SILENTCHAOS

Origins began as an audiovisual performance, commissioned by Cryptic and premiered at the CCA in Glasgow in March 2019, then carried through Aberdeen, sound festival and Radiophrenia. The record grew out of it.

After one year of pause, we started to record the new album, "Origins". Unlike the previous albums, which were rather a dionysiac burst of flowing consciousness than a reasoned stylistic and compositional work, with this new project we completely changed the approach.

The whole project consists of an album and a graphic novel as its final outcome, with stories and images from this foreseen future, compositional insights on our techniques, and dark autogenerative live sets.

The record was finished. The graphic novel was finished, in Italian. Neither has been released.

"Pure Chaos" is Silent Chaos' 4th studio album. Composed of released singles, unreleased tracks, and works for installations, this 8-track album is incredibly organic and transports the listener on a deep journey into darkness, with cinematic obscure sounds and sepulchral drums, ancient rituals for this new era, Crowleyan influences and suggestions from the deep space.

Silent Chaos' composition is based on performative improvisation framed in a pre-decided structure, thus their sound appears organised even if unpredictable, with ever-changing textured drones that hypnotise the listener.

Cover and graphics were made with the first generation of text-to-image models, in 2022, when the machines still had a hand of their own.

01 Cotard's Syndrome, The Waking Dead · 02 Chains of Abyss · 03 Meditation of the Middle Pillar · 04 Ritual for a New Era · 05 Synbals · 06 Daedalus of Possibilities · 07 The Autogenerative Secret Music of Plants · 08 L'Oscuro Oceano dello Spazio Infinito

Shortwave radio is one of the most fascinating sonic worlds: capturing vital moments in world history as well as the thrill of pirate radio, clandestine radio stations, secretive number stations and military and spy radio. All of humanity is truly out there to be listened to at the turn of a dial.

Cities and Memory teamed up with The Shortwave Radio Archive to present more than 100 recordings from the history of shortwave radio all over the world for artists to remix and reimagine. Silent Chaos created the composition De-Konstruktion.

Released for Toten Schwan Records in the compilation "Gli déi se ne sono andati, grazie per il vostro odio", December 18, 2020. Originally commissioned by Sound Festival for the Marischal College fountain in Aberdeen.

The vision from other worlds of impossible perspectives. The expansion of dimensions intersecting in emotional labyrinths. The journey continues into unknown universes.

Using pixel-sorting in TouchDesigner, they paint with sound worlds of impossible perspectives.

"MACRO" is the second, long due, part of the project micro//MACRO. The music on "MACRO" is the evocation of archetypes buried in the collective unconscious, shown in a new emotional light. The use of electronic tools, such as modular synthesizers and electronic pad drums that control loops, samples and field recordings, offers a wide sound palette from which Silent Chaos draw to define their personal stylistic framework.

Each composition determines a special universe in which crop up echoes of musique concrète, choirs, tribal sounds, noise and ambient, in sound experiments that envelop and surprise even those not accustomed to listening to these genres. The album is the mature fruit of years of A/V concerts, theatre and radio performances, rehearsals and recording sessions.

"MACRO" is the story of a journey, the one that takes the spirit from the Microcosm, as in the album "micro", where the destruction of the worldly self allows access to the Mystery, to the Macrocosm, in which, having recognised the limits of the self and of the world, the Intellect is pushed toward unknown horizons, with the terrible and sublime purpose of making the deconstruction of the Whole, to finally reconstitute itself as a primordial Adam.

01 Nocturne on Ganimede · 02 Let the Grace In · 03 The Deconstruction of Collective Unconscious · 04 The Fall of the Machine · 05 Winterland · 06 Adonai's Calling, The Hail of God

Cotard's delusion, also known as walking corpse syndrome, is a rare mental disorder in which the sufferer holds the delusional belief of being dead, of not existing, of putrefying, of having lost the blood or the internal organs. In a hundred-patient cohort, denial of self-existence appeared in 45% of cases; the remaining 55% presented delusions of immortality.

A syndrome that is clearly spreading in the world.

