#4 - A Conversation with Iosonouncane
Introduction
This interview is part of The Sonic Atelier – Conversations with Contemporary Composers and Producers, a long-term project dedicated to exploring the evolving role of the composer in the twenty-first century. The series investigates how today’s creators inhabit hybrid identities at the intersection of composition, production, and performance, and how their artistic practices intertwine with technology, aesthetics, and the changing dynamics of the music industry.
In this conversation we meet Iosonouncane, the stage name of Jacopo Incani, one of the most distinctive voices of the Italian contemporary music scene. Composer, songwriter, and producer, he is widely recognised for his ability to merge songwriting with experimental sound research, crafting works that balance lyrical intensity with daring production choices. From the layered complexity of DIE to the monumental scope of IRA, his albums have marked turning points in Italian music, pushing beyond conventional genres into unexplored territories.
Here, Iosonouncane reflects on the fluid boundaries between writing, production, and mixing, on the role of technology as both a creative tool and a challenge, and on the balance between authorial identity and the demands of today’s algorithm-driven music industry. The discussion also explores his approach to film scoring, his views on spatialization and immersive sound, and his reflections on the place of art in a world increasingly dominated by utility. His words open a window onto the craft, contradictions, and poetic urgency that shape the work of a contemporary composer navigating the complexities of our time.
Date of interview: 18 July 2025
Question: It’s common nowadays to speak about the hybrid figure of composer, producer, and performer. Do you recognize yourself in this description, and how do these three dimensions coexist in your work?
Iosonouncane: Yes, I definitely recognize myself in it. My approach is exactly that: I compose, arrange, produce, and record, and most of the time these activities overlap or even coincide. For example, a few weeks ago I started working on my new album using sketches I had recorded over the years. I can never focus on a single instrument: while I’m tweaking synths, I already have a guitar in my hands. I work on different layers at once because one influences the other. A harmonic sequence on the classical guitar might immediately suggest a production idea. And sometimes, even while I’m playing the guitar, I already think of it as a synthesizer and transfer it straight onto an arpeggiator.
I reflected on this dimension when Brian Wilson passed away, I’ve always been a fanatic of his. Listening back to his music and talking about it with friends made me realize how, already in 1965, he was a very young artist who composed, arranged, produced, and recorded. You can hear it clearly in the Smile Sessions: he was giving instructions to session musicians as if he had a DAW at his disposal. Without an academic background, he worked by trial and error, imagining musical solutions and adjusting them in real time, very much like we do today with Ableton Live. With experience that process becomes faster, but the logic is the same. In this sense, Wilson was perhaps the first contemporary producer: he embodied all these figures at once, like Phil Spector or Joe Meek, but with the unique distinction of also being a performer and interpreter of his own music.
I think what I do is very similar. And working on film scores, in particular, is the perfect lab for this dimension: a field where composition, production, and performance coexist naturally.
Question: Which composers or musical movements do you feel you have absorbed most deeply, and which languages have left a mark on your journey and on the way you conceive and think about the creative process and music?
Iosonouncane: Until one day in the fall of 1997, I was a very skinny, polite, shy boy with acne, good grades, obsessed with football, and a bedroom covered in Juventus posters. Then, thanks to my sister, I listened to a song by Oasis and it was a real shock, like open-heart surgery, a heartbreaking and sublime experience at the same time. In that music there was revenge, vital energy, melancholy, and emotion. It perfectly matched my way of being. The next morning I woke up different: I was a musician, even though I had never played anything and grew up in a family where music was listened to only in the car, without a record player or vinyls. From that moment on I knew with absolute clarity that I would write music and that it would be my life.
Reading about Oasis, I often came across the name of the Beatles. I remembered that my middle school English teacher, Gianni Persico, had shown us a documentary about them as a language exercise. I asked my sister to get it for me and that is where it all began: my teacher lent me the videotape, then he gave me Ian MacDonald’s book on the Beatles’ sessions and a cassette with Revolver and Rubber Soul. We also started a correspondence: I would send him blank tapes with a letter commenting on the albums I had listened to, and he would send them back recorded with other albums.
