Dark Companion Records

I’ve always pursued what I call PEM (Popular Experimental Music) — a kind of music that manages to integrate experimentation with accessibility (steering clear of outdated academicism, ivory towers, hermeticism, and elitist self-indulgence).

I believe that experimentation doesn’t have to mean boring or distressing the listener: you can experiment by pleasing the ear, not only by assaulting it. Above all, to me, experimenting means chasing—and therefore shaping—the present, day by day (rather than slavishly repeating the past). It means constantly reinventing oneself, daring to challenge an audience (instead of simply pleasing it or serving up the same tired formulas).

Electronic music, for instance, often falls into this trap — trying to recreate sounds from the past. Now, I’ve studied and loved the past (all of it, not just electronic music, with a special focus on the 20th century); it’s the foundation of my education — I come from an academic background. But at a certain point, I felt an urgent need to better understand the present. When I fell in love with electronic music, it simply became another expression of that same urgency.
Vincenzo Ramaglia

Credits
Vincenzo Ramaglia: electronics
Renato Ciunfrini: clarinet