A suite in four movements for modular synthesizer, voice, field recordings, FX, loops and electronic pad drums.

I Ritual For A New Era · II End Of Days · III Inner Transmission · IV Beyond Reality

Thanks to Aleister Crowley · Mutable Instruments · Richard Devine · Tom Erbe

Two years after the first annual report, Raffaele Pezzella [Sonologyst] gathered musicians working across many projects, including surveys focused on Iran, Portugal, Russia, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom. The third annual report, in two volumes, collects 229 tracks by more than 200 artists from 40 countries. It does not pretend to be exhaustive, and in some ways it may appear chaotic, lacking any stylistic or chronological order. Probably it is like our life.

The labyrinth folds the circle and the spiral into one meandering path that still arrives somewhere. It works as a figure for the course of a life, and it produces its own neurological state: the brain operates differently inside one, and for a few minutes we become someone else.

A labyrinth is not a maze. Mazes are solved. They demand choice, sequence, an active and linear mind, and being multicursal they can lose you. The labyrinth is unicursal, one way in and one way out, no decisions, no thinking required. The only decision is to enter. Walking one asks for intuition and a receptive mind. You have to trust the path and surrender to it.

A labyrinth is a mystery rather than a puzzle. The theologian Diogenes Allen drew the distinction: a solved problem is finished and abandoned, while a mystery, once recognised, is never finished with. We return to it and it opens new levels. Mysteries are known by being entered, and the deeper the entry the greater the illumination.

Our brains are looping mysteries like labyrinths.

The music in "micro" is the first part of a double project, micro//MACRO, narrating the evocation of archetypes buried in the collective unconscious, shown in a new intellectual, in the manner of Plotinus, emotional light.

The use of electronic tools, modular synthesizer, sequencer and battery pad controlling loops and samples, offers a wide sound palette from which Silent Chaos draw to define their personal stylistic framework. Each composition determines a special universe in which crop up echoes of musique concrète, choirs, tribal sounds, noise and ambient.

01 Odysseus's Journey · 02 Ab Origenes · 03 Technological Monk · 04 Insania · 05 Eleusi

Human AutomatArt in Edinburgh, from April the 9th to April the 24th, for the DataSphere exhibition, Edinburgh Science Festival, at the National Museums of Scotland. The Museum's Grand Gallery becomes a bespoke information collector, gathering data from the people visiting and the activities occurring there, via a network of sensors distributed around the space and visualised live on the screen.

In the present world, every human being has become a living set of data, and potentially a content creator. With Human AutomatArt, we are transforming Aberdeen's Music Hall into an information collector, gathering data from the human activities occurring there, via movement detection, sound and temperature sensors, whose data are generating the digital painting on the screen.

Doing so, the unaware human beings become the autonomous agents whose behaviours create the structure for the generative art program, and the human life and related activities as a whole become the painting artist.

Awarded the Alt-w Fund in summer 2019 by New Media Scotland and Aberdeen Performing Arts, for the Music Hall's giant LED screen. The exhibition was postponed to 1 November 2021 by the lockdown. Displayed again in Aberdeen for Spectra 2023, Festival of Light.

After the first The Autogenerative Secret Music of Plants, this time we make a bucket of oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) play the modular synth and the FM synth Korg OpSix. They tend to be on one side quite noisier than the plants, but on the other, they are a quite thoughtful type. And they sing melancholic tunes.

"L'Oscuro Oceano dello Spazio Infinito" (The Obscure Ocean of the Infinite Space), originally commissioned by Sound Festival for the 2020 edition, in rotation at the Marischal College in Aberdeen for the British Art Show 9 and Sound Festival 2021.

The soundscape was composed with the movement, the rhythm, the sound and the play of light on the water of the Marischal College's fountain in mind. Using delayed and reverberated tinkling glass sounds, random electronic patterns, deep and dark slowly evolving atmospheres, and enigmatic choir drones, we imagined how the deep space would sound, and, by the alchemic motto "as above so below", explored how the sound of the above would merge and play with the sound of the below, here symbolised by the water games of the fountain.

sound commissioned four soundscapes for the fountains outside Marischal College, each inspired differently by the movement, the rhythm, the sound and the play of light on the water: Ross Whyte, Pippa Murphy, Bea Dawkins and Silent Chaos. The work is played in loop on mobile devices through the locative audio player Sonicmaps by listeners standing alongside the fountain.

