LCNL 10: SEC_ Mix (part one)

LCNL 010: SEC_ Mix

Last year while in Napoli I met Mario Gabola (A spirale, Aspec(t)) at Perditempo, an incredible music venue in Piazza Dante with a sister-store nearby, both of which act as bars that sell radical books and music.  Roberta of Jealousy Party had tipped me off about Perditempo, for which I am eternally grateful.  (For that matter, be sure to check out the insane hybrid sounds of Jealousy Party.)   Mario’s band-mate in Aspec(t) is  Mimmo Napolitano aka SEC_, the guy behind Toxo Records and many related musical projects, including mixing and mastering several local projects, and the mastermind behind this installment of the Lost Children mix series.

SEC_ has cultivated an idiosyncratic technique for producing his music, an apparatus composed of Revox tape recorder, no- input feedback, laptop and electromagnetic devices.   Through this system, SEC_  channels his interest in free improvisation, power electronics and musique concrète into a unique manifestation of his artistic vision, capable of balancing the tension between chaos and order, and always surprising sudden shifts.   The latest disc by Aspec(t), Abbatoir released on the French Nunn Records,  showcases this style alongside Gabola’s saxophone feedback and electronics, while his collaboration with Jerome Noetinger, Testacoda on Bocian Records,  is a fine testament to what post-gear worship crazy improvisations can be accomplished by two freed-minds with tape machines. SEC_ has also recently ventured into radiophonic work with “Music for a becoming-insect” for the Austrian Kunstradio.   Aong with Gabola and Maurizio Argenziano  on electric guitar and Francesco Gregoretti on drums, SEC_ has recently released the the CDr Twilight of Broken Machines on Eh?.  The aptly named Strongly Imploded quartet further pushes the boundaries of live electronic and improvised music even further.

For this mix, the first of a two-parter, SEC_ combines music that reflects the darker, more chaotic side of his Mediterranean seaport. SEC_’s aesthetic practice is deeply personal and his technique and focus are inspiring. This mix showcases some of his recent projects as well as what has been inspiring him recently.(Joseph Sannicandro)

SEC_ Mix (part 1) by Lostchildrennetlabel on Mixcloud

MINI-INTERVIEW

How did you put this mix together? What ties together your choices? Is there a common theme?

Basically I put together the music that I like and that I’m listening more in this period. There is a kind of path or story made by assonances, influences, but also by very personal feelings. And I’ve tried to put in the mix some of my music or music in which, in a way or another, I collaborate mainly here in Napoli, connecting it to music of people who have an affinity with that work or influenced it.

What music are you working on currently?

At the moment I’m working on my solo album Outflow, that is almost ready but I still don’t know when it will be released. And I’m also working on the new Aspec(t), on a collaboration between Aspec(t) and Dave Phillips and on a duo with guitarist Olivier Di Placido. Next year the new Weltraum should be ready too.

How has your technique evolved over the years?  Can you tell us a bit about how you work with the Revox and no-input mixer and whatever else you are using at the moment.

I started electronic music playing analogue synth and computer, but soon I developed a personal approach, very physical and dynamic to that devices, for example playing a controller keyboard as a crazy pianist but using electro-noise samples and digital processing…I still use this set up with Weltraum, my more rock-oriented project. Then I started working with tapes and I discovered the world of feedback, and this has literally opened my mind. Now I’m very focused on this, but without losing that physical approach consisting in sudden cuts, scratchings, blasts and a lot of dynamics. Revox is a wonderful machine that I use both as a tape recorder, both as a no-input mixer, with the advantage that I can manipulate all these feedback on tape in real time! I’m also very interested in the edges between analog and digital trying to explorate the zones in which this limit is difficult to recognize: for example I generate feedback between Revox and laptop, using the latency of the soundcard to modulate the sound…is this process analog or digital?

When did you start Toxo Records?  What made you interested in releasing this music?

I started Toxo Records in 2009 when I released Weltraum’s CD Sy. My main interest is not only releasing music as a product, but to feed the music as a practice made of relations between people, places, meetings, exchanges, fun, etc… I use records to increase my live activity and to meet new people, new musicians, new realities.

You’ve chosen a lot of recent selections from European artists.  As we all know the situation in Europe, and globally, seems to be coming to a head.  The dominant culture has lead us to the brink of disaster, we’re dangerously close to the precipice.  Much of this music seems to be some sort of reflection on (or reaction to) the decadence and hedonism of modern life.  Do you think the current situation, the return of the rhetoric of austerity and management and so on, has created an aesthetic reaction?

Well, there’s always an aesthetic reaction, but usually it is a consequence of a more complex reaction: when the reality changes, the people change their practices and ways to do as well and this has an influence on the aesthetic side.

The current situation is stressing people to impose them (and you can feel it strongly in south of Italy) a way of life they don’t need. To save the financial capitalism we have to accept every kind of absurd, restrictive law. Life is probably a struggle between the desire of freedom and the need to limit it. In this moment the oppression is making the desire of freedom stronger: people is looking for other ways to live, to produce, to organize (not only in music), far from the main circuits in which they cannot find any freedom. This has a very strong aesthetic consequence, but it doesn’t show up in a kind of anti-capitalistic or apocalyptic rhetoric, but it influences the real ways in which music is done, the relation with tools and technology, with spaces and people, the need to explore the world of sensation without stopping at the clichés. Aesthetic is not a matter of message, is a matter of practices.

Tracklist