Rome’s Egisto Sopor has been making little waves with his releases for quite a while now. Since we’ve known him he’s released a cdr album on Legowelt’s Strange Life Records and put a cassette out on the much admired 100% Silk label, both under the name ‘Polysick’. As ‘TheAwayTeam’ he’s released a DVD ‘Relax & Sleep’ and a cd ‘Star Kinship’ on Japanese label Moamoo. He is also one half of the low key video unit AAVV, whose work has graced many of the important releases of new lofi electronic movement.
Well, here is his first album proper ‘Digital Native’, 15 tracks of glowing, nocturnal, analogue grace that hark back to acid house and early techno, but with a mood and intent that seems to be designed for watching images dance on closed eyelids. It’s no surprise that his work as a video artist resonates so strongly with the music he makes.
Polysick says of his approach, “When i make music I always have a visual part in mind. In this case, many of the tracks have been influenced by visions of tribal nocturnal mysterious explorations like in ‘Preda’ which is the italian word for “quarry”. I tried to convey a sense of mystery and danger with those swirling flutes and the timpani rolls too, like if you were in the middle of a jungle, in a deep dark night and you’re running away through the trees, haunted, like in some of those old zombie splatter movies from the 80’s.. same with ‘Tic-Tac Toe’, with that clock ticking and the deep bass…”
Polysick has tapped straight into the synthetic pleasures of early dance music’s otherworldly pulses, the hypnotic arpeggios of Italo disco, soaring Detroit chords, cosmic disco, the ‘4th World’ music of Jon Hassell and the library exotics of Piero Umiliani. This is body music for the resting body, Imagine a nexus between early acid house and Italo music being used for mental therapy, exotic travelling and imagining, exciting the brain waves and journeying into imagined spaces. ‘Digital Native’ is set in this imagined line of enquiry.
01 Totem
02 Woods
03 Taito
04 Loading..
05 Lost Holidays
06 Caravan
07 Drowse
08 Tic-Tac Toe
09 Meltinacid
10 Gondwana
11 Preda
12 World Cup
13 Bermuda
14 Transpelagic
15 Smudge, Hawaii
