Francesco Virgilio’s multidisciplinary electronic project mokroïé returns with Unanswered, an immersive four-track EP that moves between the vastness of the cosmos and the deeply personal terrain of memory, adolescence and loss.
Across four interconnected compositions and accompanying films, Virgilio explores some of existence’s most enduring questions without attempting to offer easy answers. Progressive electronics, organic instrumentation, psychedelic textures and cinematic arrangements combine to create a record concerned as much with atmosphere and sensation as it is with narrative. Wonder, mortality, fleeting happiness, absence and grief all surface across Unanswered, reflecting the uncertainty contained within its title.
The EP is structured in two contrasting halves, Outside and Inside. The first looks beyond the self, turning towards nature, space and the scale of existence, while the second becomes increasingly intimate, exploring adolescence, melancholy and the emotional void created by the loss of someone close.
Instrumental opener ‘Eternity’ immediately establishes the record’s expansive perspective. Conceived as an allegory for existence, the track places the instinct to live alongside the inevitability of death. Sparkling electronic textures meet organic sounds, creating an impression of movement between Earth and the stars and setting up the EP’s recurring tension between the enormous and the human.
‘Over The Clouds’ continues that outward journey through a more serene, luminous landscape. Its dreamlike atmosphere gradually gives way to uncertainty before arriving at a sense of resolution through ethereal piano, offering a moment of calm within the EP’s otherwise searching narrative.
With ‘Teenage Sunday Sadness’, the perspective turns inward. Opening the record’s Inside section, the track begins with a sense of brightness and carefree energy before slowly revealing a more inexplicable melancholy. It captures the emotional contradictions of adolescence, where sadness can arrive without an obvious cause and moments of innocence can exist alongside an emerging awareness of life’s complexity.
Closing track ‘Negative Space’ is the only vocal composition on Unanswered. Australian singer, songwriter and composer Alison Thom, from Howlite, provides a haunting focal point against an ethereal electro-pop backdrop and delicate orchestral arrangements. The song gives voice to absence, grief and the empty space created by losing someone, with the whispered French phrase “l’attente d’un retour”, meaning the waiting for a return, distilling its central feeling of longing.
The track also marks a continuation of the creative relationship between Thom and Virgilio. The pair previously worked together on mokroïé’s electro-orchestral remix of Howlite’s ‘Blood Type’, a dramatic reimagining that introduced new electronic energy and sweeping musical dynamics. The remix prompted Howlite and their publisher to memorably describe the result as “the soundtrack to the next John Wick!”
For mokroïé, however, the music is only part of the experience. Each track on Unanswered is accompanied by its own music video, with Virgilio creating the visuals as extensions of the compositions rather than as separate promotional pieces. Cosmic dust, human figures, vast skies, rain-soaked landscapes and fragments of everyday life become part of the project’s visual vocabulary, creating a synesthetic relationship between sound and image.
That fusion of music and visual storytelling has been central to mokroïé since its inception. Virgilio approaches the project as a form of sonic direction, shaping rhythm, atmosphere and narrative alongside one another. Electronic, rock, pop and industrial foundations are combined with elements of jazz, soul and global music, while familiar instruments can be placed alongside more unconventional textures. The result is a constantly shifting creative environment in which each release can operate according to its own rules.
Collaboration has also been a defining element of the project’s development. Previous mokroïé work has involved spoken-word artist Allonymous, drummers Dave Collingwood and Cyril Atef, and Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo-winning photojournalist Sergey Ponomarev. Virgilio and Ponomarev previously collaborated on the multidisciplinary 2017 EP GLOBAL – SYSTEM – ERROR, extending mokroïé’s interest in the meeting point between sound, image and contemporary storytelling.
Later releases including Machines & Soul, WORKS2K21 and Moving Forward continued to develop that approach, bringing electronic experimentation into conversation with questions of identity, emotion and human experience. With Unanswered, those concerns become more intimate, with Virgilio turning the project’s expansive sonic palette towards memories, vulnerability and the spaces left behind when something or someone disappears.
Ultimately, Unanswered is less interested in resolving its questions than in inhabiting them. Its four tracks move from stardust and mortality to adolescent sadness and the lingering presence of absence, constantly shifting between cosmic scale and deeply personal emotion. The accompanying films extend that journey beyond sound, creating a world in which the EP can be experienced as both music and moving image.
In that sense, the title becomes less a statement than an invitation. Unanswered accepts that some questions remain open, finding beauty not in certainty but in the energy that continues to exist when definitive answers are out of reach.
