BIOMEKANIK25

18.04.2022

INTERVIEW

Tell us how your adventure in Psychedelic trance music began ?

The first contact I had with psychedelic trance music happened around 2001, at that time I was around 18 years old and i was living in my home country, Italy. I was young, naïve and in search for adventures, musically I was coming from a background of crossover metal music and casually starting to listen to electronic music such as hardstyle and gabber music, then one day a friend asked me if I was interested in trying something different and that evening I experienced my first squat party in my hometown, Genova. I was brought to this party where I witnessed for the first time the beauty of the kind of parties we love: the freedom, the beautiful deco and the awesome music, live act at that party was playing Nexus. This adventure stole my heart from the very first moment, I recall that as a full newbie that night already before leaving the party I was asking to the people I came in contact with to please tell me names of artists that I could dig in order to listen more of this music. This was the very beginning of my love for the psychedelic culture.

Why is your project called Biomekanik?

My darkpsy project is called Biomekanik because of my deep passion for the aesthetic developed by the swiss artist called H.R. Giger. When I was a kid and then teenager the "Alien" movie franchise had a pretty strong impact on me, at first as a kid one day happened that I saw a piece of the film "Alien 3" on tv and that made me have nightmares for quite a long time, I was pretty disturbed by the pictures left in my head and for long time I was scared by the figure of the tall black deadly and scary alien of the movies... till my teenager time. Somehow as a teenager one day started an incredible kind of obsessive love for the "Alien" movies and the whole lore and aesthetic behind them. My soul somehow healed the fear for the Alien creature and I became a huge fan of it, the whole "Biomechanic" aesthetic of H.R. Giger became a deep part of me influencing what I liked and how I developed. The name of my darkpsy project "Biomekanik" is a tribute to all this aesthetic.

In which festivals have I presented my project.

I had the pleasure and honor to be invited to play quite an amount of events so far, and festivals have a very good place in my memories.
Some of the major events where I played my live set were for example:
- Freqs of Nature festival in Germany.
- Glia Gathering in Romania.
- Kali Mela in Spain
- Hesperus Gathering in Greece
- Voov Festival in Germany
- Zuruck zu den Wurzeln in Germany
- Human Evolution Festival in Italy and many more.

What we can expect from Biomekanik in the future?

Interesting question, the project Biomekanik is going to change a bit in the near future, at the moment when I play my live set I generally play between 155 to 200 bpm, this means that what I play is pretty variegated and is targeted for certain types of dancing and musical experience, I have middle fast tracks with a certain type of flow and vibe as well as 200 bpm complex and peculiar tracks, in some time (is not yet clear how long) but one day will happen that my project will be split and a new project more oriented to the "core" side of darkpsy will also be created, Biomekanik will stay the project name for the middle fast music and the new project name will be for more fast and aggressive music so that all can be better targetable for promoters and for the listeners.
Another interesting thing that will happen in the future is my soon to be ready new Ep, to be released on the Berlin based Quintessence rec when Corona will allow the party scene to thrive again here in Europe. This new EP will be different in style from the previous one released on Cyberbay rec in favor of a deeper and more introspective sound.

Tell me about your Debut EP Cinematech.

My debut Ep Cinematech released on Cyberbay records was the result of three and a half years of work. As the name suggests one of the strong influences I have for my music is cinema style sound design and sci-fi sonic textures, all wrapped together with psychedelic sound design. It was a beautiful adventure producing it, getting the mixes to sound how I wanted at that time took a lot of time and it was challenging, but I think it was all worth it. For the EP Cinematech a very interesting adventure was the shooting of the music video that was used as promo, a lot of support goes to the girl that directed it.

Which record labels I belong to.

Over the years I developed good connection with many people in the scene and I'm proud to represent a few labels that support my audio work. The labels I play for are the berlin based Quintessence rec and Cyberbay rec, then I found good connection with Psyko rec in Austria, Labyrinthine Crew in Swiss and finally the good old friends of Creative Jungle rec that supported me in my very beginning of my artist career.

Which artists I collaborated with

I made music together with other people only twice, one track made with Marco Kasatka and another withTobias Interius Umbra, I have a particular workflow in music production and I still have to find another producer that works like I do so I'm happy I made music with these two wonderful humans, let's see what the future will bring.

BIOLAB STUDIO

What defines my music.

One aspect that is peculiar about the way I do music is that I try as much as possible to develop and use my own productions techniques, even if my approach is a bit different from most producers. Then I'm a great fan of sampling, even more then sound synthesis, I'm passionate with field recordings and generally speaking I like a lot to dig in territories where most producers don't research in order to be original.

Tell us about the Biolab Studio

Biolab Studio is the result of all these years of hard work, simply put, everything I did so far regarding audio and in my private life converged in the design and construction of the place where I work. The aim of the room is to be acoustically controlled in order to be able to do critical listening in mixing/mastering and of course to be suitable for producing music, the studio is still evolving and soon there will be a new round of construction of acoustic panels to hopefully enhance further the precision of my monitoring system.

