IUGA‘s debut album Meldrop is an intensely personal meditation on grief, nature and renewal, rooted in the forests of the Tuscan Apennines where the composer now lives. Inspired by the loss of his dog Toki and by the untamed landscape surrounding his home, the record traces an emotional journey in which wolves, deer, birds, snakes and humans inhabit the same fragile ecosystem. The title refers to the final drop left hanging from a runny nose after tears have run dry—a striking image that becomes a metaphor for grief persisting long after mourning appears to have subsided.
There are no dramatic gestures here. The album is driven by atmosphere rather than narrative, favouring gradual shifts in mood over overt climaxes. “Unleash (Into la Rata)” immediately immerses the listener in unfamiliar territory, its fractured voices and restless modular textures creating a palpable sense of unease. “Toki” follows with a restrained lament whose melodic contours suggest farewell rather than despair. “Tail” picks up where the opening track leaves off, but with less disquiet. Having become acclimatised to the album’s sonic environment, the listener begins to find points of orientation.
The tension returns in “Into Your Gaze”, where an electronically distorted voice seems to communicate from Hades. Yet expectations are constantly overturned. “Aspis” is unexpectedly calm and measured, acknowledging nature’s indifference without turning it into violence. Just when “Hurst” seems to open the possibility of tranquillity and reconciliation, the closing title track allows the drone to gather force before gradually dissipating, suggesting that grief never truly disappears but becomes part of one’s emotional landscape.
Although Meldrop is created entirely with analogue and modular synthesis, it rarely feels technological. IUGA approaches his instruments instinctively, treating them almost as living organisms rather than machines. Recorded with minimal editing and almost no post-production, the album preserves the rawness of performance, allowing metallic resonances, unstable oscillations and breathing textures to evoke the physical presence of the forest itself. The result is a debut that resists sentimentality while remaining deeply affecting: an album in which grief is neither conquered nor romanticised, but gradually absorbed into the wider rhythms of the natural world.
To shed further light on Meldrop, IUGA kindly answered a few questions by email.
Meldrop is described as an album about the place you call home, your dogs, the forest and the lives that inhabit it. The record often feels like an ecosystem in which different forms of life coexist. How did the landscape around you shape the music, and were there specific encounters, sounds or memories that found their way into an album which, as the liner notes indicate is, at least partially, shaped by personal grief?
Meldrop is deeply connected to the place where I’ve been living for about four years now, a magical, wild spot in the mountains outside Florence. I can say with certainty that without this place, this album wouldn’t exist. The opening track, “Unleash (Into la Rata),” marks my entrance into the house in the woods. I finally felt free, unleashed, but also overwhelmed by the wilderness and the life thriving within it. I tried to convey in music the sensation of wolves pushing up to the thresholds of my home and their howling at dusk, echoing across the entire valley. The spectacular concert of nocturnal birds, whose spectral songs accompanied me to sleep, the sheer wonder of rediscovering hundreds, thousands of fireflies after so many years, having believed they were gone forever.
The meaning of Meldrop is “a drop at the tip of the nose / a runny nose”, and it’s tied to the loss of my dog, which happened the year after I moved here. The entire album revolves around this, and the track “Toki” is dedicated to her, or rather, to us. It’s my farewell, her funeral, the moments leading up to her burial, when I carried her in my arms from my house to the spot I had chosen just a few meters away. In that moment, those few meters felt like hundreds of kilometers, and when even the tears had run dry, only that drop at my nose, that meldrop, was left. It stayed with me for hours, days, even months. That’s why I speak of a fragile emotional reconstruction, so much of my energy in the following months was spent finding myself again, forgiving myself, and rebuilding a new beginning.
Toki died from an asp bite; in my mind, the track “Aspis” tells the story of that day when their paths crossed, and consequently, mine did too. The sound builds up in a crescendo, its intensity rising to a climax that marks the final, fatal strike by the viper. It took a long time to understand that nature is also this, that awe and wonder don’t just manifest in its beauty, but also in its cruelty, and that there is no right or wrong in nature. Everything is in its place, every life follows its course.
The album explores birth, life, death and what you describe as a realm where “even death becomes solely a matter of sound and scent.” That is a striking image. How did you approach translating such deeply physical and sensory experiences into a language of modular synthesis and ambient composition, especially when working without conventional narrative or lyrics? Also, what do the vocals concealed in the track “Into your gaze” refer to? Are they intedend as a warning?
Modular synthesis was the only necessary path for composing these tracks, it allows me to know myself deeply and establish a conversation with my inner self. I always say that I don’t play my instruments, but rather I play with them, manipulating and letting myself be manipulated by the living sound, so as to respect its intrinsic, primal electricity. Since this is a deeply personal album, I needed to feel completely honest, first and foremost with myself, but also with the listener. I tried to convey my lived experience, my emotions, and the surrounding environment through these “machines,” often letting myself sink into long nighttime sessions lasting hours and hours, solely in
search of sonorities that would come into contact with the most hidden and fragile part of me, the part that ultimately gave birth to the album.
