Francesco Perissi XO

Francesco Perissi XO: the new electronic avant-pop concept album ROSSANA will be released on September 18, 2020

Rossana is the name of a loved one who has passed away. ROSSANA is the new electro avant-pop concept album by Francesco Perissi XO – producer, sound designer and multi-instrumentalist from Florence – out on September 18, 2020.

“ROSSANA is the pretext to connect mind and soul, complex and more instinctive musical elaborations, reaching a moment in which the pain of absence becomes liberation” (Francesco Perissi XO).

ROSSANA contains a symbolic imagery of the emotional sphere of affectivity, often marked by destructive and constructive impulses. Mourning can be defined as the psychological state following the loss of someone or something which has been a significant and integral part of existence. “The loss can be referred to an external object, such as the death of a person, a geographical separation, the abandonment of a place, or to an internal one, such as the closing of a perspective, the lossof one’s social image, a personal failure and similar” (Umberto Galimberti, Psychology). The description of these processes occurs through five progressive phases, borrowed from Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004), describing the overcoming of a traumatic event: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. In ROSSANA each phase is represented in its sensations by two tracks, for a total of ten tracks, with the idea of ​​a “cathartic” dimension of music that, in this case, moves between avant-garde of feelings, dark pop song-form, IDM and minimalism.

Sound therapy proceeds with crushed and granulated iterative textures of electric guitar, electronic rhythms and filters, melodies guaranteed by the use of the voice – when introspective, when more aggressive – and deeply essential lyrics. The result is a whole of suspended atmospheres, where the constant search for tension leads to dreamlike openings. It is a music obtained by the fusion of power and elegance. The influence of key-names such as Autechre, Nine Inch Nails, Moderat, Bernard Parmegiani and Andy Stott is kept at a respectful distance. ROSSANA was played, produced and recorded by Francesco Perissi.

ROSSANA is the third record by Francesco Perissi XO. The acronym XO represents his electronic solo project and a hypothetical alchemical formula for the soul of each individual. The first album Near Death Experience, self-produced in 2014, referred to the near-death experiences achieved through psychoactive substances. The following EP NDEr – Near Death Experience Reflections, released by Blame Records in 2019, recovered the same tracks of Near Death Experience with a more reflective approach, adding for the first time words and singing lines.

ROSSANA condenses also further activities undertaken over the years by Francesco Perissi: from the studies at conservatories between Italy and Sweden to the role as rock and post-metal guitarist, the unconventional experimentation on the expressive and technological possibilities of the electric guitar pursued with the parallel project X6 (where the instrument is spatialized in six speakers thanks to the hexaphonic pickup), the exploration of the digital audio world, the collaboration with the historic Florentine research center Tempo Reale, the mix of contemporary academic music and modern popular music. Perissi’s compositions were performed by ensembles and artists from New York, at KMH in Stockholm, at the Contemporary Arts Center Luigi Pecci in Prato.

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