Not Waving - 'Umwelt' [LP stream]
Walls guys Sam Willis and Alessio Natalizia have just started their own label through Kompakt titled Ecstatic, and their first release comes courtesy of Alessio’s newest solo project as Not Waving with LP ‘Umwelt’, which is available to stream below. The album took its main sources of inspiration from the mysterious military practice of Remote Viewing, a technique that attempts to use extra sensory perception to sense objects out of sight. In the spirit of the inspiration taken from RV, the track titles were lifted randomly from an Atlas and some of the results – Mansfield Underhill, Truth Or Consequences and Sicklerville Blackwood – strike on gold in the process.
These influences result in a sound on ‘Umwelt’ that’s packed with sinister and smoke-filled uncertainties, with traces of Dan Lopatin and Dominick Fernow’s Vatican Shadow project melded with warm, ambient swathes that will be more familiar to Walls followers. Read some quick questions with Alessio below the stream, and check out this mix for more of an indication of what’s to come from Ecstatic.
Hey Not Waving, how’s it going?
It’s going well. Have just finished to work on a movie soundtrack which is something I have never done before and I just realised how difficult it is! Just finished now so feeling extremely relieved.
Was there anything in particular around the theme of “Remote Viewing” that you wanted to translate into sound?
The process of “viewing” as sensing with mind and remote listening as imagining a sound for places I have never been before. My fascination with the contrast between magical and empirical.
The album was mastered by Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3, how did that come about?
We thought it would be cool to have him involved in Ecstatic so we sent him the album, he liked it and he said he was up for it. He completely gets it and is an amazing super hardworking guy and gave me some really interesting feedback and helped a lot with the tracklisting of the album.
Any more plans afoot with Ecstatic you can share with us?
We are doing a series of Walls 12” in the next months and have a couple of amazing albums from other artists planned that we can’t wait to share.
What have you got planned for the summer?
I am only planning to be on the beach as much as I can. A part from that working on music as always.
Ecstatic released ‘Umwelt’ on the 6th May.