My first real encounter with the Beatles was therefore that black-and-white documentary from the early 1980s, with a dramatic voice-over that gave it a sense of sacredness. The most overwhelming part was from Revolver onward, when they stopped touring, locked themselves in the studio, and began using the studio as an instrument. That combination of listening, book, and documentary gave me the certainty that making music meant exactly this: working in the studio, searching for sounds and structures. Even then I could sense the structural difference between an Oasis song and A Day in the Life, which completely overturns the verse-chorus form I was used to.
For me, making music has meant this from the very beginning. The fascination with the idea of playing on stage faded almost immediately, replaced by the attraction to sound exploration. With a friend who had inherited a Tascam four-track recorder, we spent Sundays doing Beatles covers or arranging his songs in the style of early Pink Floyd.
That was my first true musical experience. Only later came the period of bands, rehearsal rooms, and much later, tours. For me, writing music has never meant picking up a guitar and composing a song. That happened only rarely. Writing has always meant recording, producing, and shaping sounds. And now that I have a studio, it also means mixing.
Question: When you compose music for images, do you follow more or less the same practice, or are there significant differences compared to working on one of your own albums?
Iosonouncane: I would say yes, the basic practice is similar. The main difference is that when I work for images, I almost never think about my own voice and therefore about words. This changes the final goal while leaving the method quite similar. What changes most are the timelines. On one of my albums I decide when it is finished. I write the final word when I feel poetically satisfied, even if months later I might wish for a different mix.
With film scores, instead, the speed of the contemporary process comes into play. From the editing stage onward there is a constant back and forth of drafts and revisions. The laboratory phase has to produce weekly syntheses that are clear for the director and the editor, who often do not have a technical musical language. I cannot send material that is too abstract and rely on what it will eventually become. It turns into a tight cycle of research, synthesis, research, synthesis. The result is that when I listen back to the soundtracks I can hear the attempts and the paths I explored, whereas with albums the research and synthesis happen more fluidly and within the necessary time.
This fast-paced method has both pros and cons. On the one hand it trains me to decide and refine quickly. On the other hand, sometimes I feel that certain ideas are closed off before they are fully mature, and I tell myself I would have liked a few more weeks to work on a sound or introduce an element.
Question: I would like to go into detail about the soundtrack for Berlinguer, la grande ambizione: how did you approach this work?
Iosonouncane: I was involved very early in the project. Andrea, the director, contacted me towards the end of the second draft of the script. He had written while listening to IRA and felt a strong connection between the film and my sound. We spent a lot of time talking in the studio, and he wanted a theme that had the strength of Morricone’s collaborations with Petri. His suggestions were very precise: a broad theme, synths that evoked the vocality and popular music dear to Berlinguer, and a sonic horizon that also drew from Soviet composers, with Rachmaninov in the foreground, whom Berlinguer himself loved and listened to.
The theme was born immediately, on the very first attempt, starting from a timbral idea: a Juno set up in a percussive way, treated with pedals until it sounded like a palm-muted baritone guitar. That dry note became the nucleus. On top of it I tried the melodica, which I had already used in previous works, and then a choral rendering with the Nord Wave, to evoke an austere, almost Soviet vocality. I added a nervous beat, then isolated the melody and stretched the harmony on the synths. At that point I thought: this line can be sung by a woman. Two days later Daniela Pes was in the studio for rehearsals. I played her the theme, we turned on a microphone, and she sang it.
For the production I prepared a folder of variations: melodica alone, Daniela on the beat, Daniela on the harmony, the melody assigned to the cello, and other combinations. I sent it the evening before filming began, so the set started with a defined theme and even with a basic dramaturgical sound structure in place, for example: melodica alone at the beginning, Daniela’s voice towards the end, and the middle to be defined.
The difficulties came in the editing phase. The film is very dialogue-heavy, and the music had to slip in between dense exchanges. At the beginning I felt stuck. It was my first fiction soundtrack with a large production, and I felt shy. At a certain point Andrea and the editor Jacopo Quadri told me clearly to take charge. I proposed some musical solutions, and from there the editing quickly found its form.
