Italian producer Phoet just released his debut album ‘Broken Symmetry’. A 12-track circular concept record, that aims to describe the concept of time through music touching everything from techno to trip-hop to African rhythms. Today he shares with us a short description of every song included.
“A brief introduction is due, from the following lines the record could seem pretentious and complex. It isn’t.
I think, on the contrary, it’s a simple and discernible work where I had fun drawing parallels between the world of physics and the world of music.
I’ve always felt the need of finding concepts to compose. In this case, wondering about what is time allowed me to find solutions that I probably wouldn’t reach without it.” – Phoet
Phoet’s ‘Broken Symmetry’ is already available. Stream/Buy here.
1. Clockwarp
The album opens with an opposition of phases, the same sound on the left and, inverted, on the right channel. When you listen in mono the sound disappears. Everything is different depending on how you look at them. While the phases slowly match, the song continues without a regular bpm, everything’s synced outside of time. The ticking of the clock becomes dilated and distorted.
2. On a Mexican Hat
You can’t balance on the tip of a Mexican hat. Like the synth that keeps oscillating from one side to the other, like a system, (collapsing) without apparent reason that collapses and breaks the symmetry of a perfect equilibrium. This track is full of arpeggios and distorted synths and through its creation I thought I could escape time.
3. Simultaneity
Events that happen at different times can also be simultaneous. In this track, voices from a distant past cross a present made of layered sounds including slowed down tape recordings and drum sounds made from different objects and distortions. Echoes from old-fashioned genres and a couple (of) quotations.
4. Footsteps
Probably the song I still understand the least. It’s between India and a rave party. Distorted kick drums, percussions, voices becoming pads and hidden melodies. The Symmetry of the record starts to break.
5. First Came The Seen
Just the voice of a poet, a real one, that reminds me to lose my vanity. The ant is a centaur in his world of dragons.
6. Symmetry Breaking
The drop of a lifetime, from Blade Runner to African rhythms. Symmetry breaking in full now, the first part in four and the second in triplets. Woods and tape slowing everything down.
7. Soul Collider
A collision of different souls, making them crash to see what happens. And, from the waste of the collision, unveiling something new. From 2step to house to Africa to I don’t even know what else. A radio without connection gives rhythm to Suz, drowned into the dub and distortion.
8. Still Untitled feat Sananda Maitreya
Again, something that already happened happens again, without repeating itself. In this track, I mix the vocal of Sananda Maitreya in one of his classics from “Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby” with broken rhythms and distorted synths. From “As Yet Untitled” to “Still Untitled”, for a song that keeps looking for his way home.
9. Standard Model
“This track is the result of me searching for a standard model to define my sound. It’s a track that pushes me to look up beyond the efforts of the day to day and look up at the sky and wonder where we all came from.”
10. Odeceixe
This song takes its name from a beach on the coast of Portugal, where my journey began. 30 years ago my father wrote a poem on that beach, and there, I’ve found him again, only the time dividing us. There, I decided this record would be dedicated to that thin veil of haze through which I could glimpse him.
In the intro, the rhythms are made with the sounds of the typewriter used by him to write that poem. The rest is a run that goes from 5/4 to 4/4 triplets, guessing how would be to cross that veil.
11. Gravity Hoax
The intro is a statement of love to the soundtracks of sci-fi movies. The rest is another crazy run through a wormhole where everything’s distorted, dilated, contracted, where all the voices of the record bounce and chase me. From the most extreme shuffle to the straightest techno. Layers of dub until the end of the tunnel.
12. Entanglement Sentence Example
This is just an outro, just an excuse to come back exactly when this all started.
Follow Phoet: Facebook | Soundcloud