Artist for which I worked for in mastering

My audio service reached a lot of music genres and I honestly like to work in different fields, it creates more passion and kills monotony. In the trance scene I can say that I worked with a lot of artists in every subgenre, as an example speaking about the Berlin scene I'm very happy and proud of having serviced the music of Marco Kasatka, Robin Oroboro, David Audiosyntax, Dave Audiokidnapping and many more.
I'm looking forward to collaborate with many more talented artists, me I'm always learning and improving so I'm hoping to reach to many more people with my audio service.

Which festivals will I remember forever

The mighty Freqs of Nature here in Germany is one of the first that come to mind, then the magic Glia Gathering in Romania with it's magical nature and lovely humans, Psycrowdelica was a festival that defined a lot my taste in audio and developed who I am now.

How is my music evolved from beginning to now:

Interesting question, speaking about music production I put a lot of effort in keeping my compositions variegated, meaning that my style evolves a lot over time. In the beginning my productions were pretty chaotic with a ton of sounds overlapping each other and honestly now I still see the potential of these tracks, but too much going on at the same time, now after all this time I feel that my songs are a bit more thematical,focusing on a certain vibe and with less chaos, but like everything, balance within the elements is key, so I'm happy that I'm always developing and growing.

How is a normal day for me:

Me I'm a pretty regular guy to be honest, producing the music I make helps me to put out my darkside condensed in musical form and through this I manage tobe a pretty normal person. After a long period of being couch potato now I like to do sports and be healthy, I try to wake up early in the morning, taking care of the office side and then starts the studio work where I work hard and for long time. Sure I take my brakes and I make sure that I don't overuse my ears in order to try to stay as objective and analytical as possible, but still I put in a lot of hours on a daily basis.
My sound engineering work generally has priority and after many hours of work on the computer and with audio, often is difficult to just "open another program" and go on with music production, it's just too heavy all this by sitting always on the same chair and in the same room, so because of that I try to separate my days so that when I can have a full free day, then I will just focus on music production diving into it fully, somehow I'm managing to find a balance with this, not easy but I'm going in that direction.

What kind of music do I normally listen to:

I like to feed my brain with lot of roots reggae and dub music, it puts me in a pleasant headspace, then in this period I'm digging a lot the UK grime scene where there is lot of talent and incredible style, Cult of the Damned it's a group that I cannot get tired to listen to. Otherwise rap music and lowfi beats are always interesting for me.
One thing that recently is attracting me a lot are Original Sound Tracks of movies, this is a sort of "classical music" (if you people allow me to call it this way), that stimulates incredibly my imagination and gives me visions of the films I love (in this very moment answering this question I'm listening the new Dune film OST by Hans Zimmer as inspiration, hugeone).
Hope not to disappoint nobody, but except rare occasions I'm not really listening much psychedelic music as entertainment, when I was younger I was listening to psy the whole day long, always, and it became part of my soul. Now I find very interesting the motto I did read may years ago: "if one person would like to make something original in one music genre, he/she must not listen to that music genre".
15: how to get to the state of active meditation / is necessary to use substances to achieve active meditation:
In the end it's personal, surely letting us go is one of the key ingredients, then to each of us their own, some people like to use substances, some other like to use other methods, important is the result and the connection with the set and setting around us.

Tips for beginners that are looking for a place in the scene:

First of all I feel to say to try to be as professional as possible, learn to say no if what is the topic of the talk cannot be done, in our scene we are full of people who promise and say yes to incredible things and then when is time for facts, things cannot be delivered. Experienced people of our scene like to have around people that stick to their words, knowing our own limitsis a very important skill.
Another point is the patience, it's pretty normal that young people are in a rush to make things happen and there is nothing wrong in wanting so, but me as a sound engineer I see unfortunately too often releases that should just be worked further before being mastered and then released, focus on quality should be top priority in my point of view.
Final point, I think that should be fundamental the passion for the research in audio, and by this I mean passion for the research in expanding the boundaries of our genre, I see very few "developers" of psychedelic music style and a lot of people just following these few developers, this is partly physiologic and normal, but in our genre we are lucky, we have no boundaries regarding the style that we can do, and it's such a pity seeing so many people just following these 15 that develop their style and aesthetic in sound.
Please people don't see these points as egocentric or arrogant, me myself I'm a learner and I'm always improving, studying a lot and always ready to recognize that everything I knew till that moment was wrong.
I give a lot for trying to make our music scene a better place, but sometimes I fuck up like everybody else, in the end we are all humans. <3
Many greetings to who read this interview till here.
Thank you a lot to Oswart for the patience and the request, it was fun to write this.