On the role of music I have a very clear position: it is not “necessary” by definition. If it is there, it must have a poetic value, not be a simple didactic background that adds emotional reinforcement. Music must open up other spaces when the film allows it. In this work we focused a lot on Berlinguer’s mother. His biography, his aristocratic origins in rural Sardinia, his sick mother who died when he was 14, suggested that we should make that absence resonate as an underground line. Even though in the editing the mother’s presence was reduced for reasons of political clarity, I wanted the music to continue evoking her. The choice of a female voice, Daniela singing the final theme in the funeral sequence, also goes in this direction.
Another timbral element became symbolic: the shepherd’s horn, bought in my hometown and never used before. It has a shrill sound, not articulable into a true melody, more like a whistle that changes with the breath. I used it in scenes of tension, conflict, and violence, in moments of BR, opposing powers, and the USSR, as an acoustic sign of a power that manifests itself without justification, but also as a reference to harsh rurality and the raw gestures that young Berlinguer had known, images that in my imagination overlapped with acts of political violence.
From the point of view of instruments and workflow, this soundtrack was a true laboratory. I deliberately decided to use machines and instruments differently from my albums: the melodica, the shepherd’s horn, the Model D not for bass but for other functions, the Prophet routed through unusual chains. The goal was to expand the spectrum of possibilities and avoid getting stuck in already familiar solutions.
Question: Let’s talk about the role of technology in your work. What is your relationship with the DAW? What function does it serve in your creative process? Is it a space that plays a broad role even in the writing phase, or do you consider it mainly a functional tool for finalizing ideas born elsewhere?
Iosonouncane: I mainly use Ableton and Pro Tools, but in completely different phases. Very often I work only on Ableton. Pro Tools is the software I use when working with Bruno Germano, my sound engineer. With him I mix the albums, and in my most recent soundtracks he has taken on a role of technical supervision. In practice, I would bring him sessions already mixed, and he would make targeted corrections on specific frequencies or technical details that require scientific precision and an optimal listening environment, which I do not have in my own studio. My room is tiny and full of gear, so it is not ideal for the final mix.
I use Ableton a great deal. When I first installed it in 2010 it completely consumed me. The apparent possibility of having everything at my fingertips was overwhelming. I spent two years recording ideas in a totally disorganized way, with sessions of 150 tracks full of sketches, both in arrangement view and session view. All that material eventually flowed into DIE, my second album. At that point I started working with Bruno, who helped me organize those sessions and translate them into Pro Tools so they could be mixed. During that year in the studio I closely observed his method. He comes from the early 1990s American independent music school (Steve Albini, etc.), so he works with resonant rooms, hardware, compressors, equalizers. For me it was like an apprenticeship: I watched what he cut, why he intervened on certain frequencies, and I tried to understand every step.
By the end of that cycle I went from being controlled by Ableton to controlling Ableton. With IRA, music truly became my profession, and that album, though very difficult, triple, very dark, without singles, led me to work on many film scores and productions. Thanks to this I was able to invest in instruments: synths, microphones, compressors, preamps.
Since then my use of Ableton has changed. I consider it a tool for quickly jotting down ideas. If I come up with a harmonic progression while playing guitar or piano, I record it in Ableton, but it stays there as a sketch. The next day I open the session and develop it directly on the machines: synthesizers, real instruments, effect chains. Ableton helps me set up the structure, organize harmonies, and save drafts.
When I get to the final stage, I take time to redo the sounds. I remove the temporary plugins and recreate the effects through the machines, modifying and expanding them. I still use MIDI a lot to sketch harmonies or possible lines, but always as a guide track, never as definitive material.
In short, today Ableton is my platform for rapid writing and drafting, while the real sound only takes shape through machines and physical instruments. Pro Tools, on the other hand, remains the place for finalization and technical dialogue with Bruno.
