1 by Off World

“One of the most singular producers in contemporary music.” – Boomkat

Sandro Perri is one of Constellation’s most long-standing and artistically diverse music-makers. This celebrated Toronto-based composer, producer and songwriter first released albums of hissing, pulsing, longform instrumental work under the Polmo Polpo moniker in the early 2000s, before moving into tropicalia-, jazz- and prog-influenced vocal music under his own name (with forays into dub and afro-beat inflected experimentation via Glissandro 70).

Over the past couple of years, Perri has been letting us in on a fascinating treasure chest of strange and enchanting collaborative sound recordings – rich in deconstructed melody, interplay between acoustic and electronic instrumentation, and pointillist and aleatory composition techniques. A bounty of private and unreleased tracks has been accumulating for some time and we’re excited to reveal that many of these will now see the light of day, with three volumes of this material to be released over the next few seasons, rounded up under the project name Off World.

Chiefly a studio-based endeavour, Perri will be the first to insist that Off World is not “his” project: tracing its origins as far back as 2008, with Perri and fellow Torontonian Lorenz Peter (Processor, Corpusse) working together on tracks and very occasionally performing live, the project has expanded to encompass collaborations between Perri and many others, including producers Drew Brown (Lower Dens, Blonde Redhead, Beck), Susumu Mukai (Zongamin), M J Silver (Mickey Moonlight) and Craig Dunsmuir (Glissandro 70, Kanada 70), and musicians Jesse Zubot and Eric Chenaux.

Off World 1 is alien electronics played humanly, with real-world accents throughout. 1 was conceived almost entirely during a 2-day session in London: a meeting orchestrated by producer Drew Brown between himself, Perri, Susumu Mukai and M J Silver after learning that Perri was a huge fan of both Mukai and Silver’s work. A bounty of raw material featuring mostly vintage synthesizers – EMS Synthi, Syntorchestra, Prophet 5 – was later abetted by violin, banjo, harpsichord, guitar and piano. The result is genuinely exploratory and peculiar sui generis instrumental electronic music that sounds like it could have issued from any time in the past 40-50 years. Off World resists easy categorization: not ambient “easy listening”, not strictly “improvised”, not “retro” – but eccentrically absorbing and soothingly mischievous as it charts its own sonic trails.

Thanks for listening.

"...a fascinating treasure chest of strange and enchanting collaborative sound recordings – rich in deconstructed melody, interplay between acoustic and electronic instrumentation..."

cstrecords.com
ESP Institute
Polmo Polpo
Lorenz Peter
Kanada 70