Artist: mycrotom
Album: Ratoratiyo
Label: Mongkong Musik
Release date: June 4 (digital), July 4 (physical)
Tracklist
1. Iquitos Bird
2. Sennabua
3. Mumiru
4. Ago Agoldenhorseshoe
5. Caverna Tragica
6. Logic by Machine
7. Another fab
About the release
Music from mycrotom? Does the «mycro» stand for microscopic miniature music, or is there simply a very modest artist behind the small-print artist name? We may assume the latter, since the Italian-Canadian Tom Simonetti alias mycrotom has created rather large-format sound carpets in the Bertolt Brecht mechanical engineering city of Augsburg. He now presents the same: soundscapes on which you can go out of work and walk away.
Soundscapes on which you can fly. Like an albatross with its broad wings, we imagine the Maestro as we listen. Very slowly the science fiction samurai Simonetti unrolls the ornaments in front of our ears. Quite the machine whisperer who perseveres in the twilight zone and weaves the song that sleeps in the mycrotom machine, he serves us music equal to a tea ceremony – with plenty of time to steep. This is a record you have to let sink in with the bass channels wide open. Details and structures unfold along the way, over time. No matter how you twist and turn it: This record is a revelation. With each listen you get more and more.
About the artist
As an eight-year-old, Tom Simonetti starts playing – live! On the stages, of his mother’s Grateful Dead-affiliated rock band. Soon the young drummer comes into contact with a first Korg MS-20, discovers his passion for synthesizer envelopes, bass clouds and then electronic music. From then on and until today he will call himself «electronic live drummer» – tapping the skins with a gentle wing beat, which he also knows how to conjugate with electronic modules. A producer who thinks along with his analog antithesis and organically defines it. Be it the invention of new sound modules and generators, or be it the communicative work on new music in workshops as a certified AppMusician – it is Simonetti’s musical openness in combination with his audio-visionary foresight, which make him a popular partner in crime. For example in improvisations with Hangonauten, SMS/Schamoni Musik Service Band alongside BELP, Protein, Pico Be (Das Weiße Pferd) or Daniel dance, theater and studio music, DJ sets and the formation of a network make a cosmos vibrate, Simonetti’s cosmos, mongkong music. Among his companions are Taison Heiss (Lali Puna), Protein (Alientransistor), Erich Lesovsky, Stefan Schulzki. The author Franz Dobler in whose ARD Radiotatort music composition Simonetti is also involved.
Above all, it is the long-standing collaboration with his internationally acclaimed companion LeRoy, which brings Simonetti wide recognition in the bands Rhytm Police, H and Das Hobos and transports the musicians on concert tours as far as Siberia or the Odessa Jazz Fest (2017).(Top Twenty annual charts 2014 BR Zündfunk, Roy Preis der Stadt Augsburg 2015, Odessa Jazz Fest 2018 Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim Selected for Apple Beats 1st and released it in 2019 in Julien Temple‘s «Ibiza Silent Movie», BR Radio Tatort 2019, 2020,).
So now the solo debut of mycrotom, self-made by Tom Simonetti, on instruments and devices like Saito Marimba, CASIO cz5000, Korg Polysix, Doepfer 404, Dynacord vrz23, Sherman Filterbank, EMU Planet phatt, I-Pad Apps, Roland jx3p or Mks50 and of course drums, percussion and some rattles.
Bernhard Kuehne from Pen Produktionen was allowed to interfere in mix and mastering. The very coherent visual design by Tommy Schmid based on the illustrations by Hanna Verwohlt. An artistic VR music video was crowdfunded in Feb 2021. A VR music video will follow in May 2021. By the way, the visuals should also work for hearing impaired people.
The result is slow, cool disco & krautmusic, dub-knowledge & minimalism, Hip Hop & Psychedelic. They are all here in this big mycrotom drum. Forms a round whole. Kraut sounds globally matured here and unlike some other hypnotic flow music does not feast on its own spirituality, but has humor, roughness and bite.