Kety Fusco creates nightmares with ‘Music To Make A Dream Come True’
Kety Fusco: Music To Make A Dream Come True is the new soundtrack by the harpist and sound researcher, out now on Floating Notes Records.
Kety Fusco transports us to a new era, one of music to make dreams come true and the subversive sounds generated by her harp sound research. Music To Make A Dream Come True is an imaginary soundtrack composed by the Italian-Swiss harpist, to be released on all digital platforms on 4 March 2022 on the international label Floating Notes Records. This soundtrack is the result of a sampling of sounds from Fusco’s harp, collected in a digital sound library named Beyond the Harp, Extreme Extended Experimental, available for artists, producers and art lovers on the musician’s official website.
Fusco destabilises the usual perception of the harp, moving away from the arpeggios and sound carpets that the instrument can easily call to mind, thus entering a universe that no listener would ever think belongs to a harp. Fusco has dedicated herself to transforming the sound of the harp, an instrument rich in sonic possibilities, and wishes to make its innovations available to everyone, not just harpists: “For me, thanks to my technique as a harpist learnt during my academic studies, it would be easy to produce arpeggios and soundscapes, but I don’t like playing easy. Instead, I’m interested in the harp being freed from any taken-for-granted connotations and for any kind of musician to explore it with a more punk approach”.
In 3 minutes and 47 seconds of experimental music, Music To Make A Dream Come True fuses noise, drones and screams with a magical aura. You can hear the cascades of nails on the strings, followed by vocal resonances emitted inside the harp’s sound box. Nicknamed ‘The Queen of the Electric Harp’, Fusco made exclusive use of the classical harp this time. Music To Make A Dream Come True conveys to the world for the first time ever a new sound timbre given by the oldest instrument in the world, the harp, which Fusco has completely revolutionised in style.
The highly esoteric video clip accompanying the track was shot by Francesca Reverito and Riccardo Bernasconi of Studio Asparagus, amidst woods, harps suspended in the air like heretical-mystical instruments, evocations and dances in the grip of possession: “Kety Fusco’s sound research is very evocative and immediately triggers dreamlike images, spirits and presences, sometimes disturbing. We have always been attracted to Genre and Fairytale, which is why Music To Make A Dream Come True immediately ‘spoke’ to us”. Fusco confirms the creepy mood of the film: “My dream? To make the soundtrack for a horror film!”.
From Pisa to Europe, Kety Fusco has taken the international avant-garde scene by storm, and under Caterina Caselli’s Sugar Music label she released her first album DAZED in 2020 (with Universal distribution and production by Swiss Music Grand Prize nominee Aris Bassetti), for which she was nominated for three categories at the last Swiss Live Talents Awards in Berne (CH) and thanks to which she got to play her compositions in the Federal Parliament Hall in Berne. Fusco’s music is a mix of perseverance and passion, electronic music to dance to on the one hand and organic research applied to experimentation and contemporary music on the other. Fusco also opened the Locarno Film Festival with an original transcription of the Swiss anthem. In the midst of the global pandemic, despite the interruption of live music, Fusco was then called upon to perform a transcription by Ennio Morricone for the Heroes festival, performing at the Arena in Verona. She has also collaborated over the years with inspiring musicians such as Clap! Clap!, Lubomyr Melnyk and the band Peter Kernel. Fusco reached one of the most important milestones of her career in 2021, when she was invited by the United Nations to the SDG Global Festival of Action, virtually sharing the stage with Patti Smith and Ben Harper.
Kety Fusco is currently finishing her new album, in which she manipulates the sound of the harp with electronic pedals, or scratches and destroys the bow of the strings, thus continuing her work of sound research. The record, made together with the musician IOSONOUNCANE, the master and sound engineer Alessio Sabella and Aris Bassetti, will be released in the summer and will have its world premiere at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival 2022.
