Hi, my name is Massimo Discepoli and I’m a drummer/composer from Italy. I started playing drums in the early 90s, then in the late 00s I began producing my own music that is influenced by genres such as ambient/jazz/post-rock/electronic. My latest album is called “An unusual way to disappear”, you can find more about it on my Bandcamp:
Geographically I’m in central Italy and it probably won’t change anytime soon. Musically I will keep working on my stuff, but at the same time I will also continue to get involved in totally unexpected projects
What preoccupies your mind these days?
Music. And improving as a human being.
Name a favourite taste, touch, sound, sight and smell
Taste: Grape in september. Touch: To pet a cat. Sound: Sea waves in winter. Sight: Sea of fog as seen from above a hill/mountain. Smell: Lasagna cooking in the oven.
Describe one of your most vivid dreams or nightmares
Falling (actually almost flying) with a motorbike from a mountain cliff, with a beautiful landscape of snowy trees underneath. Luckily the dream ended before crashing to the ground.
Have you ever had an uncanny experience?
A few years ago I was waiting outside my house for a bandmate of mine, as we had to go to a rehearse, and we wanted to use only one car. It was VERY windy, and suddenly a roof tile fell right in front of the gate I was supposed to go through, breaking into many pieces. Maybe ten seconds later my friend arrived, and I walked out of that gate. I have wondered many times what would have happened if my friend, for example, didn’t have to tie his shoes or if he didn’t encounter a red light on his way to me.
How does your sense of place affect the way you express yourself?
I live in an area with many natural features and I am also an amateur landscape photographer, who loves to be in the middle of nature: I think this is reflected in my music, which tends to evoke large spaces.
What has particularly touched or inspired you recently?
I recently read the book “House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski, an incredible book, both in atmosphere and typographically (yes, typographically)
Tell us a good story, anecdote or joke
I delayed the delivery of this interview by several days, as I could not find a good story, and I have not found any. So now, instead of a good story, we have a sad one.
Allow me to introduce myself – I’m an ex-pat Australian musician who has been living in the U.K since 2019, and I’m currently involved in a myriad of musical endeavours and collaborations. As well as performing under my own name, I play in the ambient soundscapes act Ghosts of Electricity, the “horror soundtracks” project The Northern Lighthouse Board, and the folkloric collective Cornish Wreckers. I’ve also been guesting recently with the Brisbane-based act Mark’s Paranormal Dysneyland with an old pal of mine, Mark Spinks. In terms of releases, the Essex-based esoteric label Hypostatic Union recently put out a split cassette of myself and label mates Enclosed and Silent Order titled “An Alchemical Gathering”. The Cornwall tape label Dub Cthonic, meanwhile, recently put out a “Ghosts of Electricity” compilation titled “Field Recordings 2017-2021” which acts as an introduction to my collaborative work with the pioneering Australian experimental musician Dean Richards (Disturbed Earth, Whirlywirld, Equal Local). Furthermore, I have a new solo album, “Ghost Music” coming out later this year on Hypostatic Union, which is currently being mastered and pressed to lathe cut vinyl by Michael Lawrence at Bladud Flies!
I was born amongst the laneways and tramlines of Melbourne, Australia and grew up all over the place. I moved to the U.K three years ago, and settled in Cornwall, an area I’d first visited when I checked out the Witchcraft Museum in Boscastle on a previous U.K trip when I was doing some research for a PhD. I fell in love with the area, with its history and folklore of mermaids, smugglers, piskies, and sacred sites. At the moment, I’m back in Australia to do some shows and catch up with friends and family. The future’s wide open!
What preoccupies your mind these days?
This is the first time I’ve been back in Australia in years, due to lockdowns, restrictions etc., so it’s been great to play again with a range of collaborators and compatriots, including my Ghosts of Electricity bandmate, Dean Richards. We just did a show together in Castlemaine – at an event called Elements: A Weekend of New Music, which was a great experience. Castlemaine is prime goldfields territory, about an hour and a half from Melbourne. It’s a wonderfully atmospheric and beautiful area, which really takes you back into Australia’s past – it’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock” territory. It was wonderful to play and hang out with some of Dean’s friends and collaborators, including local poet Djinn Cosgriff, Ballarat musician Tim Hudspith, and Glendon Blazely, who played some beautiful musical saw in my set, and also performed with his wonderful band “night, Owl Hollow” (check them out on bandcamp). The musician/writer/engineer Ray Bassett recorded the show, so hopefully there will be a live album coming out sometime soon.
