Watch Joakim perform The Studio Venezia Sessions live in Rome

Using rare instruments and modular synthesisers.

Earlier this month Joakim released a new album recorded last year at Studio Venezia, the installation/sculptural ensemble/recording studio created by Xavier Veilhan for the French pavilion at the 2017 Venice Art Biennale.

A live performance devised from the sessions and subsequent release was commissioned by the Villa Medicis in Rome for their Villa Aperta festival in early June and has been captured in full. You can watch it below.

Joakim was one of several musicians and artists (including Brian Eno and Sebastien Tellier) invited to record in residency at the space, which was home to an extensive collection of instruments from medieval horns to rare modular synths, like Baschet crystals and percussions, a Buchla, and a clavinet.

Rather than draft compositions for his residency, Joakim invited visitors to help guide the creative process in-situ, asking them to pick a word, a letter between A and G, a tempo and even the instruments, that would form the basis of each improvised track (and its name).

Captured by a team of sound engineers using Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich’s vintage mobile studio, the immersive 9-track LP was inspired in part by the proto-ambient sonics of German electronic pioneers Cluster (particularly on ‘Trust’ and ‘Air’), as well as drone, Japanese minimalism, and modal jazz from the ’60s and ’70s.

Order your copy of the LP here.