wednesday 26 april – 10.30pm

Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Lorenzo Senni (I)

JP32000

sound performance

P32000 is the title of the sound performance by Lorenzo Senni as an opening for the sixth edition of Live Arts Week. Senni – who has gained widespread acclaim for his distinctive deconstructivist approach that distils the unexpected quintessence from 90s trance music – returns to Bologna with a concert which embraces, and thus retraces, the pre-sets created for the realisation of the tracks published on his records: sequences, patterns and melodies programmed to give life to different sound objects. JP32000 multiplies the model number of the Roland JP8000 by four: four synths that Senni uses ‘all together’, having utilised them in the creation of all his records, from his first album Quantum Jelly to the most recent, Persona, which has been released by Warp. This live show is therefore an occasion to witness the magic of the creative process, allowing us to listen from behind the scenes and granting privileged access to the essential relationship that bonds a musician to his instruments. A homage to/struggle with the formative strength of the instrument; it is an example of compositional wisdom founded on executive virtuosity.

Lorenzo Senni is a Milan-based composer and multidisciplinary artist devoted to investigating and abstracting the mechanisms of dance music. His releases deconstruct the sounds of trance, hardstyle, hard-trance 1990s rave culture. He heads the experimental music label Presto!?. Senni’s latest EP, Persona, appeared on Warp. Senni studied musicology at the University of Bologna. His third LP, Quantum Jelly, which appeared on the independent label Editions Mego, was received with unanimous acclaim. The record is deeply influenced by Senni’s love of 90s trance/hard-trance music and by a growing interest in this genre’s musical structures and inner mechanics. Senni works trance’s obvious, euphoria-inducing tropes (static, breakdowns, restarts, super-saws, endless build-ups, and over-the-top, instantly gratifying melodies) into forms inspired by experimental, noise, and abstract computer music: for example, he’ll structure tracks around a single idea, force the architecture of build-ups into non-build-ups (sonic spirals of repetitive arpeggiated melodies), thereby preserving, if reinventing, the emotional tension and drama. His 2014 mini-album on Boomkat Editions, Superimpositions, was accordingly lauded for its ‘pointillistic trance’ and its playful exploration of the emotional buildups and breakdowns of euphoric rave music. Senni also composes music for cinema. His soundtrack for the award-winning movie Da Vinci was screened at the 55th Venice Cinema Biennale. He has also collaborated with the theatre companies Orthographe and Pathosformel.
www.lorenzosenni.com
prestorecords.com/sennihome.html