HUMANBEING is out today!
“HUMANBEING is a very personal project. Paradoxically, it’s so personal that I needed to assume it as a new identity, a virgin one separate from the name I’ve made for myself.”
Rossano Baldini
Liver (Official video Filmshoot short cuts)
Director : Federico Brugia
Under his own name, Rossano Baldini has enjoyed a career as a renowned composer for film and television; a jazz pianist and keyboardist who has recorded with the likes of Gianluca Petrella, Michele Rabbia and Pierpaolo Ranieri; and a performer with the revered, Oscar-winning composer Nicola Piovani as well as the most esteemed orchestras in his native Italy. His latest project represents a rebirth of sorts, necessitating a new name: HUMANBEING.
Establishing a wholly new persona as an electronic composer / performer, HUMANBEING, allowed the artist to reconnect with his own, long-dormant vision while striking out in stunning new directions.
His eponymous album is a unique hybrid of the organic and the technological, delving deep into the his essential humanity by way of evocative synthetic soundscapes.
It’s a timely reinvention, occurring at a moment when we’ve all been starkly reminded of our biological natures at the same time as we’re more interconnected than ever in the virtual realm.
Born in Rome, Baldini began studying piano at the age of eight, eventually leading him to the St. Cecilia Conservatory of Music and later to a brief tenure in Los Angeles, along the way studying with the likes of John Taylor, Kenny Werner, Stefano Battaglia, Antonio Valente, Franco Medori and Franco D’Andrea.
As a teenager, though, he was obsessed with The Beatles’ White Album, a rich source of inspiration that can point impressionable young listeners in myriad directions, from exquisite pop to experimental sound collage, blistering electric rock to folk-country storytelling. For Baldini, it awoke a desire to realize a personal vision through music – a dream that was waylaid for a number of years as he applied his estimable talents to composing for filmmakers’ visions, accompanying other artists or improvising on other musicians’ work.
The first half of HUMANBEING’s eponymous album, one of two suite-like trios of songs, was written in off hours over the next year and half, after the artist’s newborn daughter had gone to sleep.
But when the pandemic hit in early 2020, with Italy being one of the first western countries to report cases of the coronavirus, he suddenly found himself with no touring or composing obligations.
As with so many musicians around the world, time, formerly such a luxury, was suddenly available in abundance. He thus returned to his deeply personal project, and the album’s second half came into existence in a matter of mere months.
In every sense, the music of HUMANBEING is a hybrid – of electronic and acoustic, organic and mechanical, traditional and innovative. It even bridges media, as the package features the mesmerizing images of Paris-based photographer Manuele Geromini, while several filmmakers, including the in-demand director Federico Brugia, have agreed to provide videos for the songs.
The hybridisation even extends to the instrumentation and sound of the album, which fuses piano, cello and other acoustic instruments into a vivid electronic soundscape where the boundaries between the different elements become blurred.
Most uniquely, the artist plays the Bercandeon – an accordion-like instrument with two diatonic keyboards, invented by the Swiss polymath Fiorenzo Bernasconi.
Read the Interview w. HUMANBEING on 15Questions.net
Release Date: May 28th, 2021
Rossano Baldini : piano, electronics, Rhodes, synthesizers, electric guitar, Bercandeon
Carmine Iuvone : cello (on ‘Heart’)
1. Flesh
2. Blood
3. Skin
4. Lungs
5. Liver
6. Heart
All Music composed by Rossano Baldini
Published by RareNoisePublishing (PRS)
All Music Produced, Recorded & Mixed by Rossano Baldini @ Nana Studio, Rome, Italy
Mastered by Fabrizio De Carolis @ VDSS Recording Studio, Frosinone, Italy
Photography & image treatment by Manuele Geromini
Design by Ian Anderson for The Designers’ Republic
Executive Producer for RareNoiseRecords : Giacomo Bruzzo
© + ℗ RareNoiseRecords 2021
