UNKNOT is a project from DJ Sciahri (Opal Tapes / Ilian Tape) and composer/audiohead Emanuele Porcinai (on Contort as WSR).
The pair have a dialogue between the backbone of Sciahri’s Techno stable and Emanuele’s electroacoustic experimental work via limiting themselves to working on restrained system.Mainly a feisty vintage synth that is craftily put though its paces! This helps to refine a sound, which can conjure thoughts of gloriously extraterrestrial landscapes which somehow have a parallel to out own.
Their 3rd release under this project is a very well worked package indeed! From the lovely melancholic drones and delicate micro percussion of Strain you are then taken to Lockt, a heavyweight stomper which seem to be in some kind of alien rainforest, very interesting and somewhat unearthly texture that somehow sound familiar!
Corrosion chugs along with gusto further through this alien landscape reaching to the finally of Vapor, a rave which appears to be bubbling under and billowing out of the smokey end of a rumbling volcano.
UNKONT03 is out now!
Enjoy this interview with the boys.
T.O.P: If your music together was a film , what kind of film would it be?
UNKNOT: In one of the first reviews that we got for our first EP someone wrote “[…] ambient sounds which warp as glass might under severe heat, evoke a space-horror OST.” (Ray Philp on R.A.) , so yea, a space-horror sounds quite right.
T.O.P: What are you up to this time of year?
Sciahri: I’m having a track released on a V.A. on Mord records in mid July and has some more material coming out before the end of the year.
Emanuele: I’m working on a new record.
T.O.P: Describe a venue, real or fiction , where your record would sound really good?
UNKNOT: Any claustrophobic place with a big PA should do.
T.O.P: Is there a piece of studio equipment that inspires you the most?
UNKNOT: Korg MS-20 above all, 90% of the material used to make our music (from rhythmic elements to textures etc.) comes out of this very piece of kit. At the start we were using it cause we couldn’t really afford to buy anything else but after a while it became a sort of restrained-setup philosophy.
T.O.P: Where do you like to go to find inspiration?
UNKNOT: We live in different countries and only see each other occasionally to jam things out and write new material. It’s a very immediate process that doesn’t really involve any research, what comes out of the machines that day and what we both like (considering that we have quite different taste) somehow defines the shape of what we’re working on.
T.O.P: What album/record would you put on to heal the mind?
UNKNOT:Depends what kind of healing you’re after, Emanuele just bought the reissue of SND’s “Travelog” from 1999 and it’s kind of as aseptically healthy as much as it is a great record.
T.O.P: How do you find your work evolving with each other and do you learn a little more with each release?
UNKNOT: It’s always very refreshing because we have very different taste in music as well as different approaches at music writing. It’s always a bit of a fight to find an intersection that we’re both comfortable with, and for sure we end up influencing each other’s personal output as well in some way.
T.O.P: What do you find the biggest challenge as producers?
UNKNOT: Trying not to starve!
T.O.P: What plans do you have coming up?
UNKNOT: While trying to write new music, which is taking a while since we live in different country, we are working for a couple of festivals/markets that are going to take place in Berlin this summer where we will sell some records and artwork prints. The first is Krake festival at the end of July, where Emanuele is also going to perform as WSR at the opening night, the other is the Independent Label Market in mid August.
Tales of Psychofonia 