The concept came from our reasoning around the originating substances of matter. Having a Mediterranean and classical culture, our mind went immediately to Greek mythology, in which Oceanus and Tethys were the primaeval parents of the gods, and so the origin of all things: the upper and lower waters, then separated to create the heaven and the earth, paralleling Apsu and Tiamat in the Babylonian cosmogony. Thales arrived at the same conclusion by reasoning alone, observing that the nurture of all creatures is moist, and that from which all things come to be is their first principle.

A series of live autogenerative sets on YouTube that sees Audrey The Plant control, with her inner bioelectrical movements, through bio-feedback sensors applied to her leaves, the modular synth and the Korg OpSix FM synth.

A plant-driven audio performance. A eurorack modular system is entirely controlled by plants via the SCÍON bio-feedback module, built and engineered by Instruō in Glasgow. Also performed at the Duthie Welch Winter Gardens.

This version of "Origins" was specifically crafted for radio and it is supposed to be listened in a relaxing place, in darkness, so the listener can be easily taken to the worlds Silent Chaos are creating. The tense structured drones create an atmosphere where your sense of historical time is lost, leaving you suspended in a dark and dreamy world, and the far but pressing drums that sneak into that world bring you to ancient times, where the super humans archetypes still reign.

Radiophrenia is a temporary art radio station, a two-week exploration into current trends in sound and transmission arts.

Origins explores the possibilities inherent in sound to eliminate the sense of reality, bringing listeners into other spaces and other times, with the aid of the looping, continuously changing and glitching video. The tense structured drones create an atmosphere where the sense of historical time is lost, leaving the listener suspended in a dark and dreamy world, and the far but pressing drums that sneak into that world transport you to ancient times, where the superhuman archetypes still reign.

We as a western civilisation are losing contact with our archetypes, with our ancient roots; we are becoming disconnected from nature and from our true selves. Silent Chaos propose a sound, a sort of ab-original sound that can evoke the remnant shadows of what we were and bring them to life again. That is why the video uses the Venus of Willendorf and other Neolithic artefacts, as symbols of the archetypes that still shape our souls, even when they are forgotten; and it glitches and shivers and becomes fragmented, because that is what technology is doing to us. Technology must be and remain a means, not a goal, and humanity has to regain its freedom from it and reconnect with its ancestral roots.

The performance was accompanied by an afternoon workshop on modular and subtractive synthesis.

Stepping back to ancient times, Origins aims to regain freedom from technology and to reveal human archetypes and ideals that are becoming all but lost. Structured drones, steady drums and continuously glitching visuals build a dark, dream-like environment in which a growing disconnection from nature and from our true selves is uncovered.

The inspiration came from far away in time. We are always searching for a primeval sound that can resonate in each of us, and since Silent Chaos was born we have explored the ability of electronic instruments to recreate that sound, in many different ways. Origins is the latest attempt, and the further we go, the closer we get to it.

Those attending the performance need only abandon themselves to the sound and the visuals, and forget, for the duration of the show, the chaotic world dominated by the technology that surrounds us.

Commissioned by Cryptic and premiered at the CCA in Glasgow on 7 March 2019, on a double bill with Kin's Watchtower for the tenth anniversary of Cryptic Nights. Performed again at the Late Night Soundsessions of sound festival. Developed during a residency at Cove Park. The album of the same name was recorded between 2021 and 2024 and remains unreleased.

Gathering inspiration from the sacred place, Silent Chaos created a ritualistic electroacoustic concert, using modular synth, field recordings, drums and cymbals microphoned and connected to the modular system. Taking advantage of the majestic architecture of the church, the projected sound-responding visuals generated an oniric atmosphere for the deep drones, choruses, and hypnotising loops that Silent Chaos were creating while channelling from higher planes.

