Daylighting

Music for DIY instruments and percussion / Cassette release with AnyOne

In Daylighting, Passepartout Duo continues to explore their fascination with building personalized musical instruments. A new suite of electronic devices that functionally integrate textiles and synthesizer circuits accompanies the two musicians’ familiar set of small portable percussion. These strange machines aesthetically recall imaginary landscapes connected to a trip to the Meili Snow Mountains in China, and inspired the seven tracks of the album.

Highlighting the potential of the new instruments, the musical process began from the careful shaping of each sound from its visceral fundamentals. The overall structure of the music is built through momentary collisions between layers of sound that exist in parallel dimensions, continuously and independently. These collisions explore timbrical, rhythmic, and melodic unison ideas that act as mile markers on listening paths. Symmetrical compositional ideas spiral out from the centerpiece of Daylighting that bisects the music of the album with its austere process, expanded and explored in each surrounding piece.

The design of the cassette summarizes the project as a whole, including machine-generated structures, geometries of weaving, and visual illusions, all distilled into the soy-based inks of the risograph.

Each cassette tape includes a five-fold insert with two color risograph print, available in a limited edition of 150 copies.

The album is released on AnyOne (CN), the Chinese art company and record label founded by Yannis Zhang and Yumo Wu, and is designed by Passepartout Duo. Inserts and packaging were printed by Concretipo in Florence, Italy.

Daylighting was written and recorded in Wunongding Village, Shanghai, Verona, and Krems an der Donau.

Special thanks to Sunyata Hotel Meili, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, and AIR Niederösterreich for providing time and space for the creation of this project.

Released June 25th, 2021

Physical albums available at these stores in Asia and Europe.