Michael and Dean
Name a favourite taste, touch, sound, sight and smell
Taste – Having lived in the U.K, where decent coffee is sometimes impossible to find, it was great to once again taste Australian coffee! The coffee here is world class – I think because there is such a strong Italian and Greek presence in the country, and they know how to make a decent cuppa! Sight – My partner, Fawnia. Smell – It’s not environmentally friendly, I know, but I love the smell of burning wood in a fireplace. Sound – the deep drones of the low notes of a harmonium, which I’ve used repeatedly in my work!
Describe one of your most vivid dreams or nightmares
I have recurring dreams where my mouth is full of things like straw, or ectoplasm, or loose teeth, and I’m forever pulling them out or vomiting them up. God knows what that signifies!
Have you ever had an uncanny experience?
Several! Although they’re all probably open to interpretation. One of the earliest experiences I had was when I was living in Brisbane, Australia in my early 20s. I was staying at the flat of a girl I was seeing, and there had been a few odd occurrences going on, doors opening suddenly by themselves, footsteps etc. One evening when I was sleeping there, I felt a rough male hand over my mouth, and I woke up with a start. I could see a shadowy form by the bed, and I literally couldn’t move. I must have stayed like that for 20 minutes or so, until the form disappeared. Of course, one explanation of that was that it was some form of sleep paralysis or night terror, and I wasn’t truly awake but in a kind of lucid dreaming state. But I’ve always remembered the feeling of that experience!
I’ve also had some interesting visual anomalies in photographs I’ve taken. I visited Tasmania gaol about a decade ago, which is an area of Australia with a particularly brutal colonial past and convict history. Fawnia and I went on a “ghost tour” at the gaol, and when the guide took us to the gallows, he explained that often, to save time, or money or whatever, the executioner would hang 2 prisoners together using the same rope, with a noose at either end. While he was discussing, this, I took a picture of him and Fawnia standing at the gallows, and got this very interesting image (see attached picture) of what looks like two people hanging! Maybe it’s just a light anomaly from the torches they were holding, but, still, it was a really eerie experience!
In fact, it was another light anomaly experience that actually inspired the name of Ghosts of Electricity. Dean and I were playing a gig at a Castlemaine recording space, and Fawnia caught this picture (see attached picture) where it looks like there were visible electrical currents surging from Dean’s guitar pedals, and creating a kind of wall of electricity and light around us. Looking at the resulting picture, and with Dylan’s famous lyric from “Visions of Johanna” springing to mind, I said something like “oh, looks like there’s ghosts of electricity!” Dean remembered this, and when we were working on our first album together, he said we should name ourselves “Ghosts of Electricity,” and it seemed fitting!
How does your sense of place affect the way you express yourself?
Landscape and a sense of time and place deeply informs the music I make. The Ghosts of Electricity project, in particular, was hugely informed by the natural landscape and countryside around where I live in Cornwall and where Dean lives in Australia. Dean lives in Guildford – which is a tiny country town in the goldfields, which is home to an ancient old tree called “the big tree” – and we ended up putting out a series of albums called “The Guildford Tree,” which acted as aural explorations of landscape and memory. I was also inspired by my surroundings in Cornwall, and was drawing on the geography, history, and folklore of the area on tracks like The Witches of Lands’ End, which was inspired by stories of how sailors used to buy “wind’ from local witches, to ensure that their voyages were successful. Dean and I even used a lot of field recordings and found sounds – wind noises, owl hoots, church bells, creaking ships – to try to evoke some of these themes and atmospheres in our work.
What has particularly touched or inspired you recently?