Question: So you also take care of the mixing in your productions?
Iosonouncane: In Lirica Ucraina and especially in Berlinguer, la grande ambizione, yes. I practically mixed Berlinguer myself. Since I could not involve Bruno Germano because he was already busy, I entrusted the final check to Andrea Robacchi, my live sound engineer. On some tracks he did not touch anything, on others he made micro-adjustments, like cutting one dB on a specific frequency. In the piece Madre, for example, he tried a mix attempt to his taste, but it did not work. We went back almost entirely to my original mix, correcting only minimal details on the classical guitar. For me, as a nerd, recording a full soundtrack, including acoustic instruments, and bringing it practically all the way to the mix was exhilarating.
For Lirica Ucraina, on the other hand, I set up a lot, but the final mix was mostly Bruno’s. And I trust him blindly. For me it is wonderful that someone with his experience takes the track and gives it back almost identical, but with a much wider and deeper sound. I am always curious to understand what he did technically, what he cut, where he intervened.
The studio dimension, for me, is irreplaceable, much more than concerts. I enjoy playing live, but I could do without it. Increasingly I feel that my ideal dimension is that of the composer: releasing an album, playing a few concerts, maybe creating a show based only on soundtracks. I like the idea of not being a slave to touring. I could even not be present when my pieces are performed, leaving other musicians to interpret them.
Question: When it comes to the entire production process, from recording sessions to experimentation and mixing, do you consider these phases as separate from composition, or are they for you an integral and inseparable part of the creative act itself?
Iosonouncane: For me they are an integral and inseparable part of the creative act. The only phase I am trying to separate is mixing. I learned this distinction also by observing younger musicians who grew up directly with DAWs. They write and produce in an integrated way, but at a certain point they decide to step back and move on to the actual mix. This separation is useful because it allows you to approach mixing as an almost purely technical step, while everything else remains fused and cross-contaminated.
For me this is the most complex challenge to manage. Let me give you an example. When I started producing Daniela Pes, she had just installed Ableton. The whole process of her album was shaped by this. She would write harmonic sequences and jot down ideas by opening sessions with hundreds of tracks. To create dynamics, she would layer track upon track, building demos that worked in terms of impact but did not hold up sonically. It was enough to remove the temporary reverbs and replace them with higher-quality ones, and everything would collapse.
This shows that composition and production can and perhaps must influence each other, but you need to know how to master production. Otherwise you risk big misjudgments: you may think a track works just because, when you listen back, it “gets louder” or builds up in layers, but that is not the case. So yes, the phases intermingle and feed each other, but with the awareness that the DAW, with its immediacy, can easily deceive you.
Question: In recent years the boundaries between writing, production, and spatialization have become increasingly thin. Do you think it would make sense to imagine a model capable of integrating these different levels in an organic way? Do you ever annotate, even in an abstract or personal way, aspects such as timbre, processing, or spatialization in addition to melodic and harmonic lines?
Iosonouncane: No, I never have, to be honest. Even after several albums and soundtracks I do not feel that I have an infallible method. Each time I make adjustments, and often during or after a project I realize that certain choices have complicated the process. A framework to help manage this multidimensional thinking of the composer could be very useful, because otherwise everything remains empirical, with inevitable mistakes and moments of frustration. It is typical for those who work this way to go through phases of discouragement: you go to bed convinced you had a great idea, and the next day you discover that the result does not work.
I found it illuminating to observe the work of a young artist I produced who will release his album in the fall. Unlike me, he immediately records the definitive sounds. If he thinks of a beat, he sets up microphones and records a frame drum, whereas I would have used a temporary drum rack in Ableton. This makes an enormous difference: his demos sound good right away, while mine remain full of fake placeholders for a long time, which slows down the process. Even in Berlinguer I experimented with this approach. For example, I immediately recorded a ken genì belonging to Maria Giulia, my percussionist. Working directly with the real source sped up the flow enormously, because every subsequent elaboration started from an already solid matrix.
