Stroboscopic Artefacts boss Luca Mortellaro, better known as simply Lucy, will soon be touching down for his maiden Australian tour.
Both the Italian-born, Berlin-based Mortellaro and his Stroboscopic Artefacts imprint have firm groundings in a brand of dark, raw and analogue techno. Emerging in 2009, Stroboscopic has played host to a number of far reaching 12-inches, two of them supplied by Xhin and Perc for 2010's Monad series. As a producer, Mortellaro's own sound is defined by thick and dubby soundscapes, the variety of which were showcased on his Wordplay for Working Bees album released earlier this year.
In advance of the upcoming Australian visit, we caught up with Mortellaro to chat about how he's been spending summer and how working on an album changed his outlook on music making.First of all, how's summer treating you so far? Have you been spending much time in the studio, or is touring taking up most of your energy?
Since the album release it has been really hectic touring-wise. But this was actually perfect timing, as I needed to get my head out of the studio for a bit. My album was an immense creative effort, so it was important to take a break from production and to start letting the ideas accrue in my mind. It was particularly inspiring to play for the first time at summer festivals Sonar and Melt!, as it showed me how important is to get the balance right between the precious periods alone in the studio and the experience of spreading a vision of electronic music that is live and physical.
Are there any producers or labels you're particularly impressed with at the moment?
Right now my ears are attentive to talents that are outside the club scene. I'm always conscious of keeping a diverse range of influences, so that as things get bigger the ideas are not diluted, and that they keep their creative focus. So at the moment I'm lapping up the artistic output of musicians like Borful Tang (who got the pole position in my RA Podcast some months ago) and Motion Sickness of Time Travel, and at the same time re-discovering old stuff with new ears, like early Speedy J material or Aphex's masterpieces and Popol Vuh's film soundtracks. Platform-wise, Raster-Noton is keeping an immense level of quality and innovates constantly. And Honest Jon's Records, their records I buy just from looking at the artwork, before even having listened to them.
Now that the dust has settled on Wordplay For Working Bees, what do you feel you've learnt about the album format? Do you see yourself getting to work on another one in the near future?
I learnt that it's, without any doubt, the format I feel most challenged by and most excited by, creatively. It was such an intense experience that it changed, probably forever, my system of production and my way of perceiving music. It's about acquiring a new and really precious mindset. But, of course, I'm deeply aware that Wordplay For Working Bees is still very close to my current headspace. What I'm trying to say is that I really need time to completely absorb and surpass the remains of the first album's process. A new album will come to life at a point in the future. I'm already thinking about the hyper-architecture of new things to come, even before the concrete musical or conceptual ideas take shape.
Finally, what's coming up on Stroboscopic over the next couple of months?
Over the summer the SA headquarters are gearing up for the second wave of our Monad series right across the summer months. Looking beyond that, the second full-length on Stroboscopic Artefacts is coming, and is an album from Xhin. Scarily good.