SIP - SoundLAB Interview Project

Elia, Dario

Dario, Elia
Italian soundartist

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biography
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Interview:10 questions 



1. When did you start making music, what is/was your motivation to do it?

I started in the early 90s. Soon I felt how rewarding the attempt to develope an own music language was. Some kind of work in progress you never complete, an expression of devotion that becomes a source of new motivation and harmony.


2. Tell me something about your living environment and the musical education.
My living environment changed many times because I was living abroad, travelling a lot and having many international collaborations. Finally the only recurrent living environment was the island of Sardinia in Italy, where I spend most of the time.
I am mainly a self-taught musician.


3.Is making music your profession? What is the context in which you practice music nowadays?
Yes, it is. But in order to be as independent as possible as musician I had many different side professions. I deal also with audio mastering. 


4. How do you compose or create music or sound? Have you certain principles, use certain styles etc?
I use several different approaches to composition and improvisation, but certainly many of my works have their roots in improv and modal music.


5. Tell me something about the instruments, technical equipment or tools you use?
The core of my live electronics performances is based on Ableton Live. As guitar player I use a wide amount of different tools. I personally designed some of these tools. 


6. What are the chances of New Media for the music production in general 
and you personally?
The limits are still beyond imagination, but for sure we are living a revolution and therefore many things are easier now. For instance, one track in my album “Vie Impervie” was easily realized as an online collaborative work involving musicians from Japan, Thailand, Korea, Turkey, Argentina and Italy. Most of them never met personally. 


7. How about producing and financing your musical productions?
I am part of a music production house called VesnaHaus. VesnaHaus deals with many different genres of experimental music and multimedia arts. VesnaHaus was co-financing most of my projects. 


8. Do you work individually as a musician/soundartist or in a group or collaborative? 
If you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you prefer?
I work quite often in all of these situations. All approaches have their magic. I love the feeling of interplay you can only have improvising with a band. And I also love the meditative side of working alone on an individual project or in an online collaboration where you rarely meet the musicians you are working with. 


9. Is there any group, composer, style or movement which has a lasting influence on making music?
So many. As contemporary composers I would say Stravinsky, Bartòk, Ives and Reich. Between jazz musicians: John Taylor, Peter Erskine, Gary Willis, Scott Henderson. And also many creative singers like Bjork, Mike Patton, Nick Cave.


10. What are your future plans or dreams as a soundartist or musician?
I am working on a concept album thought as a serie of micro-compositions. A serie appearing like consecutive chambers, with every chamber dealing in a different way with the idea of transmission of knowledge between human beings.

out of competition: 


Can works of yours experienced online besides on SoundLAB? Where?
List some links & resources
http://www.reverbnation.com/darioelia
http://www.facebook.com/darioeliamusic