Caterina Barbieri - Ecstatic Computation

Three years after the original release date of Caterina Barbieri's career-defining Ecstatic Computation, the Italian artist is re-releasing the album on her newly founded light-years label. The reissue includes previously unreleased music (on CD only) as well as a beautifully remastered version of the original cover art.

Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer who explores themes related to machine intelligence and object-based sound perception through a focus on minimalism. Ecstatic Computation revolves around the creative use of complex sequential techniques and pattern-based operations to explore artifacts of human perception and memory processes by ultimately evoking a sense of ecstasy and contemplation. Computing turns from a formal, automatic writing technique into a creative, psychedelic practice for creating temporal hallucinations. A state of trance and wonder where the perception of time is distorted and challenged.

Equally nervous and ecstatic, the rapid permutation of patterns can create a state where time stands still and is in motion at the same time. Is it momentum music moving forward or backward? As long as the perception of the present is constantly strengthened and refreshed in an endless sense of loss, rediscovery and the search for one's orientation, this question lies mutely aside from the exciting and confusing moment of the thing.