CD – Unexplained Sounds Group

From Unexplained Sounds Group, the Neapolitan experimental label – or as they call themselves a ‘global network of aural disorientation’ – comes an interesting project conceived and curated by the producer Raffaele Pezzella, who is also active under the pseudonym Sonologyst. It is a collection inspired by the author Phillip K. Dick who masterfully anticipated a central theme of contemporaneity: the relationship between reality and technology, highlighting how media manipulation represents the most subtle form of social control and how being ‘ubiquitous’ is the ‘new’ way of exercising the domination of capital, becoming algorithmic, predictive and statistical. The world that Philip K. Dick imagined not only internalises the uncertainty that the accentuation of an increasingly technological dimension implies, but amplifies it and reproduces it as a constant perception of instability, of reality broken down into overlapping, simultaneous and fragmentary levels. Ubikuitous – Music Inspired by Philip K. Dick’s Dystopias fits into this perspective, building a listening itinerary that privileges the mental and imaginative dimension of sound, over linear or thematic storytelling. The artists involved – many of whom are already known in the field of experimental and post-industrial productions – interpret Dickian dystopias through different registers: from the suspended and cinematic atmospheres of Mark Hjorthoy and Borda, to the more tense and percussive structures of Bruno Bé Dorella or Richard Dore. Elsewhere, in the abstract and layered landscapes of Oubys and vÄäristymä, the hallucinatory and fragile dimension of identity emerges, as if sound itself is forced to oscillate between presence and dissolution. It is Adi Newton, the frontman of Clock Dva, who with ‘Non Psychogenic Ambivalence’ offers one of the most emblematic contributions: an intricate composition of dreamy restlessness, which sits perfectly at the crossroads between memory, dream and perceptual manipulation. Overall, the collection confirms the Unexplained Sounds Group’s attention to the borderlands between sound art and philosophical reflection, where music becomes a vehicle of inquiry and not just an aesthetic experience. Ubikuitous – Music Inspired by Philip K. Dick’s does not limit itself to celebrating Dick’s imagination, but extends its legacy, transforming his vision into an acoustic constellation of insinuating and persistent unease.

 

VV.AA. – Ubikuitous | Music inspired by Philip K. Dick’s dystopias