caterina barbieri: myuthafoo

red vinyl edition. Caterina Barbieri is set to release Myuthafoo, the sister album of 2019's acclaimed Ecstatic Computation. Written at the same time, both albums are based on creative sequencing processes that playfully unravel Barbieri's deep-rooted interest in time, space, memory, and emotion. And since she was set to re-release Ecstatic Computation on her light-years imprint (LY 002CD/LP/C-LP), it made sense to accompany that album with this intimately entangled set of unreleased recordings. Barbieri had been touring excessively at the time, and her process began to shift in response to that nomadic, interactive energy. Using the Orthogonal ER-101 modular sequencer, Barbieri manually programmed patterns into the device and fed them into her arsenal of noise generators, trialling different combinations at each show. If an idea worked well in the live environment, she would put it aside, letting longer pieces breathe and transform as they sprung to life and developed organically. It's a process she relates to her interest in cosmogony, the study of the universe's origins; her music is rooted in the limitations of a small number of options that branch out into a much larger structure, eventually reaching towards an open-ended cosmos of possibility. From "Math of You", it's clear that the sounds are grounded in a similar sonic philosophy, blipping synth sequences nudge alongside each other harmonically, disrupting trance's addicting euphoria with filigree polyrhythmic pulses. Like "Fantas" before it, the track is focused around emotionally affecting repeating phrases, but a closer examination reveals hidden intricacies as these phrases flicker like illusions, dissolving and dissipating as they snake and weave. The album's title track is most generous and tender, blunting Barbieri's usually razor-sharp sequences into rubbery Möbius strips that twist romantically, bending back on each other. It gazes at the stars from an atemporal vantage point, relying on synapse-popping psychedelic logic and established physics. Meanwhile, "Sufyosowirl" is rigorous and rhythmic, as melodically charged as pop music and soaring as Jean-Michel Jarre's lavish stadium electronics. The closing track "Swirls of You" encases Barbieri's celestial sequences in gaseous vapors, allowing the music to ascend slowly and purposefully until it flickers and fades to nothing. Barbieri's music sounds like it has a life of its own, endlessly expanding and transmuting until it can develop its own rules and gestures. Myuthafoo teases an ecosystem where technology and biology are intertwined, and the past, present, and future are part of the same essential narrative.