“Into Your Gaze” is a very difficult track for me to analyze, somewhat like the entire album. If you try to analyze everything you won’t come out a winner, but if you let yourself be carried away, you do. I’ll try to help with a cinematic example from one of my favorite directors, Lars von Trier. In a scene from the film Antichrist, the protagonist, during one of his frequent walks in the woods, spots among the vegetation a wounded and bloodied fox. The animal lies hidden, biting and tearing at its own flesh, self-devouring. Turning its gaze toward the protagonist, it roars in an infernal voice: “Chaos reigns.” With “Into Your Gaze,” I wanted to convey that exact same sensation you get when watching that scene. I wanted to show the dark, infinitely powerful side of nature that doesn’t obey human logic, and that is very often governed by a blind destructiveness to which the human being
can only submit.
The title, on the other hand, in contrast to these dark forces, comes from my encounters in the woods with wild animals, especially deer, foxes and, more rarely, nocturnal birds of prey. There is a moment when our eyes lock, and I am in your gaze, and you are in mine. In that precious moment, I vanish, I am matter, I am nature. It’s a gesture of light that touches my core and restores my balance. The same goes, though on a more frequent basis, with my dogs. Being in their gaze makes me feel at home every single time.
Toki
Although Meldrop is built entirely from analogue and modular synthesizers, it rarely feels technological. Instead, it conveys something organic, almost animalistic, as if the machines themselves were breathing or responding to the environment. What attracts you to modular synthesis as a tool for expressing themes of nature, grief and memory, and how much of the album emerged through improvisation versus careful construction?
I’m really glad that this feeling comes through. This wild imagery stems directly from the nature I inhabit, and managing to convey something organic and animalistic, as you say, was the goal of this album from the very start. I believe much of this result is due to my approach with modular synthesis: I have a deep aversion to academic studying and technicalities, I hate reading manuals, and I hate practicing by studying every single module and its specifications.
I let myself be guided by the sound, I explore like a child on an adventure. I delve into the search for sounds in an animalistic way, yes, guided by instinct and primal need. It’s just like when I abandon myself in the woods with my dogs: we are part of the environment, we take our time to scout around, respecting the place we are in and its inhabitants. In the exact same way, I respect the sound and my creative process, without forcing anything, without planning a single thing. I step into my sonic forest and let myself be cradled.
No, there was no meticulous construction at all, quite the opposite, in fact. I recorded everything on an old, heroic computer from 2006 that can barely run the recording software, let alone heavy modern plug-ins. This self-imposed limitation helped me get straight to the heart of my sounds, which are intentionally rudimentary, with an almost metallic and primitive feel. There was very little, almost zero, multitrack recording, no sampled sounds (except for the vocal recording on “Into Your Gaze”), and minimal post-production. Even regarding the opening track “Unleash (Into la Rata),” the quasi-animal shouts echoing through it are entirely produced by modular synths, specifically by the Tabor oscillator from the Italian brand Jolin Lab. It was essential for me to create every single sound through careful research and experimentation.
The cover artwork by Bernardo Lupo Migone is immediately arresting: a solitary figure suspended in free fall, caught somewhere between descent and flight. It seems to resonate strongly with the album’s themes of loss, transformation and surrender to forces beyond one’s control. How did that image become associated with Meldrop, and what does the falling figure represent to you in relation to the music?
When I saw that image for the first time I immediately said, “there it is, I found it”. It’s an incredibly strong, high-impact image. The caption read, “A body moves through space and time”, and that’s exactly it. This suspended figure is still, yet it moves. I was fascinated by the fact that it could be interpreted in different ways. For instance, some might see it as a fall, while others see it as a leap into the void, intentional, brave, and liberating. In any case, the time had come for me to fall; the moment had arrived to free myself from certain fears I had been dragging around for too long, to heal from the grief of losing my beloved dog, and to deeply embrace my pain. To embrace this “mal di vivere”, this existential malaise, that too often has been a heavy burden, deciding for once to transform it into something beautiful through my music.
Bernardo Lupo Migone is a talented photographer and a delightful person who was immediately supportive and enthusiastic about being part of the project. Without his imagery, the album wouldn’t have carried the same meaning; he made this debut of mine even more special.
Finally, I would like to thank Raffaele Pezzella, founder and curator of the label Unexplained Sounds Group, who believed in this project from the very first listen. He showed courage and intellectual integrity, evaluating solely the quality of my work rather than who I was, how many followers I had, how many albums I had produced, or how many “cool” places I had played. He believed in my music, and given the times we live in, that is something we can’t take for granted.
Emerging artists need exactly this: someone who believes in their project regardless of who you are or the numbers you pull. There is a need for truth, to rediscover the essence of sound. There is a need to give voice and support to those who deserve a release through their music and not through the construction of a persona.
(Gianmarco Del Re)
a closer listen 