If instead you rely on provisional tools, a weak Ableton 808 instead of a real drum kit, or a Farfisa emulator instead of the actual organ, you eventually reach a point where everything sounds fake and two-dimensional. You find yourself correcting, equalizing, embellishing something that will never have the presence and space of a real instrument. That is why I feel I need a method that simplifies the work, even though it is not easy to find.
I am not interested in crystallizing parameters that should remain magical, but I do believe that a modular system capable of integrating the different levels would be truly useful.
Question: If you had to instinctively create a drone, a static or slowly evolving sound mass to describe a snowy landscape crossed by a walking protagonist ,a silent, suspended environment conveying emptiness and isolation, where would you start? Would you move more toward timbral or melodic research?
Iosonouncane: That is a beautiful question, but the truth is that there are many possible paths, all potentially valid. It depends a lot on what I perceive as the director’s expectation, and above all on his or her degree of courage. Some are frightened by a solution that does not directly describe what is happening on screen.
For example, I might open the Hydrasynth, set up a very clear pad on an interval of a fourth, a sixth, or even a major seventh, and I would already have an effective solution. But I might also arrive at the same result by taking a “longer route,” an apparently distant choice that at first listen seems unrelated but ultimately introduces deeper levels of interpretation. Sometimes, in fact, I would use that very clear pad not in the snowy scene, but in a moment that contradicts its character.
In reality, when working on a soundtrack it is never just the scene that determines the musical choices. Music is applied not only to the image, but also to the director’s poetics. This is why I never propose a single solution. I prefer to offer a range of possibilities, even opposed to each other, because this helps me understand how the director thinks.
Take a moving scene between father and son. I might suggest a dreamy guitar and synth arpeggio, but also a noisy drone in contrast. In this way I can understand whether the director wants that sequence to remain simply moving and dreamy, or whether he is willing to let an element resonate in advance that will appear later in the film.
For this reason I cannot give you a single definitive answer. Without knowing who the director is, what the cinematography is like, and where that scene sits within the film, I lack the essential elements to choose.
Question: Today the music industry is increasingly shaped by digital platforms, streaming, and fast, often fragmented listening driven by algorithms. Do you find yourself having to deal with this logic? To what extent do you think the current system, with the centrality of platforms and playlists, influences or limits the possibility of experimenting and pursuing musical research?
Iosonouncane: Obviously, being 42 years old, I risk slipping into the classic “back in my day things were different” speech. But the truth is that they really were. The world changes faster and faster. My first album as Iosonouncane came out in 2010, and even then breaking into the independent scene was a completely different experience. At the time the path was clear: the more concerts you played, anywhere, the better. You could perform in front of three people in a bar, but you had to do it. It was about sowing, and only later would a label release your record once you had built up a minimum of recognition. Diversity was a value: it distinguished you, and that was what gave a project its strength.
Today the logic is the opposite. Streaming platforms are built on playlists, and the highest goal a single can reach is to end up in popular playlists. But to get there, you need to resemble what is already working in that playlist. The result is that tracks are produced from the start to be “indexable,” with recognizable poetic hashtags. In this context, diversity becomes a disadvantage, because it risks not finding a place.
When I started out, touring meant crossing Italy from top to bottom, playing in improbable settings and in front of people who did not know you. That condition tested you, it allowed you to search and find your own path. It is no coincidence that many very different projects emerged from that generation. My first record and Colapesce’s first record, for example, had no points of contact, yet both had a strong identity. Today, instead, many debut pop or trap albums sound almost identical in themes and musical solutions, because they all respond to a single logic: capitalizing on plays and fitting into playlists.
This difference was evident in the past as well. Just think of the psychedelia of the 1960s. At that time banality and predictability were seen as a disadvantage, and the drive was toward experimentation. The Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Velvet Underground, the Doors, Pink Floyd: the goal was to push further and further, and that was also a successful commercial strategy. Complexity was a recognized value. Today it is the opposite: complexity is an obstacle, because the algorithm rewards immediacy.
