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Manuel Piccoli

ROCKET RADIO MEETS PANORAM

Manuel Piccoli
 
 

It is reassuring and inspiring to connect with an artist from your country, and a similar age, that genuinely found his path and international recognition in electronic music, or - let's say it - sound art.

Panoram caught our attention some time ago with “Everyone Is A Door" (Firecracker Recordings 2014) and by popping out from dj’s collections in the form of limited edition records. When we stumbled upon his latest record "Pianosequenza vol.1" (Union Edition), fresh from the Mother Tongue pressing plant, we decided to contact him for a show; we couldn’t be happier with the results!

“Social Constructions (Reputation)” is an unreleased set recorded by Panoram exclusively for Rocket Radio, and it aired for the first time on our channel this May.

 

Panoram’s work is labelled with the most charming words trying to describe his travels in experimental electronic music, all pretty much recalling a cloudy inward out-of-time universe of sound textures. To spare you our poor lyricism, we thought it was a better idea to let Panoram tell us by himself what his music is about, so we asked him a few questions:

 

When was ‘Panoram’ born and what is the artistic project behind this name?

 

Panoram was born something like nine years ago. I was searching for a new, more personal approach to music making and I was trying to set some sort of ‘visions’ I had at the time into a ‘sound place’. I think my first record, "Accents" had a lot of hints about what Panoram was going to become in the records that followed. It was some sort of ‘map’ for this new world I was starting to build. I think now Panoram it's working like a filter. Rather than shaping things from scratch I like to process different kinds of inputs. It is like observing things under a ‘lense’ and seeing what they look like. I can change tools and try out different ideas, but I think you can always spot that all the different outputs belong to the same ‘place’ and this gives me a lot of freedom in a way.

 

Where do you musically grow up, and which do you consider being the most significant stages of your journey as a musician?

 

I come from a musical family. Grew up with the classic mainstream music from the late 80's and we watched a lot of musicals (De Palma's “Phantom Of The Opera” is still one of my favorite movies) but I think the stronger inputs were always visual. My dad had pretty much everything from Pazienza, Tamburini, Liberatore, Mattotti so I always had something good in my hands. This was mixed with the 90's Japanese video game era and that was a mix of strong visuals and music. When I was a kid I used to go dancing a lot in small clubs, starting with a lot of new wave and then more contemporary dance music later on. Those are the years when I discovered all the things that I keep listening to nowadays like Dopplereffekt, Drexciya and loads of electro, both American and European. I've been in London a lot during the first years of Panoram because that was the place where my stuff was supported more. London is also where Damon (Amen Dunes) bought my record "Everyone Is A Door" (Firecracker Recordings). I think my friend Jimi (Lobster Theremin) was working at Kristina Records at the time and suggested it to him. Damon got in touch with me a few years later and asked me to work together on his latest album, "Freedom". That led me to the States where I spent a couple of years touring and playing synths live for Amen Dunes. I think being in New York and in the States in general helped me a lot to find new lymph for my music. I was unable to make any music for two years straight because of the touring but I was processing a lot of new things.

 

You founded your own imprint Wandering Eye, tell us more about it and what brought you there.

 

Wandering Eye was meant to be just an output for my own music at the beginning. I decided it was going to open up to other artists when I discovered the music of Ando Laj.

I felt a strong connection to his work. I love all the things I've put out on the label and I have some new artists that I am working with, very excited about it.

 

Tell us about “Social Constructions (Reputation)”. How does it relate with your other productions? Is it going to be released on some label or on a format other than the digital one?

 

Working with radios for me means always creating original material since I don't dj. I thought I would put all these sets under the name "Social Constructions" from now on. Each one will have a theme (like "Reputation" in this case). It's like a stream of consciousness for me with not a lot of focus on details. I like to keep these sessions fun, without too much control when I am recording them. It's a way for me to go through a lot of weird ideas and sketches that have been sitting in my computer and also record new stuff from scratch.

 

What about Panoram live performances? What’s your live set situation like, if there is any?

 

Oh that's a good question. I will have to start from scratch since I left all the gears I was using between New York and Los Angeles. Not a bad thing considering that most of the things were involved in a wild night in Salisbury. I was on tour with Amen Dunes and coming back to my hotel room I found out that everything in the room was covered in urine. Quite happy to get some ‘clean’ gears...  I am also looking forward to bringing the Pianosequenza material live soon.

 

Do you think you may ever stop by Verona and say hello to your RR friends sometime in the future? :)

Oh I would love to. I was only there once and really liked it.

Interview by Cate

 
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SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS (Reputation) by PANORAM