Caterina Barbieri

The musical vortexes of Caterina Barbieri rewire time and space. Listening to the Italian composer and modular synth virtuoso has felt like traveling at light speed and slow motion all at once since 2017’s breakthrough double album “Patterns of Consciousness.” 2019’s “Ecstatic Computation” pushed even further with the lead single “Fantas,” where a haunting melody hurtling towards its supernova climax felt like witnessing the life and death of a burning star. Far beyond any new age trope or modern synth trend, her music stands alone in its ecstatic intensity and cataclysmic emotional impact.

For an artist who is best known for peering into the far future on her critically lauded album “Ecstatic Computation,” Caterina Barbieri, however, has long maintained a dynamic relationship with history. Her music is rooted in the relationship between technology and its impact on the creative process, and her use of modular synthesizers doesn't simply aestheticize the machinery; it examines its consequences and the harmony between complex contemporary mathematical processes and classical art. Pitchfork has described her music as “a mind-altering journey” and “a dream machine for the ears.”

On her 2014 debut release “Vertical,” she used the Buchla system alongside her own voice to marry two vastly different sonic eras, and by 2022's “Spirit Exit,” released on her own ‘light-years’ imprint, Barbieri had broadened that concept. Taking inspiration from mysticism, poetry, and post-humanist philosophy, the composer dissolved atemporal choral echoes and pop vapors into electronically assisted configurations of crystalline beauty. The record was described by NPR as “deeply psychedelic and, by extension, subversive; like nature, its effects can't quite be narrowed down or predicted.”

Since her early releases on Important Records, Caterina Barbieri has been growing a dedicated popular and critical following, culminating in her release on Editions Mego, “Ecstatic Computation,” being named Bleep’s Album of the Year and appearing on most of the ‘best of’ lists for 2019, followed by 2022’s “Spirit Exit” on her new label, ‘light-years’.

There's no doubt that this musical evolution was assisted by her energetic schedule of live performances and extracurricular work. In just a few short years, Barbieri has played a slew of the world's most important music festivals, from Unsound and Atonal to Primavera Sound and Sonar, and has presented well-received shows at London's Barbican Centre, Berlin’s Volksbühne, and the Philharmonie de Paris, among many other venues. She composed a score for 2020's Cannes-selected coming-of-age thriller “John and the Hole” by Spanish filmmaker Pascual Sisto.

This year Barbieri will step back into the past on “Myuthafoo,” an album that was penned at the same time as “Ecstatic Computation” and uses a similar creative language to toy with our perceptions of time, space, memory, and emotion. Never immobile, she twists high and low cultural symbols into delicate, dizzying patterns that help us understand the mutable bond between the cybernetic world and our fleshy, human domain.

Both cosmic and kosmische, this music gazes at the stars from an atemporal vantage point, relying on synapse-popping psychedelic logic as well as established physics.