I believe this comes from a fracture between the time of art and the time of the market. Art has an expanded, almost eternal time. The market wants results by tomorrow morning. This imbalance has led to the triumph of market time. But I still believe that human beings need narratives to help them make sense of the world, and that authorial strength will eventually emerge. Of course, you have to fight to defend it, but when an authentic and recognizable project appears, it imposes itself. This happened, for example, with Daniela Pes. She had a huge impact precisely because she was different, recognizable. Yet paradoxically, the market responds by seeking not one unique artist, but a hundred simplified clones.
In short, today complexity and diversity are viewed with suspicion, but for me they remain fundamental necessities. It is harder, of course, but it is the only path that makes sense to follow.
Question: How do you see the impact of artificial intelligence on music? Do you consider it more as an opportunity to explore or a risk to be wary of?
Iosonouncane: I cannot give you a definitive answer. In general, I am pro-technology. History shows that every innovation was initially demonized. When the microphone was invented, people said that real singers were those who could be heard in the back row without amplification, yet the microphone actually expanded the expressive possibilities of singing. The same applies to the electric guitar or distortion, which reshaped the musical language.
For this reason I would avoid speaking in terms of a sharp divide. I am well aware, however, that technology is never neutral and that not all innovations carry the same weight. Autotune, for example, has already been the subject of heated debate, but between autotune and artificial intelligence there is an enormous gap. AI carries with it a much deeper impact, one capable of truly redefining the evolution of the entire musical system.
I do not yet have the tools to fully assess its consequences. I am not optimistic, but neither am I ideologically opposed. The only thing I am certain of is that art should never be judged through ideological criteria. That is a mistake that impoverishes our vision.
Question: Have you ever worked in Dolby Atmos or other immersive formats? How do you relate, more generally, to these new technologies?
Iosonouncane: No, I have not, not yet. I have never even had a true listening experience in Atmos, so I cannot say whether it could be a path for me. In general, I believe that humanity evolves, but the market runs even faster, often in ways that are autonomous from human beings themselves. I think of a monologue by Gaber from the 1970s in which he said that once the enemy was clear and visible, whereas today what we are confronted with is productivity: an autonomous, unstoppable force that creates conditions difficult to resist.
The same happens with technological evolution. It becomes unavoidable, even for those who would have the tools to oppose it. Do you want to remove your music from Spotify because you do not agree with certain political choices? Then you also have to give up Amazon, Apple Music, and all platforms. It is a symbolic gesture that, paradoxically, ends up hurting independent musicians more than big names, because for us those small earnings added together represent the concrete possibility of having artistic freedom.
The truth is that all this is complicated, and I myself often feel uncertain. The only certainty I have is that in a world dominated by the principle of utility, where even songs are described as “working” or “not working,” art remains essential precisely because it is useless. It is the most futile thing and at the same time the most necessary, because it is the only thing that gives human beings back their most human part. I believe that what is needed is not more honest or capable politicians, but rather fearless artists, capable of showing what would otherwise remain invisible.
Question: In your creative process, is spatialization a fully compositional parameter, conceived from the very beginning, or is it a phase you deal with mainly in post-production?
Iosonouncane: It is not at all something I leave to the production or final post-production stage. On the contrary, I consider it a compositional element from the very beginning. When I work on a sound, especially if it is a synthetic sound, I already conceive and build it upstream, placing it within a wide stereophonic space.
Already at the sketching stage of an arrangement I distribute the sounds in space, and I tend to do so with very wide placements. Often I position a sound completely to one side or completely to the other, with no half measures.
I believe this approach comes from the sound morphology of the place where I grew up, characterized by an incredible play of echoes, reverberations, and reflections. For me, the “natural” dimension of listening and sound distribution is already that: wide, layered, immersive.
Question: When thinking about an immersive experience, what role does the audience take on for you? Do you consider them a witness to whom a finished work is presented, or do you see them as an active component of the performative ecosystem: an explorer moving within the work, or even an element capable of influencing and shaping it in real time through their presence or reactions?
