“Time is often at the center of my stream of consciousness. What I like the most is how we can hold on to pieces of the past whilst we wait for our future. What about the present? Is it just a stage during which we observe who we were and who we will become? The 5 tracks of this Ep are questions about this.”

Italian composer and pianist Luca Longobardi comes from a generation of classically trained musicians that incorporate the language of contemporary electronic music into their compositions, and which are strongly connected to the multimedia arts.

Born in 1976, Longobardi studied classical music in Italy and New York and went on to earn his doctorate in digital audio restoration in Rome in 2011. His works reveal a strong interaction between classical and contemporary music.

“The fragile and intimate piano pieces are often in the foreground, interwoven with electronic nuances and atmospheric soundscapes. The emotional picture is a fragile skeleton of melancholy, the kind of melancholy that is born between longing and lucid dreaming.” (Gezeitenstrom – Musikmagazin)

The experience he has gained as a theatre musician has increased his interest in the relationship between sounds and spectacle; he has composed music for ballets and films and accompanied installations and experimental art productions (Atelier de Lumières – Paris, Carrière des Lumières – Baux-de-Provence, Kunstkraftwerk – Leipzig). At his multimedia performances and in his recordings, strongly experimental electronic music meets pure, ethereal and simple-seeming piano playing that nevertheless relays deep emotions.

Of the EP Luca says:

Now and Always: “a frame of time, a dialogue of two persons who bring their troubled thoughts from the past to present.”

Elke: “diving into retro sounds with a cinematic hint.”

Dēp: “in memory of Daniele, a special person and close friend of ours who died in an accident too early.”

Clouds: “taking a break from the routine, bringing my head up in the clouds.”

8 light-years from here: “a good-night tale, music to set the mood for a nostalgic dream.”

“Ambient Music to me is not generally a genre but a place in which we can take a moment for us.”

His musical references are Murcof, Beethoven, Nils Frahm, Thom Yorke, BVDUB.

“Longobardi’s works seem to be spontaneous, based on everyday-life situations that give the impression of being very simple but that hold deep feelings and thoughts, and the more you immerse yourself in them the more familiar they become, and will fill you with nostalgia for places and people you don’t know” (Gezeitenstrom – Musikmagazin).