Electroacoustic composer and Sound Designer Paride Rapide is attracted to the total absence of limits of electronic music. We caught up with him to find out how his musical journey evolved and how he abandons himself to “flows” of imagination.

ArtsCulture: What’s your musical background and what inspires you?

Paride Rapide: I honestly don’t know where to start. In my life I went through a series of periods (like all human beings) where I received stylistic/aesthetic influences. I started studying electric guitar around 11-12 years. I listened to a lot of popular music (rock, rap, hiphop, soul, jazz) during the early years of adolescence, to then get closer to classical music and start studying classical guitar later.

Paradoxically, just when I started to get closer to classical music, I also started to approach electronic music. The thing that fascinated me most about it was the total absence of limits, electronic music is truly boundless in its possibilities! So I decided to go deeper, so I enrolled in the music conservatory and studied Electroacoustic Music. During that training course, I had the opportunity to learn and get to know all the musical avantgardes (GRMC, Studio for Electronic Music of WDR, Milan’s Musical Phonology Studio etc.), the acoustics of sound and all its characteristics, the synthesis and resynthesis of sound and much more. The discovery of all this information has significantly influenced and inspired my aesthetic musical conception, also allowing me to educate my hearing and my way of listening.

ArtsCulture: What makes you excited about your music and emotions do you try to create?

Paride Rapide: Without a doubt, what excites me most are the combinations of acoustic instruments, concrete sounds and elaboration/resynthesis processes, often I distort the tones so much that they make the original sounds almost unrecognizable. In addition to this, I often also abandon myself to “flows” of imagination that lead me to digress on the keyboard. Almost dreamlike states of total synchrony with sound and vibrations.

ArtsCulture: What is the electronic music scene like in Sicily?

Paride Rapide: I am a little out of the dynamics of the local scene, I admit that I am a little detached from everything in general, presumably because when I express myself I do not expect people to understand what I have to “say”. This way of being, however extreme it may seem, makes me feel good, without having to compromise. Certainly there are some Sicilian musicians that I know and appreciate very much, “electronic” and not.

ArtsCulture: What is the Feelingood Lab and how important is collaboration?

Paride Rapide: Feelingood Lab was a creative collective made up of artists operating in the music, publishing, film, theater and photography sectors. It was born in 2016 with the aim of creating a productive, efficient and free reality in its fullest expression through the union of multiple artistic personalities. The goal is to produce, promote and publish “good music” without gender foreclosure but with meticulous attention to quality, but it is also to support emerging talents and develop productions not only related to the musical environment, but also to those of the show. Unfortunately, however, due to some events, the collective has recently dissolved (while maintaining the friendly relationship of all the representatives)

ArtsCulture: What role does the musician have in society?

Paride Rapide: Music, like art in general, besides having a series of rational and mathematical aspects, also has many abstract and spiritual aspects. Despite the fact that in recent years, due to the advent of extreme consumerism, even in some art art has “sold” considerably lowering the quality of what is on the surface (aesthetics without ethics is cosmetic), it in its in my opinion, the purest and most authentic form has the task of caring for the soul of each individual.

ArtsCulture: Your album Eternity came out in 2015, can we expect another one, and where can we hear more of your work?

Paride Rapide: Eternity was my first album and in a few days (exactly June 10), it will celebrate its fifth anniversary. Certainly many things have changed, I have acquired many other skills and knowledge during this time period. Currently I am dedicating myself to continue my studies and works, but I don’t know when I will finish. I hope to be able to release something new, more complex and empathetic soon. I enjoy publishing short fragments of my works on Instagram and Facebook, but I repeat that I hope to publish something more complete and enjoyable as soon as possible.

ArtsCulture: Looking forward to it! Thanks for your time!

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