It was a hugely inspiring experience to have recorded my forthcoming album “Ghost Music” with the legendary U.K. musician and sound engineer John Hannon and my brilliant friend Stafford Glover (who runs the Hypostatic Union label). John was an amazingly intuitive musician, who played everything from violin, harmonium, harmonica, clarinet, to bagpipes on the album, and it was devastating when he passed away last year. The album is a real tribute to him (I feel it’s just as much his album as mine), and I was determined to leave things pretty much as he initially recorded them. Stafford also had a huge role on the album; he co-wrote two of the songs and plays an equally varied collection of instruments on it, including bass, autoharp, organ, doorframes and piano lids! It was a real privilege to work with both of them, and the album also features beautiful contributions from Fawnia, my Cornish Wreckers bandmate Tony Millman, and The Doomed Bird of Providence’s frontman Mark Kluzek. I also had invaluable technical help in finishing it off from the legendary Mark Beazley (Rothko), Michael Lawrence, and Julian Wright.
Tell us a good story, anecdote or joke
All the jokes I know are terrible or unmentionable/unrepeatable here! I was surrounded by great stories, though, living in Cornwall. One of my favourites was the story of the much-hated 17th century Bodmin lawyer Jan Tregeagle, who was apparently so evil that he was sent to hell after his death, yet managed to escape and went into hiding back in Cornwall, at the top of “Roche Rock” – a rocky outcrop above the village of Roche – in a ruined old chapel which used to be a monastery. Apparently after hiding out there for years, the devil eventually caught up with him and sentenced him to spend eternity emptying out the water in Dozmary Pool – a small lake just down from the famous Jamaica inn, which is also supposed to be the final resting place of King Arthur’s sword Excalibur. The devil gave him a limpet shell with a hole in it for the task – so he never made much headway. The story inspired one of the songs on “An Alchemical Gathering” – a track called “A Sailor’s Song.” I’ve even visited the site itself, but there was no sign of Tregeagle unfortunately! He must have had the day off…
I’m Maggie Houtz, aka DJ Maggie. I own and operate a record label called Over the Moon, sister imprint to Behind the Sky, Evan Bluetech’s label. While Behind the Sky is devoted to music with an analog modular synthesis focus, Over the Moon’s focus is on exquisite, emotive downtempo. We have two releases so far, the most recent being from newcomer Encounters with his debut album, “A Path Beyond”.
In true fashion for many in the music culture, I have a visual side to my creativity as well: I’m a nature photographer and a digital artist.
The photography began as a love affair with East India on a fateful trip with my mother in 2004; it evolved into so much more. There are so many perspectives to explore which can yield even just a pleasing contrast of light and shadow, or the elegant curvature of bare branches; I love seeking those perspectives out and curating them to remind myself (and others) that beauty exists in the world everywhere you look; sometimes one might just adjust their perspective to see the detail that was previously unseen and appreciate it.
As a digital artist, I begin with my photographic images and, using various art apps both on mobile and PC, manipulate them into pleasing, often symmetric or kaleidoscopic patterns. From there, in some cases, I will take that resulting art and further explore with freehand painting. This past year, I’ve begun exploring having my art printed onto clothing, home goods and more; it’s been great fun and has started piquing some interest from others, so I’m developing an online store now to showcase these items.
Music has always been a big part of my life. After dabbling a bit with playing instruments in grade school (piano and trumpet), I started collecting music in my pre-teen and teen years. I worked at a record store in the semi-rural area where I spent the second half of my childhood (Santa Ynez Valley, CA), and would spend my entire paychecks on buying new music. At the age of 12, I started making mixtapes for myself and friends, so I guess you could say music curation was one of the earlier skills I started honing.
My love affair with downtempo electronic music began in the mid 90’s, when I went into a local record shop in LA, walked up to the purple-haired DJ behind the counter (who went on to become a very dear friend to this day), and told him I liked Enya, Enigma and Deep Forest. What would he recommend? He handed me several compilation CDs of trip hop and one original album from local LA electronica band Electric Skychurch – and the rest, as they say, is history. That same year (1996), I was invited to attend a legendary Moontribe Full Moon Gathering, and it was there that I found my community and the courage/support to eventually start sharing “mixtapes” (on CD) of the delicious downtempo I was finding and not hearing anyone else play around me. 2004 saw my first time DJing at a friend’s house party, and it’s been a delightful and prolific ride ever since. I record every time I play, and to date have released more than 100 mixes online, with tracklists furnished for every mix.
