Track By Track: Repetto – Roboto

When an artist chooses to pursue a different path or angle there is a certain risk associated. To veer from due course carries the potential for embarassment or failure… However, for those who succeed in channeling their creativity into pastures new a world of opportunity and self discovery awaits. 

Angelo Repetto is perhaps best known for his work as part of the musical duo Wolfman. His own musical history is rooted in previous experience and inherited knowledge, his father the co founder and drummer of dark wave pioneers Grauzone. As such there has always been an invested interest in electronic music, however which direction was left entirely open. 

Angelo's debut album comes in the form of "Roboto" – an LP which demonstrated his passion for techno music and the experimental fringes of electronic music. We invited him to guide us through the album below…

Interlude

I spent 6 months in Berlin last year and took everything with me that i needed to produce music. Except for my Roland Jupiter 6. It's too big and really heavy to carry around and when i returned to Zurich, I had to spend a lot of time with my all-time favourite synthesizer. During one of these reunion-sessions with my baby, I recorded a lot of these tiny pieces. I really missed my Jupie. My dad (Marco Repetto, Grauzone/Bigeneric/Planet Love) bought it in 1983, the year of my birth, and gave it to me when I turned 30. There’s no better present!! 

The Light Ceremony

Music has always been the most important thing in my life. And it’s the one thing I can always do whether I’m happy or sad. It’s something I just do and most of the time I cannot remember in which state I was or how I produced a track. It’s like in that tv series „Heroes“, the guy who’s on heroin and paints scenes from the future. When he’s on it, his eyes turn all white and he can’t remember a thing when he’s back to normal. That’s how I feel when I’ve finished a track. Except that I don’t do heroin (laughs).

Encircled

While I was living in Berlin I was going out a lot and my favourite club was „Sameheads“ in Neukölln. The cosmic tunes down there really turned me on and I guess this track is somehow an homage to those days in Berlin. Speaking of which: I really am living in the wrong era. It’s the only thing i’m really jealous of when I meet people who were in their twenties in the early 80ies and were making music in those days! So many possibilities! So much music to discover and you could accidentally be part of an avant-garde movement and invent grundge, techno, wave,…

Powershift

This acid-soaked track is called power shift because somehow I hear hope in this mellow synth that fades in at some point. It represents the stupid struggle between knowledge and lust for power. I often generate the titles afterwards and, to be honest, I hate it. I would rather call them track A, B, C. But, on the other hand, it’s really interesting to listen to my finished tracks, smoke a little and just write down what comes to my mind, and eventually see something new, something i didn’t think of while I was producing them.

From High to Low

Another rather dadaistic experiment. When i compiled ROBOTO, i had about six dadaistic sketches  that I wanted to place between the tracks, but then decided to keep only the funniest ones. And I think it’s a good introduction for the next track. It’s also the first track of the B-side. Just like the interlude. These intros announce the mood of what’s coming.

Do The Roboto

Ok, i’m in love with late eighties/early nineties grooves. I guess this one was inspired by this Stereo Mc’s type of music which I really love. And these chords are just so fucking cool. During the recording process I was working a lot with drum machines but in the end I had to replace all the synth snares and play an acoustic one. It’s this live-character that I really love and, of course, an acoustic snare played by a sloppy drummer like me sounds much more unique than a drum machine sound I guess. More energetic, dynamic and not perfect. Or just organic.

Tomorrow Never Knows

I’m a big Beatles fan and I especially like their weird, psychedelic stuff. Their music was a very important influence in my younger years when I started playing guitar. „Tomorrow Never Knows“ is still one of my favourite tracks and the decision to produce this cover version was more of an accident. Like a lot of things on this album. During my stay in Berlin I hung out a lot with Nicolas Stocker, in my opinion one of the best drummers in Switzerland. One day we had this session in his studio in which he just played drums with a click and i started to build the music around his drums. 

I was experimenting with guitars and suddenly I realised that the atmosphere of this track I was working on reminded me a lot of „Tomorrow Never Knows“. Don’t ask me why. But I decided to go on and make a cover version of the track. I’m generally not a fan of covers and I could have named the track differently and no one would have noticed, but i guess I’m too honest. I paid a hundred bucks for this version. Now it’s official!

Emerge

This track is also an outcome of the session with Nicolas Stocker. I really like the vibe of this one, just like „The Light Ceremony”, it’s just burbling and evolving into nowhere. I really like these krauty vibes! I think my next release will be just like that. In this period I discovered Gigi Masin, Tempelhof etc.; really inspiring music that fills the emptiness of a room, just below the radar, but very present.

Visit the Angelo Repetto site HERE.