A fascinating discussion with the acclaimed German multi-instrumentalist about wrangling technology through constraints, how process differs from experimentation, and his time-jumping collaboration with Stefano Castagna, Sea of Hopeless Angels.

Today, the Spotlight shines On returning guest, the innovative musician and composer Markus Reuter.

Markus originally joined us for Episode 130 back in November 2022. He joins us now to discuss his project Sea of Hopeless Angels (Unsung Records), which began as several unedited studio solo improvisations by Markus on his electric touch guitar. Those recordings were turned over to mixer Stefano Castagna, whose sonic wizardry included not only mixing but fully collaborating with the recordings, adding new sounds and instruments as inspiration struck, including his own voice, various samples, bass, synthesizers, and other electronics.

There are other inspirations at work in this project, but we will leave those to be revealed in the course of our discussion. It is important to mention the final collaborator for Sea of Hopeless Angels, though, and that is Aldo Grazzi, an Italian painter and video artist, who, back in the early 1980s, made visual experimentations interfacing a video camera with a cathode ray TV screen. The resulting video retains every imperfection of what was then state-of-the-art technology. All of the pieces on Sea of Hopeless Angels feature video accompaniment drawn from these videos, which are in the Grazzi archives, with two of them also accompanied by studio footage of Markus’ original performances.

(all musical excerpts heard in the interview are taken from Markus Reuter and Stefano Castagna's album Sea of Hopeless Angels)

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Dig Deeper

• Visit Markus Reuter at markusreuter.com
• Download Markus Reuter & Stefano Castagna's Sea of Hopeless Angels on Qobuz or Bandcamp, and listen on your streaming platform of choice.
• Follow Markus Reuter on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube
• Aldo Grazzi
• Sea of Hopeless Angels visuals + videos
• The making of Sea of Hopeless Angels
• Kid Arrow

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