Evan Bluetech and I have been close friends for 16 years. During the early days of the Covid pandemic, we began collaborating on various projects, including live stream shows on Twitch (one of which lasted for over two years, called Holotropic Happy Hour, thanks to the strong community that formed around it). In 2021 he surprised me with an offer (on my birthday) to help me launch a record label. Honoring this loving gesture from a friend who saw in me the skills and passion to curate releases in my beloved genre, I leapt at the chance. The nuances of this role as label director are still being discovered and appreciated, but it all feels like it’s in service to help further the existence of sublime music and the sustenance of the beautiful souls who make it. I can stand by that anytime.
I’ve spent decades building relationships with the artists whose music I play when I DJ, and many of them have become treasured friends. I am a firm believer in lifting up those around me who are striving for authenticity in their chosen forms of creative expression, and so it is with this renewed sense of (global) community that I’m excited to see where this role can take me.
What preoccupies your mind these days?
Having just wrapped up co-producing our Twitch show for 2+ years with my collaborators and contemplating how inspiring the community that formed around it could be, I’ve been thinking a lot about desire for connection, and ways to foster that. Prior to that show existing, my sense of connection with other downtempo lovers around the world was tenuous at best, but we all felt so very much in sync as we attended this show week after week, showcasing new and established talent in both the musical and video artist realms, providing tangible ways to support these artists, and co-creating a safe space in which to enjoy the sights and sounds. Now that the show has ended, it’s left a big hole, and I’m determined not to lose that sense of connection.
Name a favourite taste, touch, sound, sight and smell
Taste: That hit of wasabi/soy/ginger in Japanese cuisine Touch: When my cat, Bowie, wants to be held in my arms
Sound: The rooster crowing in the distance, which signals to me that I’m visiting my family’s farm. Sight: When, right after sunset, the horizon is imbued with all those shades of pink/orange/gold at once. Smell: Caramelized onions in their final moments of cooking
Describe one of your most vivid dreams or nightmares
At age 16, I dreamt of being a passenger on a cruise ship that stopped, for repairs, at a port on an island governed by a clan of other humanoid-like creatures. We were invited to disembark and explore but listen for the ship’s horn to return. I can still (nearly 40 years later, in my mind) see the details of the village in the cliffs above the port. I met and fell in love with the son of the clan chief, but fraternizing between humans and these “others” was not allowed, by penalty of exile from the clan – so we had to be secretive. We were found out anyway, and my lover was exiled from not only his clan and island, but from this very dimension, so I knew I would never see him again.
I woke up sobbing, so absolutely sure I’d been there that I pulled the covers away to check my feet for pebbles and debris from walking barefoot on the island.
Have you ever had an uncanny experience?
I thought I saw a giant spaceship once. I was at the family farm on a hot summer night and decided to sleep in the yard next to the house, as I was missing camping. As I laid there on my back, looking at the stars and listening to the crickets and frogs, suddenly everything got really quiet. Like, ALL the crickets and frogs stopped making noise at once, like a carpet had been laid over the sound. There were loads of stars in the sky, so I noticed that there was a clear outline of where the stars were being blocked by something HUGE moving over us. It took up about a third of the night sky and moved, slowly, silently, across the sky. As soon as it had fully passed over, the crickets and frogs started making noise, as did the dogs and chickens nearby. It was cacophonous for a few moments and lent credence to the sense that something enormous had just passed me by!
How does your sense of place affect the way you express yourself?
I’ve been both a country and a city dweller and recognize the value of both. I tend to need equal amounts of each, so I’m grateful that I have a setup that allows for that. My folks live a couple hours outside of LA (where I live) and I visit them regularly. It’s doubtful whether I could sustain all these years of living in the city if I hadn’t had the country to retreat to, and it’s this steadily oscillating pendulum of quiet and stimulation that has fostered my creativity, for years. Certain creative pursuits are best done in one environment, while another might best utilize the opposite. The challenge has been in maintaining that balance.
What has particularly touched or inspired you recently?
The sincere outpouring of love, gratitude and appreciation that happened during the last broadcast of our Twitch show, from all the folks who attended over the last two years. To know that I played a part in fostering that space, and to see its impact on so many – nothing better than that sense of inspiration, borne out of a genuine love for others.
Tell us a good story, anecdote or joke
I got into dad jokes while I was streaming all the time on Twitch, and one in particular has always made me smile:
How do you make antifreeze? You take away her blanket.
Wyrd Daze 