Where Nothingness is Bliss [2023]
Ortiga’s latest release will spawn you in an imaginative adventure which blurs the lines between music production, visual arts, and world building, following a similar approach to his previous album “New Economy”.
Alongside the music, SY/N provides the complementary book “631x”, which presents the story of a fictional world, permeated by a sense of social criticism and an underlying theme of internal struggle.
Molded through a cyclical process of writing, recording, reworking, and transcribing, this organic sonic tapestry masterfully weaves together a dense mesh of field recordings and distorted sound design, showcasing an all new interplay between digital wizardry and real life chordophones, ranging from lishy strings to obscure folkinstruments.
In this release the melodies play a more prominent role than ever, steadily flooding the listener’s heart with touching progression and otherworldly choirs, which at times accumulate into gargantuan walls of raw emotional release.
The result is a multi-layered work that explores the conflicting yet entwined strands of daily life and the quest for personal growth, evolution, and collective awareness.
Ortiga’s commitment to his craft is evident throughout “Where Nothingness is Bliss,” with each track offering a unique musical and conceptual journey. From start to finish, the album invites you to join in on a character building experience, solidifying SY/N role as fine narrator the of alternative presents.
BEGINNINGS [2018-2021 Remastered Archive]
“BEGINNINGS” is a remastered archive of the first three Alex Ortiga’s works (Blinded, 2018; New Economy, 2020; Always Moving Under the Surface, 2021).
The 2018-2021 archive presents the tracks with a new sound, characterized by an analog tube mastering by Giacomo Bisaro (No-oN).
The tracks are ordered in a non-chronological order to create a new narrative.
This 2 hours archive merges the three different concepts of the three records to cover a full range of thoughts about human relationships: the relationship between human and data in “Blinded”, the relationship between human and society in “New Economy”, the relationship between human and the self in “Always Moving Under the Surface”.
Discography
Always Moving Under the Surface [2021]
Exactly one year after “New Economy”, SY/IN returns with an introspective work subdivided into four major movements: four slivers collected by digging within itself and transposed into music without a claim to continuity. A farewell, a self-recognition, a meditation, an healing: nevertheless parts of a single path. An abyss of light and darkness obtained through the mixture of traditional elements coming from both western and eastern classical music. Samples and drones were reworked and merged through granular and spectral synthesis to create ominous and distant soundscapes, capable of communicate the intimacy of the individual at the same time.
New Economy [2020]
“New Economy” is a 42-minutes music piece recorded during 2019. It comes alongside with a book realized by Alex Ortiga and 1558M language processing model.
“Doomsday guys waving their hands, bring back Heaven,
Volleyball Cheerleaders with fake breasts and double D’s,
Platinum hand painted lips flitting from place to place.
Someone screams,
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Something tells them to hurry up,
Everything is in slow motion.
Machine man goes to unlock the gate,
Heart painted on… The Bank accessory is black as night. Custom battle star helmet. Gun that shoots fast.
Golden chance Disintegration Strike
Manually punched in the face. There is NO love lost here. “
Blinded [2018]
With Blinded, the relationship between human and digital is analysed through a narrative perspective, which also considers the inavitable hybridization of man and how both the collective and individual consciousness may increasingly change.
However, the main aim is not to lead the listener to think of themes such as the evolution of humanity in technical and critical terms. It is, on the contrary, to create and put the listener in an audiovisual world distant in time, where everything already took place and there is no more the conception of individuality, but rather an unique entity of data that merely exist.
Other music records:
As The Sun Through Black Clouds [2022]
Alex Ortiga – Delusions, HATE Lab, 2022 – 30 minutes
“As The Sun Through Black Clouds” was produced and recorded between May and June 2021 like an emotional rush that had to find immediate expression to be both pure and cathartic while also having the chance to exist and remain expressed as something timeless and universal.
This record represents that hum of bitter and melancholic energy that arises from the bottom of delusions. It’s the ephemeral yet overwhelming wonder of the cold wind after a summer storm, of the nostalgic astonishment of the black clouds illuminated by the sun, of the desire to be washed away and sometimes disappear completely.
- Submissive Desire
- Still My Fear
- Delusions
- Tiny Black Eyes
HATE Lab STREAM / SPOTIFY / DOWNLOAD
O/M/ [Collaboration with Aeon Gate, 2021]
Alex Ortiga, Alberto Bertelli, Giulio Spampinato, Prehistoric Silence, 2021 – 18 minutes
Be polymorphic.
- Cohortalis
- Redux
- Anxurus
- Caelestis
- Fulgur
- Obsequens
- Arcanus
Retracer / Recarter [2017]
Alex Ortiga & Martina Camani, StAY Records, 2017 – 17 minutes
“Retracer / Recarter” is a performative art project born from an idea of Alex Ortiga and created in collaboration with the performer and artist Martina Camani. The aim of this performance was to highlight the expressiveness of the body. To obtain this result a dance choreography was first composed by Martina Camani, without any musical base, and all the noises generated by the movements of the body were recorded. From these samples the sound component was then created by Alex Ortiga. The work sees its fulfillment in the simultaneous execution of performative choreography and sound interpretation, in this way the body in motion is no longer subordinate to musical expressiveness but itself becomes the compositional medium of what the spectator perceives not only from the visual but also auditory point of view.
The name of the project highlights its intention, focusing attention on the procedural part: “retracer”, that is “to trace” in French and then its palindrome, “recarter”, recompose, re-propose (on paper). The body in motion that expresses its drama as a body, the trace that this expression leaves, at the sound level, the deconstruction and recomposition of this trace into something new, but without hiding its origin.
- Retracer: As Ashes
- Retracer: Walking Over Traces
- Recarter: Until The Lights Out
Pass Away [2016]
Alex Ortiga, StAY Records, Ghost City Collective, Prehistoric Silence, 2016 – 47 minutes
The compositional process of Pass Away started in March 2016, during a period in time where more and more things seemed to be missing. People, relationships, situations. A series of elements that once passed or, actually, changed, don’t come back. In the universe we live in you cannot escape how some things mutate irreversibly, therefore nothing can be undone. What remains is the memories, and the pain that comes inevitably when trying to reminisce them. Memories are bound to accumulate and to increase over the life span, being necessary for the individual growth process and for existence as well.
Pass Away combines together all the pieces of the jigsaw, that has now are something different: in this case sounds.
The songs included are in fact obtained, almost totally, assembling samples: breath, steps, rain, moving objects, voices etc.. some left just as they were, others manipulated, transposed, played, distorted, cut and pasted again.
- My Ghost is Sand I
- Car Crash Dreams
- Hollow Flax
- Existence is Perpetual Motion
- Do Not Forget the Things Your Eyes Have Seen
- Love Not (with XIX)
- Holy Tooth: Their Deeds Will Follow
- Quit Anxiety (with No-oN)
- My Ghost is Sand II (with Ankubu)
Soundtracks
Sonzai.zone [Motion Picture Soundtrack, 2019], Various artists – OFFICIAL WEBSITE
Die Hard (Motion Picture Soundtrack) [2018 – Rest Now!], Various artists – STREAM / DOWNLOAD