Overview: Following three Eps and one LP Fabrizio Rat releases his second solo album on Odd/Even, German label by Andre Kronert. His live set – a unique performance of a real man/machine playing with his hand non stop for many hours like a human sequencer – has bring him around the globe these years setting dancefloors on fire with his hypnotic and captivating techno. Nevertheless, alongside his intensive touring he has never stop producing, and his 12 track upcoming album is the result. Playing these many gigs around the world has inspired in a way the title track, ‘Unconscious Mind’. « While playing my live set I have often experienced a state of trance, reached some magical moments where the movements of my hand on the keyboard and the control of the musical flow becomes almost automatic, unconscious, and a feeling of ‘unity’ with the people in the room arise. Losing the awareness of control and letting the subconscious ‘play’ is surely the most exciting part of music. It can really generate surprises and allow to reach the unexpected and the unforeseen. For me techno is a kind of meditation, very powerful and loud. It is an extreme music which explores frequencies you can’t hear with your ears, only perceive with the body. Sub basses are in a way similar to the subconscious mind, you cannot identify them precisely and understand clearly what they want to ‘say’ – as you can do for example a melody in the middle register – but their only presence can impact your feelings very strongly. » 

The sonic palette used here is much larger compared to his first album ‘The pianist’, which was coproduced with Arnaud Rebotini and released on his label. However, the hypnotic power of repetition stays at the centre of his work, and is here even pushed much further. The sound of the ‘prepared’ acoustic piano (e.g. modified with objects touching the strings and experimental playing techniques) is always there, but used in a subtler way, to melt or fight against the analog synthesizers employed alongside, in particular the Korg Ms20 which is a real main character (you can feel its ‘aliveness’) in this record. 

The album is conceived entirely for the dancefloor, with no rest and no breathe, no ambient or ‘quiet’ tracks. Melodies emerge at times, resulting from original orchestrations of piano and machines. At other times more violent and static textures explore the extreme repetitions of piano harmonics, combined with slowly evolving filtersweeping hypnosis.

The meditation attitude towards techno is probably the reason that pushed Fabrizio to include spoken ‘mantralike’ vocals on some of the tracks, provided by Swedish singer Linda Olah with whom he has collaborated on many projects. « I asked her to speak as a hypnotist would do, with a flat, regular, obliging tone. In the very same attitude I played most of the piano patterns in the record. I hope it will help people listening or dancing to this record to loose awareness and control. »