SUITE FOR DROWNING - A Live multi-media concert album, took place on May 16th, at 8pm in the Old Little Theatre in Santa Barbara. The performance was a collaboration between Lucian Parisi and the other members of the Drowning Quartet. Suite for Drowning is a collection of musical works directly inspired by near death aquatic experiences on the California Coast. This suite of live electroacoustic pieces explores the vastness of the ocean, natural forces, biological fear responses, out of body experience, and after-life.
This project began in the Fall of 2023 as a piano piece after a near-drowning experience. The piece, Barely Afloat, sparked many stylistic changes in my work. Suite for Drowning is a realization of subsequent experiments in composing coastal granular chamber music. Electronics are taken from my last two albums, Lagoon and Riparian Forms, as well as unreleased recorded material. Audio in this performance makes use of granular layering, physical manipulation, live electroacoustic processing, looping, microtonality, feedback, and other techniques. Each piece is notated as a custom open-score, based around waveforms, textural and tonal changes, and queues. This music draws inspiration from Tigran Himasyan, Mabe Fratti, Nico Georis, Steve Reich, L’rain, and Floating Points.
Score books attached below.
Riparian Forms is a soundscape ecology composition project capturing various locations along the California coast and nearby riparian areas. The album melds psychedelic environmental chamber music, site-specific field recordings, and landscape composition. Individual works were composed on research visits to UC field stations, before being recorded in Isla Vista, at the Oasis. The project draws influence from Floating Points, Mabe Fratti, Steve Reich, Juana Molina, Tara Clerking, Sam Gendel, Tigran Himasyan, Ichiko Aoba, and Nico Georis.
This project was part of a research grant under UCSB’s College of Creative studies, later being presented at RACA-con as a talk. Over the Summer of 2023, I spent a few months visiting different field stations, camping and getting a feel for Calirornia’s various Coastal landscapes and ecosystems. On my hikes throughout the field stations, I would jot down text notes about concepts for pieces, including: structure, atmosphere, instrumentation, and instrumental voice relationships. In my composition book, I would sketch the gestural contour of pieces, vague dynamics and expression, and a general harmonic pallet to work from. Along the way, I collected audio field recordings of atmospheres, animal calls, ground textures, streams, and various other noises. The pieces were based on interaction between organisms and abiotic structures in their environment, historical geography anecdotes, and observations regarding acoustic qualities in these spaces.
Attached is a PDF detailing the creation of the album - including recording, field work, and composition.
Lagoon is an ethereal art-rock album recorded over the course of 2022 in my San Francisco studio. The project is the culmination of years of sound refinement and developing a unique, experimental production language. Lagoon is a reflection on my own uncertainty, confusion, and hallucinatory experiences during a wild exploratory period of life. The seeds of ideas were conceived everywhere from mornings farming in Spain and psychedelic castle wanderings in Portugal, to remote forest hikes and meditative late night studio sessions.
The writing process for the album focused on building dense textures from live-looping guitars, distorted novelty instruments, and samples. Once a significant voice emerged, I would turn to hardware effects and resampling to experiment with sound. Drums, bass, and vocal parts tended to arrive naturally as I paced around the studio working with my loops. Lagoon’s production makes use of reversed and distorted acoustic samples, unrecognizable guitars, self-reflexive audio, electronics, and spacious, ethereal arrangements. The result is a lush, cohesive journey provoking mirror-like reflection and dissociation. Psychologically, it hovers somewhere between bliss, melancholy, and stimulation.
This project served as a realization of the work done on my early releases - Sustained Frequencies and Ramblings, and a foundation for ongoing work. Lagoon was heavily inspired by early Brian Eno, Stereolab, Mid-Air Theif, Robert Wyatt, L’rain, Mabe Fratti, Floatie, Sasami, and Urlika Spacek.
Ramblings is a progressive-folk and art-rock exploration of ego, identity, and interpersonal relationships. Recorded at a very difficult crossroads in my life, the project embodies personal growth from negative experiences.
Sustained Frequencies is my first album of experimental electronic sound collages and songs that allude to an indie / psychedelic aesthetic. The project emerged from early pandemic turmoil and served as a jumping off point for all of my current musical and audio pursuits.
