LUCIO CAPECE + BEN VIDA

Umwelt is the first album of two tireless sound researchers. Lucio Capece uses a slide saxophone, the sound of which is modulated by cardboard tubes, and an analog synthesizer when Ben Vida takes up the digital domain – synthetic sounds, sampling and material arrangement. Thanks to the mutual interest in psychoacoustics, they managed to combine such various measures into a coherent and engaging whole. Another gem in the catalog of Bocian Records.

To book Lucio Capece and Ben Vida, please contact:
Joanna John / hello@kissthefrog.no

Boomkat about Umwelt:
“Umwelt’ is a filigree elision of explorative electro-acoustic disciplines, forming the first collaborative release between two leading lights of avant-garde and experimental music. Acoustic alchemist Lucio Capece, sought after by everyone from Mika Vainio to Vlaislav Dely for his inventive talents, meets Ben Vida, one of computer music’s most interesting composers, in a suite of liminal and surreally absorbing works recorded over the past four years between Brussels, Berlin, and New York.
Capece brings a unique versatility on bass clarinet, slide saxophone, cardboard tubes, analog synth and filter to Vida’s synthesis, sampling, and digital arranging, resulting in four pieces that get up the nose and
and under the skin with deeply, rari fied effect recalling works by Jim O’Rourke and the depths of the GRM archive.
The duo’s efforts are full of psychoacoustic, proprioceptive audness that almost gets us sliding off the chair with its mind-bending subtleties, whether crumpling time/space perceptions like liquifying tinfoil in the
transition between iridescent rhythm and hypnagogic chamber drones in Asmodea, or doing the strangest things to our heads with the air-bending sorcery of Umwelten, and Rashad Becker-like off world psychedelia of The Three Graces. Seeing Lucio play at a Berlin gallery 13 years ago was a quietly pivotal experience of experimental music for us, and this work with Ben Vida highlights the immanent power of his music in a way that still has our attention rapt.”

Ben Vida is a composer, improviser and artist. In the mid-1990s he co-founded the minimalist quartet Town & Country and released solo records under the moniker Bird Show. He has worked with numerous labels including PAN, Shelter Press and iDEAL.
Vida’s practice focuses on pieces for electronics and voice and has recently expanded to works for small ensembles. The text based compositions he produces utilize techniques developed through an engagement with experimental writing practices. In these works language is treated as a raw material that can be sampled and re-contextualized into numerous mutable forms. In addition to his pieces for voice Vida has produced numerous releases that demonstrate his research into systems and sound syntheses.

His projects have been presented widely in venues such as the Guggenheim, NYC; Centro Pecci in Prato, Italy; STUK in Leuven, Belgium; the MCA, Chicago; The ICA, London; The Kitchen, NYC; Performa Biennial, NYC; EMPAC, Troy, NY; Leap Gallery, Berlin; Lampo, Chicago; Cricoteka Museum, Kraków, Poland; the Sydney Opera House; Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna; Borderline Festival, Athens, Greece; the Royal Festival Hall, London; INA/GRM, Paris and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY.
Vida’s work has been featured in Artforum, Modern Painters, The Paris Review, The New York Times, Art Review, Wire Magazine, The Creators Project, WIRED Magazine among others.
Recent projects include a collaboration with YarnWire and vocalist Nina Dante premiered through Lampo at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago and duo releases with Marina Rosenfeld and Lucio Capece.
Vida teaches at Brooklyn College in the Sonic Arts MFA program.