Iosonouncane: It depends, I do not have an absolute answer. In general, I like it when concerts take on a ritual form and present themselves as complete works, with a precise structure and dramaturgy. In those cases the audience is asked above all to adopt a strong contemplative stance, because what happens is the manifestation of the authorial vision of whoever is on stage. This may include a direct involvement of the spectators, but only if it has a poetic reason within the work, not as a necessary element.
That said, the audience is always present, even when it seems absent. Even if one decides to perform an album in a completely empty space, the very absence of human beings becomes a factor that affects the poetic dimension of what is happening and the subsequent interpretation of the work. It is therefore almost impossible to imagine the performance of a work that does not resonate beyond itself.
Question: How important is the visual dimension for you in a hypothetical immersive performance? Does immersiveness derive solely from sound, or is it an experience in which the visual parameter also plays a fundamental role?
Iosonouncane: For me, music is fully sufficient in itself. In fact, I believe its strength lies precisely in its intangible nature: it is the most absolute art form because it cannot be grasped, unlike cinema, which tends to contain and enclose all languages. Music, instead, hosts only itself and requires nothing else.
Today the opposite tendency prevails. We live in an era where the visual, spectacular, and aesthetic dimension often determines the recognizability of an artistic project even more than its musical value. This is evident in mainstream projects, which are often driven primarily by their visual narrative. I position myself in the opposite direction, because I consider the reception of art primarily as an intimate experience. Personally, I prefer listening to an album alone rather than going to a concert. Going to the cinema, for example, distracts me and often prevents me from truly entering the work. For this reason I think the healthiest thing today would be to relearn how to renounce sight, not out of aesthetic choice but for contemplation: not aesthetic contemplation, but “spiritual” contemplation, in the sense of the necessary distance between author and listener. It is precisely this distance that allows the work to resonate in its elusiveness.
That said, it is clear that music in concert never takes place in an anechoic chamber or in a sterile space. It always takes place in a physical space, inhabited by people who listen and move. In this sense, the visual aspect is not indispensable, but it can help and facilitate immersion. And it can do so in completely different ways, from large-scale light shows in the style of Pink Floyd to radically opposite choices. I remember, for instance, a PJ Harvey concert in which the lights were fixed, motionless, left on for the entire performance. That gesture, apparently minimal, conveyed austerity, authenticity, and a different kind of access to the audience.
Ultimately, there is no absolute value. The visual dimension, if present, is always part of a narrative, a poetic extension of the context. It can reinforce or contradict, but it remains a narrative layer added to sound.
Question: At the beginning I asked you about the references that shaped your musical training. I would now like to ask you the same question, but in relation to composers of music for image: which have been the most significant reference points for you?
Iosonouncane: I studied cinema at university without really knowing it. At the time I had seen very few films, which is precisely why every discovery was surprising. From film history to animation, from documentary to experimental cinema, everything was a revelation. That perspective influenced me greatly in music as well. Even today, when I jot down ideas for my pieces, I use technical cinematic language, as if I were describing camera movements or editing cuts.
Over time, however, I developed a conflicted relationship with cinema. I like it when it subverts its own rules, when it embraces emptiness and absence, as in the film The Zone of Interest, which refuses to show and entrusts sound with a central role. On the other hand, cinema that tries to say everything bores me. We already live immersed in an excess of images and sounds, often superfluous. That is why I look for expressions with a strong poetic uniqueness, that accept their own limits. A work, for me, is complete when it is incomplete.
I do not have a list of “canonical” composers I look up to, except for emotional reasons. Morricone is of course a mountain to be studied and contemplated, but I would not say I am tied to him as my sole model. Rather, I am attached to precise impressions. I think of Fiorenzo Carpi and his Pinocchio, which struck me deeply. In general, I love music that works both within the film and as an autonomous work, capable of living its own life outside the images.
Acknowledgements
I warmly thank Jacopo Incani (Iosonouncane) for generously sharing his time, reflections, and creative process. His openness has been essential in shaping this conversation within The Sonic Atelier - Conversations with Contemporary Composers and Producers.
By Francesca Guccione