshine kissing one’s neck, the album exhales and wheezes a rhythmic noise that’s exhausting to flee. A cybernetic metropolis of sunshine and noise, of prepare station ready rooms, automotive park lifts with nobody in them, or wandering satellites buzzing to themselves, lonesomely spinning above the whole lot and everybody.

There’s quite a bit to soak up. Lots to really feel. Lots to consider. However with out Pezzella’s conceptual analysis, to accumulating the supply materials, shaping the sounds, and arranging the construction of the album, with out his preliminary intrigue in what’s on the market, lurking behind the screens of the sky, or buried centuries belowground, as secrets and techniques hid from modern life, there’d be nothing. Simply the sign. The waves. Nothing for us anyway. Time doesn’t care if we’re round or to not take word. Area doesn’t care if we’re round to prod its terribly huge vacancy. Time and area passing us by, mere bugs peddling towards the spokes of a drained, previous wheel, making an attempt to make ourselves really feel higher about with the ability to flip it yet another rotation.
AA”I often handle the whole lot myself. It’s a solo course of, and that’s one thing I’ve come to worth deeply. It permits me to totally immerse myself within the subject and to develop a really private reference to the sounds and the tales I attempt to inform by means of them,” he states. ”In 2024, I collaborated with different musicians for 2 albums, and in these instances, the music tended to shift towards extra summary experimental electronics, usually and not using a clearly outlined conceptual theme. That type of collaboration may be thrilling and enriching in its personal means. However once I’m coping with topics like science, thriller, or metaphysics, I discover that solo work offers me the main focus and area I want. It turns into a extra meditative and concentrated course of, which I really feel is important for the type of sonic storytelling I intention for.”

Though what we hear on Planetarium are non-audible indicators collected by NASA transformed into sound, you’d be gravely mistaken for those who thought what we hear on Planetarium is just that and nothing extra – a knowledge dump. Like an aural montage spliced collectively in the identical sequence, the duty at hand to make sense of those arbitrary tangents of noise and chaos requires a far higher funding from the artist, important in his means to work with and weave collectively a panorama of sound, with out which, the whole lot would float into an intangible dissolve of nothingness just like the particles and detritus of an opium-addled thoughts.
AA”I merely got down to create my very own private model of a sonic encyclopaedia of science and thriller. The sonification’s are simply the uncooked materials,” states Pezzella. ”What I attempt to do, as greatest as I can, is construct a narrative round them. I form and manipulate the recordsdata, add loops, play synthesisers, and produce the whole lot along with a mixture that, hopefully, carries what could possibly be recognised as a ‘Sonologyst signature.’ It’s an try and let individuals uncover area by listening to its hidden voice. Whether or not or not I succeed, I hope the end result sparks curiosity and creativeness.”

Since 2014, Pezzella has been serving because the curator of Unexplained Sounds, a ‘World Community of Aural Disorientation’ fascinated by ”mapping and selling the worldwide underground scene of experimental music.” It’s accountable for albums impressed by the works of extremely revered figures reminiscent of Phillip Ok. Dick’s dystopias, William Burrough’s cut-up texts, William Gibson’s neuromancer inhabited universe and just lately, the cult movie Eraserhead by David Lynch, a mission which started months earlier than the passing of the director. The community’s major label, Unexplained Sounds Group, was established in 2015 and 2021, with Eighth Tower label increasing into ebook publications and a web based journal, Eighth Tower.

At the moment, the community encompasses subsidiaries reminiscent of Eighth Tower Data, ZeroK, and Reverse Alignment. He additionally hosts a streaming radio program titled The Recognition Take a look at. By way of these channels, Pezzella’s intention ”to supply the listener an immersive journey by means of the photo voltaic system, not by means of photographs or knowledge, however by means of sound” amongst different formidable works that introduce audiences with sufficient of an creativeness to go away their incredulous inhibitions behind, may be globally realised.
AA”Certainly one of its most distinctive initiatives is the Sound Mapping collection, a long-running assortment of compilations that discover experimental, digital, and avant-garde music from all around the world,” Pezzella explains. ”The thought behind Sound Mapping is each curatorial and a bit anthropological. Every quantity focuses on a selected nation or area, from Iran to China, from South Africa to Lebanon, and showcases artists who usually work removed from the highlight however are doing actually unique and thrilling issues. It’s about giving area to voices exterior the mainstream and constructing a type of sonic map of world experimental sound. There’s wonderful stuff occurring in every single place, you simply should be curious sufficient to go discover it and, most significantly, hear.”

Our time right here. Our small complaints. Our boring woes. Our benign, eternally rehearsed traces filmed with out discover. In fact, exceptions abound if you realize the delicate spot of the wall to press your ear towards. Psychic TV taught us that. Sonologists train us that, too. Scientists within the issues we will’t see or hear however can join us to the identical power of feeling as having our heads held in place by frames of vicious gentle and fields of turbulent noise. Arrestingly psychedelic. Oddly comforting. Area is the place. Music as astra.

Right this moment, NASA shares that their Voyager 1 probe, launched in 1977 and presently greater than 14.9 billion miles away from earth, reached the heliopause: a boundary the place the photo voltaic winds of the solar begin to fade of their magnetic energy and the photo voltaic winds of interstellar area are in steadiness. At this point- it found a “wall of fireplace”. A sparse wall, however nonetheless…a wall.

Life on different planets? Not fairly. And when feeling alone has by no means sounded so…rewarding, who the hell cares!

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