Branciforte & Barbieri: Ghosts in the Machines

Here we have a couple very different varieties of electronics: two deep dives into sound-sculpting that remain determinedly human, however technological or spooky things get.

Joseph Branciforte & Jozef Dumoulin
ITERAE
Greyfade
2026

When describing the thinking behind ambient music, Brian Eno famously said that it should be "as ignorable as it is interesting." If anything, the continual challenge is to do the opposite: practically anyone can create something easy to ignore, but once you start getting abstract and formless, it takes continual focus to keep engaging the mind and the senses. Existing in some imaginary alien naturescape, ITERAE balances the two with a vivid soundscape as slow and striking as a glacier.

Joseph Branciforte and Josef Dumoulin make the raw material with the rich tone of a Fender Rhodes, then begin putting the sounds through live processing as soon as they are made. The analogue warmth of the instrument is stretched and slowed until it feels like a kind of crystalline cocoon. The drones shift gradually like swirling colors half-seen through the walls of an igloo. The soundstage is full of clicks and taps and glitches galore, evoking a series of outlandish images: maybe alien critters skittering through the walls, maybe the faint clanking of far-off machinery, perhaps electric wires crackling with sparks. In headphones, the enveloping ambience fills the ears and practically zaps straight to the brain.

Depending on how you listen, the work can exist as one immersive sonic world or four. This release ingeniously splits the nameless tracks among a quartet of mini-CDs to be spun in any order, in addition to a regular single disc spanning the whole 70 minutes. Whatever the sequence, each piece makes its own small setting for contemplation or (just occasionally) tickling your scary bone. Ignore it as background if you like, but there is no shortage of fascination to come from paying close attention either. The landscape exists out there at whatever level anyone wishes to explore.

Richard Barbieri
Hauntings
Kscope
2026

Where most traditional ghosts might like to make spooky bumps in the night, there are apparently others who think that the random creaks and groans are so last century, and find it more amusing to make sounds with circuits and wires instead. Or so one would think from following the arc of Richard Barbieri, who has made his niche as a keyboard player who rarely sounds like a keyboard player. Synths are the core component of his mad-scientist's sonic lab, but he is less interested in pressing keys than messing with the technology behind them. The pieces are fantasies of both the past and future, meshing Victorian-era ghost stories alongside sci-fi dystopia. These are vast-sounding collages are made with small-scale means and few ingredients, always subtly stretched into sounds you would never hear from anyone else.

While Barbieri's solo recordings always tend to have some eerie shadings here and there, they have rarely been quite as shadowy as on Hauntings. The overall framework is consistent with his catalogue, a bewitching cross of textured ambient clouds with often-catchy beats and bleeps—yet this one more frequently leans toward the sparse with some extra willingness to let the chill seep in. Light drones are stretched into unsettling ambient clouds, or perhaps woven with processed trumpet lines so that it becomes unclear which is which. Voice samples pop in like faint snippets of radio waves. When the keyboard drones come to the fore, they do not settle into mere static tones, but waver and bend in a way that only feels organic (if still not always natural).

And still, Barbieri's specialty (one of his specialties) is a knack for keeping things rooted despite drifting into the otherworldly. A little low-end bass line will often provide a little hook to snag the ear. Weird sounds drift out of phase like unintelligible murmurings from beyond the veil, but usually collide with an electronic rhythm to ground the senses here and now. Barbieri's hauntings can feel spooky but not outright forbidding; the chills are enough to let the goosebumps linger without actually giving nightmares after the lights come up.

Tracks and Personnel

ITERAE

Tracks: 04:38; 09:07; 11:33; 07:20; 09:20; 09:31; 09:06; 07:31.

Personnel: Joseph Branciforte: Fender Rhodes, electronics, live editing; Jozef Dumoulin: Fender Rhodes, electronics.

Hauntings

Tracks: Snakes & Ladders; Anemoia; Victorian Wraith; 1890; Artificial Obsession; Paris Sketch; Perfect Toys; Traveler; Reveille; Last Post; A New Simulation.

Personnel: Richard Barbieri: keyboards; Morgan Ågren: drums & percussion; Percy Jones: bass; Luca Calabrese: trumpet.

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