MAKING history as the “first album created by a person while they were still inside the womb”, the creation of Luca Yupanqui’s music was aided by her parents – her mother the bassist of psych-rock band Psychic Ills, and her father a Lee Scratch Perry collaborator – using biosonic MIDI technology to translate the vibrations of Luca’s in utero movements into sound.
“V4.3 pt.2” is the first piece to be released from the aptly named Sounds Of The Unborn, an album which was the culmination of five-hour sessions of Luca’s mother Elizabeth Hart fixing the MIDI devices to her stomach and the vibrations transcribed through her father Iván Diaz Mathé’s synthesisers.
Hart and Mathé, in this transcendental, meditative and unified state, sought to illustrate the creation of a person untouched by the world; an altogether separate layer of consciousness than that expressed by the average person: “pre-mind, pre-speculation, pre-influence, and pre-human”. They did so by intervening in the editing and mixing process as little as possible, leaving the sounds from those sessions untouched to preserve Luca’s message.
“V4 pt.2″‘s minimal synth passages, ushering waves and ripples of drone amongst the other contrarily organically-resonating electronica, are a prime demonstration of the message and questions the duo wished to convey. These clamouring, expressive sounds emulate an insightful, primordial existence, answering questions of how it is to be within another’s consciousness; “How does it feel? What does it sound like?”
Visual artist Victoria Keddie made the accompanying video which, in its ethereal maelstrom, simulates Luca’s experience in another way. Of the video, Iván Diaz Mathé explains:
“We did some Super 8 footage during the recording sessions and later we teamed up with artist Victoria Keddie because we love her approach an aesthetic.
“She processed the film with analog gear and created a visual trip that summarizes what we felt while creating this album.”
The upcoming album not only elucidates upon this grandiose message of artistic expression within the womb, but also saw Elizabeth and Ivan traversing unchartered territory as musicians, with technology able to create music from any living thing (including plants). Herein, the two (or three) pioneer a new language and form of communication, where this technology enables the ultimate organically channeled art.
See the video for V4.3 pt.2 above. Sounds of the Unborn is released on Sacred Bones April 2nd, pre-order here.
