Italian composer Lorenzo Bracaloni’s latest features piano, electric piano, guitars, synthesizers, voice and field recordings. Like previous recordings, Ljós is presented with extraordinary attention to detail. Recording under the name Fallen, Bracaloni makes ambient music that doesn’t rely on the genre’s many cliches. One gets the impression that the careful attention he pays to his work is a result of how highly he regards his audience.
Tell me about the new release. How has it turned out relative to what you originally envisioned?
Ljós has come to light in a very difficult period of my life, and in the middle of the first pandemic wave here in Italy. It was written, composed, recorded and mastered in my home recording studio (as usual), during the first lockdown. It was a difficult period for me in many ways: job-related personal reasons, beyond the pandemic.
While writing these pieces – with Italian track titles for the first time since 2005 – I was looking for quietness and tranquility: sounds for my body and mind first. The album title came to my mind immediately after having had the very first final master listening. It is the perfect meaning/result of what I was looking for with this album, in that period, as a human being.
How do the people around you influence what you do musically?
I have been living in a big city for two years. It’s not my cup of tea at all. I prefer the countryside: the hills, the plains, the woods, the nature I left behind. And for what? For a stressful job with stressful people who were born here. So, we’re absolutely different from each other in our approach to life.
People here influence me in a very bad way right now. I miss serenity and calmness. That’s exactly what I am looking for each time I compose brand new stuff for a possible album.
“My principal aim is to create pieces that represent what I am living, during a period of my life. Like a photo taken during a unique fragment of time.”
I think a lot of artists come at ambient music from that perspective, which can contribute to a solitary process. Is that true for you?
Well, I don’t know about others, but it works this way for me. Certainly in this period, since April/May of last year. My principal aim is to create pieces that represent what I am living, during a period of my life. Like a photo taken during a unique fragment of time, but always trying to work on sounds as freely and deeply as possible. I let the tracks take the direction they suggest.
I’ve often wondered why people don’t record sounds the way they take pictures. When I find old recordings of my kids at a young age, they’re like little treasures. In some ways, more meaningful to me than photos.
Absolutely. Each idea, each sound with relative sound editing is a picture of a moment. It doesn’t matter if it’s from the past or present. It’s a picture of what I am, of what I was and what’s on my mind. They make me cry of happiness or sadness sometimes. It’s life. The same applies to drawings, paintings, books, etc.
I’m curious about the name you’ve chosen to record under – Fallen. What’s the significance of that?
Fallen has a very intimate meaning to me. I recorded albums and toured as a folk singer until 2014 under a different moniker: The Child of A Creek. That project’s not dead at all; I am working on new stuff. My Fallen ambient/experimental project was born in 2014. I wanted to give space to my electronic background and explore/enhance the atmospheric attitude that my folk project had, especially from 2013 to 2014.
The Child of A Creek was a positive moniker. Fallen has a different meaning to me, much more intimate. It has absolutely nothing to do with things like Fallen Angel, etc. Instead, it is tied up to my health issues and to what I have had to face, and am still facing, in my life. It may sound sad, but it’s real.