Theory Therapy 90: Loris S. Sarid
Music for quiet reflection
Theory Therapy mix number 90 comes from Loris S. Sarid, who’s originally from Rome and is currently based in Glasgow. Working in a space where the synthetic and the human gently blur, his music moves with a kind of soft logic – delicate, detailed and quietly disorienting.
Following last year’s Ambient $ – an amazing piece of playful, paradox-filled world-building – Loris has recently put out new material on 12th Isle in collaboration with Innis Chonnel, Looking For Mount Sylvan. Like those recent releases, his mix unfolds with a sense of gentle ambiguity – drifting through soft electronics, treated textures and fleeting melodic fragments.
Hey Loris. How are you today?
Very well, thanks. I’ve had my first caffeinated coffee after weeks of decaf: I’m buzzing.
What was the last song you listened to?
Pete Brandt’s Method - ‘What You Are’. (or feel somewhat nostalgic). It’s hard to not move along to it.
Where’s your favourite place to listen to music?
At my desk, like a real estate agent. Also on the upper deck of the 4A Bus, from Battlefield road to Glasgow Central Station.
What’s the best music discovery you’ve made recently?
Network Music Glasgow. It’s a computer supergroup - four members shredding max MSP patches live with absolute grace. Saw them live recently and was incredibly fresh and inspiring.
What does your current setup look like, and how much does your environment shape what you make?
I believe we are always in conversation with an environment, either physical or imaginary. Ideas and inhabitants inside these environments are the agents that we respond to or relate with. So an environment is by all means a collaborator.
My physical environment is currently Glasgow, which is now cloudy with a faint hint of spring.
My imaginary environment is populated by guitar players and smells like bronze and wood. I’m working on a 6 string bass live set, so my set-up is a laptop (which I’m using to process sound and launch some recordings), a midi controller that I mapped to some parameters in Ableton Live and a Squier Bass VI.
Tell us a bit about Ambient $, – what does this album mean to you personally?
It’s a pretty important album for me. More than a specific outcome, I was trying to revisit my approach to making music in a way that felt new and exciting. I tend to think a bit too much, so I often consider continuity in my work and how an album relates to the previous or the next. Ambient $ was an exercise in letting go of these self-imposed limitations: style, genre, aesthetics, consistency.
How do you usually approach sampling when starting a track?
For the most part I make little tunes or riffs and then bounce them and treat them like sample libraries. In Ambient $, where I really wanted that “sample” aesthetic, I ended up using this technique quite a bit. There’s also a few samples from YouTube tutorials or speech, which I then tuned in Melodyne or manually in Ableton.
What's inspiring you most right now?
I’m working on some guitar/bass music, so that’s so inspiring at the moment. I’ve used guitar quite a bit through the years but never as a central instrument for an album or live set. Trying to give it more of a prominent role in the next stuff.
Talk us through your Theory Therapy mix – where it came together and what kind of space you were in mentally or musically.
This mix sort of highlights many things that are inspiring me right now. Inspiration is not very linear and doesn’t follow a bpm, so I tried to reflect that in the mix. I reckon it turned out to be a pretty accurate mood board of where I’m at, which in hindsight seems to be all over the place: from John Frusciante to Sugai Ken. Lol. Nevertheless, I think it has its own logic!
Where would you recommend listening to it?
Somewhere soft or somewhere wet. Like a sofa or a shower/bath.
Tell us something exciting that’s coming up for you soon – in music or in life generally.
A new album just released on 12th Isle few days ago. It’s a collaboration work with my friend Innis Chonnel, which I’m really excited for. I’m also playing keys in a band called PENKNIFE with Isa Gordon and Paul Thomson and having a great time.
Medium term future probably includes playing more live gigs, I’ve never gigged much but trying to change that, definitely enjoying performing live more than before. I’m also getting married next month, so I feel loved and blessed.
Tracklist:
Iona Ferguson - Sternit
Martina Berther, Philipp Schotter - Eternal Youth
Liam Overton - Side B
Sunny Dunes - Patience (waiting for the summer)
Kaho Matsui - Things,signs
Food people - Light Hazzles
Oliver Coates - way of the open palm
Arto Lindsay - Complicity
Echo Party - If I
John Frusciante - Wind Up Space
Sugai Ken - Environmental Sound at Benchmark Stone
Travesia - Para
Freeway Fusion - Woman in the White Coat
Tom Mudd - Romantic Chord, The Brook and The Pool
Mogwai - Tuner
Andrew Pekler - Rain nr. 33