"Permutations, an electronic adventure in Time and Space" was performed at the Kirk of St Nicholas Uniting in Aberdeen for sonADA inTransit.

A fifteen-minute composition created for the Shift/Enter night of the University of Aberdeen's Music Department. Cymbals with contact microphones attached, passed into the modular synth both as a direct signal, modified and reverberated, and as FM synthesis operators for the oscillators. A Tibetan bell with a contact microphone is passed into a granular synthesizer, deconstructed and delayed ad infinitum. Harmonic chant with long reverb recalls ancient times.

Synbals investigates the possibilities inherent in the use of acoustic means in ancient ways, passed through technology and advanced synthesis techniques. The Dronin, a bowed instrument handmade by the Sardinian maker Massimo Olla, joins the cymbals and the voice.

The University's account of the evening describes the piece opening with a small bell struck, then cymbals activated with thin chains, later with beaters and fingernails, while the Dronin was bowed and notes were sung into a microphone, some of them remarkably deep. Everything was amplified or reshaped electronically. The resulting sounds ranged from whispers to explosive roars, metallic and percussive, at moments almost orchestral or choral.

An opus for modular synthesizer, speeches, field recordings and electronic percussions, in four movements: I. Us. II. They. III. The World. IV. The Judgment.

The work explores, through schizophonia and analogue synthesis, and in a strongly critical way, the human and spiritual schizophrenia that we are experiencing in the present days. Everyday life, made of familiar sounds, and natural life, in which mankind has its roots but from which it is being torn away by the massive use of technology and mechanical means, are put in relation with the global political choices and the behaviour of corporations and multinationals by which they are governed.

The exploration continues by asking about our future and how it will be affected by the use or the misuse of advanced technologies: artificial intelligence, space travel, renewable energies, genetic modification, geoengineering. It ends with the major threat humanity has ever faced, climate change and environmental disaster, seen in a philosophical and apocalyptic way.

The narration is made with field recordings, samples and analogue synthesis, with the speeches of the major world actors of our time, taken from conferences, interviews and news channels, as the backbone of the entire composition. Within the limits of the movements, the performance is entirely improvised.

Video installation and music performance for the vernissage of Hypernature, an exhibition by Domenico Canino.

An evening of musical and visual experimentation at the Core Gallery in Rome, shared with Breaking Wood, with visuals by Flavio Parente.

Experimental ancient music for experimental ritualistic theatre.

Music composed live, improvised over a given theme, without direction.

Live performance with the Ranya art exhibition.

Experimental ancient music for experimental ritualistic theatre.

Music composed live, improvised over a given theme, without direction.

Audio/video performance with the Ranya art exhibition.

Music and video composed live, improvised over a given theme, without direction.

Experimental ancient music and sound-reactive video for experimental ritualistic theatre.

Music and video composed live, improvised over a given theme, without direction.

Experimental ancient music and live video composition for experimental ritualistic theatre.

Music and video composed live, improvised over a given theme, without direction.

Experimental ancient music for experimental ritualistic theatre, live in radio. Two nights: The White Goddess, and Misteri Eleusini.

Music composed live, improvised over a given theme, without direction.

An improvised live performance at the Officinenove gallery in Rome, with Mino Curianò on trumpet, and video by the gallerist.

Music composed live, improvised over a given theme, without direction.

Contemporary experimental music inside a village of contemporary art. A night in four acts at the MAAM, the Museo dell'Altro e dell'Altrove, in Rome.

Music and video composed live, improvised over a given theme, without direction.

An hour and nineteen minutes drawn from micro, from the 2017 compilations, and from two pieces then unreleased. Ritual for a New Era and Inner Transmission were heard here before they became the first and third movements of Osclltr ////012.

00:00 Odysseus's Journey · 10:27 Chains of Abyss · 18:54 Ritual for a New Era [unreleased] · 31:03 Eleusi · 42:47 Daedalus of Possibilities · 50:19 Technological Monk · 57:58 Inner Transmission [unreleased] · 1:09:47 Insania · 1:14:40 Ab Origenes

Abyssal in depth, from a freehand composition.